A Greenpeace East Asia investigation reveals that some 4 million tons of fish, equivalent to nearly one third of China’s total annual domestic fisheries catch is comprised of the so-called trash fish.”
According to the NGO researchers, for Chinese trawlers, which account for about half of China’s total catch, the proportion of trash fish rises to 50 per cent of catch, adding that catching trash fish on this scale is placing extra pressure on China’s already heavily over-exploited fish resources and causing further damage to an already stretched ecosystem.
Though too small for human consumption, trash fish’ catch is increasingly in demand from China’s booming aquaculture industry, which processes the catch into fish feed.
In the space of 50 years, China’s domestic catch has deteriorated from low volume, high value’ mature and big fish to high volume, low value’ juvenile and small fish. This is a classic case of fishing down the food web, and it is quite simply not sustainable. With the emergence of a huge market for fish feed made from trash’ fish, it is imperative that the government better regulate this type of fishing practices, before it is too late for China’s ocean ecosystem, warns Rashid Kang, senior oceans campaigner at Greenpeace East Asia.
The campaigner explains that in a healthy and sustainable marine fishing industry, fish species should be allowed to mature before being caught, otherwise they are unable to reproduce and fast reach the point where stocks collapse.
Greenpeace investigation found that 44 per cent of fish species from a total of 218 species in 80 samples of trash fish taken from 22 ports along the Chinese coast were edible and economic fish’, of which 75 per cent of fish were juvenile.
This discovery demonstrates that the fishing industry is increasing pressure on the most valuable species to China’s food safety and the profits of the struggling industry.
In 2014 China’s aquaculture industry consumed 7.2 million tons of domestically caught wild fish as fish feed, larger than Indonesia’s entire annual catch. An additional 5.1 million tons of fish feed are sourced from outside China. The industry grew 10 fold from 1986 to 2015 and now occupies more than 60 per cent of global aquaculture production.
How best to develop fish farming’s role as a contribution to food security and how best to use feed’ or trash’ fish and invertebrates can only be determined by better understanding the volumes involved and the possible implications of their use for the future health of marine ecosystems. Given China’s major importance globally, both as a seafood consumer and as a seafood farming nation, the question is extremely important and relevant, stressed Professor Yvonne Sadovy de Mitcheson, Swire Institute of Marine Science, University of Hong Kong, and advisor to Greenpeace’s report.
In her view, there is now an opportunity for the country to be a leader in sustainably produced seafood if it can find and maintain the right balance between human use and the health of the marine ecosystem it exploits.
All in all, in order to tackle the problem of overexploitation of trash fish resources, Greenpeace East Asia recommends that the quantity of trash fish caught be reduced by enhanced regulations on mesh size, fishing gear, fish species size and the use of a quota system.
Finally, the NGO considers it is also important to develop more Marine Protected Areas in which young fish could more easily grow to maturity and suggests that the government establish strict requirements for fish feed sustainability.
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