Fuel consumption of global fishing fleets: current understanding and knowledge gaps

Abstract

Compared to a century ago, the world's fishing fleets are larger and more powerful, are travelling further and are producing higher quality products. These developments come largely at a cost of high‐fossil fuel energy inputs. Rising energy prices, climate change and consumer demand for ‘green’ products have placed energy use and emissions among the sustainability criteria of food production systems. We have compiled all available published and unpublished fuel use data for fisheries targeting all species, employing all gears and fishing in all regions of the world into a Fisheries and Energy Use Database (FEUD). Here, we present results of our analysis of the relative energy performance of fisheries since 1990 and provide an overview of the current state of knowledge on fuel inputs to diverse fishing fleets. The median fuel use intensity of global fishery records since 1990 is 639 litres per tonne. Fuel inputs to fisheries vary by several orders of magnitude, with small pelagic fisheries ranking among the world's most efficient forms of animal protein production and crustaceans ranking among the least efficient. Trends in Europe and Australia since the beginning of the 21st century suggest fuel use efficiency is improving, although this has been countered by a more rapid increase in oil prices. Management decisions, technological improvements and behavioural changes can further reduce fuel consumption in the short term, although the most effective improvement to fisheries energy performance will come as a result of rebuilding stocks where they are depressed and reducing over‐capacity.

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“…However, it can be seen that in 2004 and 2008-9 there was a general decrease in the number of fishing days per vessel due to fuel price increases, as already reported in Cheilari et al, (2013) and Parker and Tyedmers (2015).…”

“…Because fuel prices have been significantly increasing over time up to recent years (e.g., more than doubled in the 14 years' period analyzed) and exhibit large short-time variation, they are often perceived by fishers, governments and researchers as the most important factor driving the fishing sector's profitability (Csirke, 2005;Abernethy et al, 2010;Cheilari et al, 2013;Parker and Tyedmers, 2015). (Figure 2).…”

“…In 2008, a EU fishing vessel was spending on average 40 days less at sea than in 2002 (Cheilari et al, 2013). Indeed, modern fishing fleets suffer from high operational costs when oil prices are high, such as the prices observed over the last decade (Csirke, 2005;Abernethy et al, 2010;Cheilari et al, 2013;Parker and Tyedmers, 2015).…”

Modifying penaeid-trawl spreading mechanisms to improve environmental efficiency

“…Globally, some crustacean trawl fisheries require over 10,000 litres of fuel per tonne landed, with some penaeid fisheries being the most fuel intensive (Parker and Tyedmers, 2014). In many fisheries, fuel costs alone contribute >50% towards production costs; a large component of which can be attributed to the spreading mechanisms (Funk et al, 1998;.…”

“…Globally, some crustacean trawl fisheries use over 10,000 litres of fuel per tonne of product landed, with penaeid 185 fisheries being among the most fuel intensive (Parker and Tyedmers 2014). The latter characteristic arises primarily because penaeid trawls require their small meshes to be made from durable twine, which translates to considerable solidity (ratio of twine area-to-area covered by mesh) and therefore drag.…”