Fisheries in life cycle assessment: Operational factors for biotic resources depletion

• Published in: Fish and Fisheries
• Main Authors: Hélias, Arnaud, Langlois, Juliette, Fréon, Pierre
• Other Authors: Agence Nationale de la Recherche
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Wiley 2018
• Subjects: Northeast Atlantic
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/faf.12299; https://api.wiley.com/onlinelibrary/tdm/v1/articles/10.1111%2Ffaf.12299; https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/faf.12299

Abstract Life cycle assessment ( LCA ) is the normed and international framework for assessing the environmental impacts of most human activities. LCA is commonly used to assess various aspects of fisheries but is only at the onset for estimating impacts of fish removal. This study proposes original characterization factors ( CF s) to quantify impacts on biotic resources using the mass of fish caught. This mid‐point assessment occurs in impact pathways leading to “natural resources,” one of the three areas of protection in LCA , and thus fisheries can be compared according to the depleted stock fraction. CF s are defined by the marginal approach applied to the Schaefer model, representing the dynamics of the stocks. They combine catches, current biomass and maximum intrinsic growth rates, determined from the application of the CMSY algorithm (Froese et al. (2017), Fish Fish , 18, 506) with FAO and FishBase data. A multistock CF is also proposed and used for multispecies‐stocks. CF s for the 4,993 stocks defined from global FAO areas are obtained and sorted according to the robustness of the model hypotheses. CF values among stocks generally tend to decrease when fish catches increase because high catches are generally associated with abundant stocks. Multispecies‐stocks CF s for the northeast Atlantic Ocean are compared to ICES ‐based CF s and are reliable for the main fished stocks. With this simple and generic structure, this operational fish resource depletion potential could be extended to other biotic resources.