The Sustainable Fisheries Partnership (SFP) has released its annual sustainability overview of fisheries used for fishmeal and fish oil from the most recent assessment period of 2009-10.
The overview covers the 28 principal fisheries around the Atlantic and South America and rates them in accordance with the FishSource sustainability assessment – it used to be called the Reduction Fisheries League Table.
Jim Cannon, chief executive officer of the SFP, said: “In releasing this information, we aim to encourage the world's fishmeal and fish oil suppliers and forage fisheries to engage in improvement efforts, with a priority on improving those fisheries that currently fall short of current single-species best practices, and ensuring that all the fisheries move towards ecosystem-based management.”
The overview reveals that cumulatively, 70.7% of the catch from the fisheries score an acceptable level on all criteria – broadly in line with the requirements of existing and proposed aquaculture feed sustainability standards.
However, it flags up that no reduction fishery is currently managed within an ecosystem based fisheries management regime and that single stock species management regimes should move towards an ecosystem based approach to ensure sustainability in future.
Fishery scores from this period indicate a small decline in overall score, but SFP says that this data does not conclude that sustainability status of reduction fisheries is in decline. Moreover, it says that sustainability is likely to have improved.
