5. Impacts on food security
The masking effect of geographical expansion would not have worked, however, were it not for a tightly integrated global market resulting from the relaxation of investment regulations, the opening of international banking and advances in telecommunications, capable of compensating through imports from the Southern Hemisphere, for the shortfall in meeting the increasing demand for fish in the Northern Hemisphere owing to increased recognition of the benefits of eating seafood and increasing affluence. In many developing countries, the need to generate hard currency to repay their debts is most easily accomplished either by selling fishing access rights to countries willing to pay relatively high prices or by exporting high-value fishes. This has resulted in many coastal areas being overfished by DWFs, leaving few fishes for small-scale and artisanal fishers to generate income and subsistence, as seen in many African countries (Atta-Mills et al. 2004). Indeed, nine of the top 40 fish-exporting countries globally are considered to have a low-income food deficit. This is illustrated for demersal table fish in figure 4, but also applies to other high-end seafood (e.g. shrimps to Japan, the USA or the EU) and to small pelagics used for fishmeal and fed to farmed animals, both terrestrial and aquatic (e.g. salmon).
The masking effect (to consumers in developed countries) of serial depletion coupled with a global market for seafood is further enhanced by fish farming, which many believe will ‘relieve the pressure on overfished stocks’. In fact, it can do so only if the fishes and other organisms that are farmed do not require fishmeal or fish oils for their production (as is the case for clams and mussels, for the herbivorous tilapia farmed in much of tropical Asia, or for catfish in the USA). When they do, as in the case of salmon or other carnivorous fishes, farming adds to the pressure, as it transforms small pelagics and other fishes perfectly fit for human consumption into animal feeds whose nutritive value is largely lost to humans when they must pass through the gut of a carnivore (Naylor et al. 2000).
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