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Courtesy of NAA:

9 July 2018, Rome, Italy – Global fish production will continue to expand over the next decade even though the amount of fish being captured in the wild has leveled off and aquaculture’s previously explosive growth is now slowing, says a new report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

The latest edition of the agency’s The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture2018 (SOFIA) report projects that by 2030 combined production from capture fisheries and aquaculture will grow to 201 million tonnes.

That’s an 18 percent increase over the current production level of 171 million tonnes.

But future growth will require continued progress in strengthening fisheries management regimes, reducing loss and waste, and tackling problems like illegal fishing, pollution of aquatic environments, and climate change, the report adds.

The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2018 reports that 90.9 million tonnes of fish was captured in the wild in 2016 — a slight decrease of 2 million tonnes from the year before, mainly due to periodic fluctuations in populations of Peruvian Anchoveta associated with El Niño.

Generally, the amount of fish being captured in the wild plateaued starting in the 1990s and has remained largely stable since.

Despite that fact, the world has for decades been consuming ever greater amounts of fish – 20.3 kg per capita in 2016 versus just under 10 kg/pc in the 1960s — thanks in no small part to increased production via aquaculture, a sector which expanded rapidly during the 1980s and 1990s.

In 2016, production from aquaculture reached 80 million tonnes, according to SOFIA 2018 — providing 53 percent of all fish consumed by humans as food.

While aquaculture’s growth has slowed — it experienced 5.8 percent annual growth between 2010 and 2016, down from 10 percent in the 1980s and 1990s — it will still continue to expand in the coming decades, especially in Africa.

To read the entire UN-FAO press release, please visit: http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/1144274/icode/.  To read or download SOFIA 2018, please visit: http://www.fao.org/state-of-fisheries-aquaculture/en/.