That makes sense—thanks for sharing these. I’m honestly surprised the icefish count is so low, but that’s just because it seems popular as a dish and requires a lot of fish. One other theory—is there much information on the fishmeal market? It seems possible that the statistics (I didn’t look too far into methods so this might be wrong) are representing fish sold (or leaving facilities) and that hatcheries are processing fish into fishmeal on site and using it to feed fry and fingerlings? Just a thought about other ways lots of fish might be produced but not represented in counts—especially if the methods for counting are different.
Icefish might weigh less than 10 grams, they really look tiny. Also, I see some wild-caught icefish in a fishcount table but it’s ten times less in weight than farmed icefish. It could be that these stats don’t include all the icefish though.
Fishcount also estimated that each year 0.45-1 trillion wild-caught fish are used to make fishmeal and fish oil, and that between 140 and 490 billion wild-caught fish are fed directly to farmed fish. But all of these fish seem to be wild-caught. This article also seems to assume that (although I only skimmed it). I haven’t seen evidence that fish are farmed to feed other farmed fish, I’m not sure if that could be economically viable.
That makes sense—thanks for sharing these. I’m honestly surprised the icefish count is so low, but that’s just because it seems popular as a dish and requires a lot of fish. One other theory—is there much information on the fishmeal market? It seems possible that the statistics (I didn’t look too far into methods so this might be wrong) are representing fish sold (or leaving facilities) and that hatcheries are processing fish into fishmeal on site and using it to feed fry and fingerlings? Just a thought about other ways lots of fish might be produced but not represented in counts—especially if the methods for counting are different.
Icefish might weigh less than 10 grams, they really look tiny. Also, I see some wild-caught icefish in a fishcount table but it’s ten times less in weight than farmed icefish. It could be that these stats don’t include all the icefish though.
Fishcount also estimated that each year 0.45-1 trillion wild-caught fish are used to make fishmeal and fish oil, and that between 140 and 490 billion wild-caught fish are fed directly to farmed fish. But all of these fish seem to be wild-caught. This article also seems to assume that (although I only skimmed it). I haven’t seen evidence that fish are farmed to feed other farmed fish, I’m not sure if that could be economically viable.
Thanks! That makes sense.