The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2010 - FAO

World review of fisheries and aquaculture
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the livelihoods of a total of about 540 million people, or 8.0 percent of the world
population.
Employment in the fisheries sector has grown faster than the world’s population
and than employment in traditional agriculture. The 44.9 million people engaged
in the sector in 2008 represented 3.5 percent of the 1.3 billion people economically
active in the broad agriculture sector worldwide, compared with 1.8 percent in 1980.
The majority of fishers and aquaculturists are in developing countries, mainly in Asia,
which has experienced the largest increases in recent decades, reflecting in particular
the rapid expansion of aquaculture activities. In 2008, 85.5 percent of fishers and
fish farmers were in Asia, followed by Africa (9.3 percent), Latin America and the
Caribbean (2.9 percent), Europe (1.4 percent), North America (0.7 percent) and Oceania
(0.1 percent). China is the country with the highest number of fishers and fish farmers,
representing nearly one-third of the world total. In 2008, 13.3 million people were
employed as fishers and fish farmers in China, of whom 8.5 million people were full
time. In 2008, other countries with a relatively high number of fishers and fish farmers
were India and Indonesia.
Although the highest concentration of people employed in the primary sector is
in Asia, average annual production per person there is only 2.4 tonnes, whereas it is
almost 24 tonnes in Europe and more than 18 tonnes in North America. This reflects
the degree of industrialization of fishing activities, and, in Africa and Asia, also the key
social role played by small-scale fisheries. The differences are even more evident in the
aquaculture sector, where, for example, fish farmers’ average annual production in
Norway is 172 tonnes per person, while in Chile it is about 72 tonnes, in China 6 tonnes
and in India only 2 tonnes.
Although capture fisheries continue to provide by far the greater number of
jobs in the primary sector, it is apparent that the share of employment in capture
fisheries is stagnating or decreasing and increased opportunities are being provided
by aquaculture. According to the estimates based on the available data for 2008, fish
farmers accounted for one-quarter of the total number of workers in the fisheries
sector, totalling almost 11 million people. Since 1990, fish farmers have experienced
the greatest increases in their numbers, with most of the growth occurring in Asia,
particularly in China, where the number of fish farmers increased by 189 percent in the
period 1990–2008.
Employment in fishing is decreasing in capital-intensive economies, in particular in
most European countries, North America and Japan. This is the result of several factors,
including decreased catches, programmes to reduce fishing capacity and increased
productivity through technical progress. It is estimated that about 1.3 million people
were employed in fisheries and aquaculture in developed countries in 2008, a decrease
of 11 percent compared with 1990.
Analyses indicate that the global fishing fleet is made up of about 4.3 million vessels
and that this figure has not increased substantially from an FAO estimate of a decade
ago. About 59 percent of these vessels are powered by engines. The remaining
41 percent are traditional craft of various types, operated by sails and oars,
concentrated primarily in Asia (77 percent) and Africa (20 percent). These unmotorized
boats are engaged in fishing operations, usually inshore or on inland waters. The
estimated proportion of non-powered boats is about 4 percent lower than that
obtained in 1998. Of the total number of fishing vessels powered by engines, the
vast majority (75 percent) were reported from Asia and the rest mostly from Latin
America and the Caribbean (8 percent), Africa (7 percent) and Europe (4 percent). The
proportion of countries where the number of vessels either decreased or remained
the same (35 percent) was greater than that of those where it increased (29 percent).
In Europe, 53 percent of the countries decreased their fleet and only 19 percent of
countries increased it. There was no increase in North America, while in the Pacific
and Oceania region the fleet size either remained the same or decreased in a larger
proportion of countries. In the Near East, 6 out of 13 countries (46 percent) increased
the number of vessels in their fleets. In Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia and