Marine Industries Global Market Analysis - Marine Institute

MARINE INDUSTRIES GLOBAL MARKET ANALYSIS
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13 Fishing
1999–03 2004 2005–09
Irish Market €M 951 176 788
UK Market €M 4,338 678 3,033
Europe Market €M 32,313 4,758 21,280
World Market €M 362,035 55,983 250,386
Definition – the value of captured fish and shellfish as defined by the FAO.
13.1 INTRODUCTION
Fishing is an important industry that is seeing growing demand, but the world catch
tonnage is falling as a result of serious resource problems and quota restrictions.There
are some opportunities offered by new species, however, aquaculture which is
subsidised in a number of countries provides serious price competition.The industry
faces a future of continuing global decline worldwide until a point of sustainability
can be reached.
Figure 13.1: Fishing and Aquaculture Production
Since 1996 capture fishing tonnage has been at best flat and has shown recent decline.
The growing world demand for fish and other seafood is being met by aquaculture
where tonnage growth over the period 1996 to 2002 averaged 7% and $ value
averaged annual growth of 4%.
Our five-year forecasts assume the value of the catch will stay constant from 2002
prices onwards.This assumption has been made on the basis of increasing production
of fish (including shellfish) from aquaculture, keeping prices steady.
Source: FAO and Eurostat
Within Europe and elsewhere initiatives have been introduced, such as the EU’s CFP
(Common Fisheries Policy), with the aim of conserving remaining fish stocks.
Globally, the volume of captured fish has been decreasing slightly and this decrease
may appear more pronounced if the speculation about China, over-reporting its
production (by as much as 43%), are to be believed. 50 In addition, the depreciation of
the US dollar against the Euro makes the decline more pronounced when values are
viewed in euros rather than dollars.
Marine fishing production can be viewed by tonnage and by value.The values are
derived from tonnage data in the Eurostat online database and further broken down
into molluscs & crustaceans (shellfish) and demersal & pelagic (finfish).The value of
each of these subsets was estimated, by country, using the FAO ‘World Fishery
Production: estimated value by group of species’ table, containing annual data from
1999–2002.
50
Delgado, C et al, ,‘The future of fish, issues and trends to 2020’ FAO.