Saving Seafood

Aquatic animal and terrestrial meat trades now almost on par, FAO report finds

July 1, 2026 — Rapid aquaculture growth has pushed farmed aquatic animal production to more than 100 million metric tons per year for the first time ever, boosting the trade value of all aquatic animal products almost to parity with the trade value of land-produced meat.

That’s according to the latest “The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture” (SOFIA) report from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The 2026 installment of the report, a biennial collection of data that outlines FAO’s vision for the fishing and aquaculture sectors, was released June 16 at the 11th Our Ocean Conference in Mombasa, Kenya.

“The [aquaculture] sector is evolving very rapidly,” Manuel Barange, director of the FAO’s Fisheries and Aquaculture Division, told Mongabay. “It’s now achieving levels that fisheries never did. And that is positive because there’s no doubt about it that we’re going to be 10 billion in just a couple or three decades. And everyone has a right to food.”

Connecting science and policy

SOFIA is “one of the most authoritative reports we have,” Paul Orina, director general of the Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute, said at a Mombasa press conference to launch the report. Its value lies in how it “connects science with policy,” he said.

The FAO has been giving policymakers, scientists and civil society a deep dive into the global fisheries and aquaculture sectors since 1995, with SOFIA 2026 bringing in data through 2024. The flagship report reviews FAO and broader U.N. statistics, including those FAO has been collecting on around 500 fish stocks globally since 1974.

It provides data, analysis and projections that inform decision-making internationally, and documents measurable progress of FAO’s Blue Transformation. This road map for meeting the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goal 14 (SDG 14), Life Below Water, by 2030, was launched in 2021. It aims to improve the social, economic and environmental sustainability of aquatic foods, and to feed more people more equitably despite growing challenges from climate change, pollution and biodiversity degradation.

Read the full article at Mongabay

UN report: People around the world are eating more fish

July 8, 2016 — UNITED NATIONS — People around the world are eating more fish and global per capita fish consumption topped 20 kilograms (44 pounds) a year for the first time in 2014, according to preliminary estimates in a U.N. report released Thursday.

The Food and Agriculture Organization report said the record consumption, which appears to have continued in 2015, is the result of increased supplies from fish farming, growing demand linked to population growth, reduced wastage, rising incomes and urbanization, and a slight improvement in some fish stocks.

According to The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2016, world per capita fish consumption increased from an average of 9.9 kilograms (21.8 pounds) in the 1960s to 14.4 kilograms (31.7 pounds) in the 1990s, 19.7 kilograms (43.3 pounds) in 2013 and 20.1 kilograms (44.2 pounds) in 2014.

FAO Director-General Jose Graziano da Silva said fish farming or aquaculture — using coastal net pens or ponds to raise freshwater and saltwater species — now provides half of all fish for human consumption.

China has played a major role in the growth of fish farming, accounting for 60 percent of world aquaculture production, the report said.

On a negative note, the report said “the state of the world’s marine fish stocks has not improved” despite notable progress in some areas.

It said almost a third of commercial fish stocks are now fished at biologically unsustainable levels, triple the level of 1974.

Global total production from fishing in 2014 was 93.4 million tons — 81.5 million tons from marine waters and 11.9 million tons from inland waters, the report said. China was the largest marine producer followed by Indonesia, the United States and Russia.

For the first time since 1998, anchovy was not the top-ranked catch in 2014, falling below Alaska pollock, the report said.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the New Jersey Herald