Hooked on Fish- Demand for Fish at All-Time High
New figures from the United Nations have revealed that the world’s demand for fish is at an all-time high.
According to the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), fish is the most traded commodity in the world, valued around $108 dollars in 2008 alone. This increased demand for fish, coupled with countless depleted and exploited fisheries around the world, leads the UN’s State of World Fisheries for 2010 to report a “cause for concern.”
"The pressure we are imposing on the world's fisheries is excessive. Either we are eating too much or we are too many," explains Dr. Daniel Pauly, marine biologist at the University of British Columbia. "Three or four years ago there was wide consensus that fisheries were doing very badly, now again it has become a contentious issue, much like talk on global warming.”
Despite ongoing debate in the scientific community of the current state of fisheries worldwide, the FAO made its opinion on the situation quite clear, writing that increasing sustainable fish populations is impossible "unless effective management plans are put in place to rebuild over-fished stocks."
