Bridges Trade BioRes • Volume 9 • Number 3 • 20th February 2009

FAO Warns against Overfishing of Shrimp

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Overfishing is putting heavy pressure on the world’s shrimp stocks, an important source of food for many of the world’s poor, and causing significant environmental harm, a report from the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization warned on Tuesday.

“For millions of poor vulnerable households, shrimp fishing is an important source of cash and employment,” said Jeremy Turner, Chief of the FAO Fishing Technology Service. “But shrimp fishing is also associated with overfishing, capture of juveniles of ecologically important and economically valuable species, coastal habitat degradation, illegal trawling, the destruction of seagrass beds and conflicts between artisanal and industrial fisheries.”

The world shrimp catch, which is concentrated in Asia, amounts to roughly 3.4 million tonnes per year, making shrimp one of the most important internationally traded fisheries products.

But the FAO says that the current pace of the shrimp harvest is putting heavy pressure on shrimp stocks and causing harm to other fish species that become bycatch - marine animals that are inadvertently caught in trawling nets. The report warns that bycatch wastes resources and can threaten endangered or commercially important fish species such as cod, king mackerel and red snapper.

The report blames weak government agencies, inadequate laws, and a lack of political will in many countries for failures in the management of shrimp fisheries.

“These factors, which can be encountered in all fisheries across the world, are largely responsible for the lack of success, rather than any inherent unmanageable qualities of shrimp fishing gear or practices,” Turner said.

The report stresses that taking a “precautionary and ecosystem approach” to managing shrimp fisheries can help mitigate many of the problems associated with the sector.

The report analyses shrimp fisheries in 10 countries: Australia, Cambodia, Indonesia, Kuwait, Madagascar, Mexico, Nigeria, Norway, Trinidad and Tobago and the US.

The FAO report can be downloaded at ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/011/i0300e/i0300e.pdf.

ICTSD reporting.