Marine seafood production via intense exploitation and cultivation in China: Costs, benefits, and risks

Abstract

Identifying strategies to maintain seafood supply is central to global food supply. China is the world's largest producer of seafood and has used a variety of production methods in the ocean including domestic capture fisheries, aquaculture (both freshwater and marine), stock enhancement, artificial reef building, and distant water fisheries. Here we survey the outcomes of China's marine seafood production strategies, with particular attention paid to the associated costs, benefits, and risks. Benefits identified include high production, low management costs, and high employment, but significant costs and risks were also identified. For example, a majority of fish in China's catches are one year-old, ecosystem and catch composition has changed relative to the past, wild and farmed stocks can interact both negatively and positively, distant water fisheries are a potential source of conflict, and disease has caused crashes in mariculture farms. Reforming China's wild capture fisheries management toward strategies used by developed nations would continue to shift the burden of production to aquaculture and could have negative social impacts due to differences in fishing fleet size and behavior, ecosystem structure, and markets. Consequently, China may need to develop novel management methods in reform efforts, rather than rely on examples from other large seafood producing countries. Improved accounting of production from fisheries and aquaculture, harmonization and centralization of historical data sets and systematic scientific surveys would improve the knowledge base for planning and evaluating future reform. Global seafood production Global seafood production reached 171 million metric tons in 2016, and on average~17% of animal protein consumed globally comes from seafood (this number can be much higher for coastal communities; [1]). Marine capture fisheries contributed 79.3 million tons to production; marine aquaculture (mariculture) contributed 28.7 million tons. Demand for seafood

The search for blue transitions in aquaculture‐dominant countries

“…Branch, 2015; Essington et al., 2006) rather than stock recovery. Government plans were to reduce landings in 2017 to 10 million tonnes by 2020 (Szuwalski et al., 2020), but to what extent this has been realized or will allow biomass recovery remains to be seen.…”

Scenarios for Global Aquaculture and Its Role in Human Nutrition

“…China participates in a globalized food system (Cao et al 2015) and there are early indications that it is attempting to realign parts of its aquaculture sector within environmental limits (e.g. Godfrey 2019;Szuwalski et al 2020). While the long-term comprehensiveness, precision, and effectiveness of these efforts are uncertain, competing economic sectors and changing social forces may drive improved regulation of the sector.…”

China at a Crossroads: An Analysis of China's Changing Seafood Production and Consumption

“…79 Given the production constraints outlined above, it is unlikely that a majority of the seafood needed to cover projected consumption in 2030 can be supplied by domestic production alone. Furthermore, the 13FYP notably states specific targets to decrease overall seafood production by 1 Mt and decrease domestic capture by a minimum of 3 Mt, suggesting that a minimum of 2 Mt of additional seafood will have to be produced in other seafood subsectors to simply compensate for the projected shortfall from domestic capture (see also Szuwalski et al 81 ). DWF has been a strategy by which China has increased domestic seafood supply in the past, but the 13FYP target for DWF is only 0.1 Mt higher than 2015 catch, while vessel numbers are set to be reduced (Table S5).…”