How Many Fish Do We Eat A Year?

The global production of fish and other aquatic life includes two different activities. The first one is capturing or fishing wild aquatic organisms, and the second one is focused on their production in aquaculture.

This production has increased in the last five decades alone, and Global seafood consumption has doubled, which puts stress on the sustainability of fisheries and aquatic ecosystems.

How many fish do we eat a year? According to calculations from different fisheries, the global demand for seafood consumption is 143.8 million tonnes per year. The overall consumption footprint, which includes other uses of seafood, is 154 million tonnes.

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Please find out how many fish people eat within a year in this short read and why it keeps growing.

How Much Fish People Consume

Fish is part of our everyday food, especially for pescatarian people. The increase in the demand for fish is to be fed. Back in the 1960s, studies showed that an average person ate 9.9 kilograms of fish every year.

But now, this value is about 19.2 kilograms, and it keeps on rising. The many reasons for this increase are due to worldwide population growth, rising income, and urbanization.

In 1996, there was a total capture of 93.3 million tonnes followed by 2011, which reached 93.7 million tonnes. Back in 2012, another production reached a maximum of 86.6 million tonnes.

During these years, 18 counties, 11 in Asia, were responsible for 76% of the overall marine captures.

There were about 11.6 million tonnes for inland waters, representing 13% of total captures. And last but not least, the production in aquaculture there was about 90.4 million tonnes.

It includes 66.6 million tonnes of fish and 23.8 million tonnes of seaweed. China produced 43.6 million fish and 13.5 million seaweeds.

Global Demand Is Growing

Global seafood consumption has doubled in the last five decades. It is a total of 20 kilograms per capita per year. And as demand for seafood rises, the sustainability of fish stock becomes a severe issue.

Compared to other products, the share of globally produced seafood traded globally is high and growing. It is because of globalization and the location discrepancies between aquaculture productions.

It is mainly happening in Asia, and the seafood demand is mainly in Europe and North America. Most of them rely on imports to meet all national demands. Some countries even considered the sustainability of seafood for both domestic production and net imports.

Conclusion

Overall, the demand for seafood consumption is growing year by year. It is because of different reasons but mainly because of overpopulation. For this reason, a different branch of the government that is handling the fisheries created a set of rules to follow.

It is mainly for managing fishing fleets and conserving fish stocks. It might be possible that stocks are renewable, but they are finite.