National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Antarctic; Schaefer; Antarc*; Antarctic Krill
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.556.119; http://swfsc.noaa.gov/publications/cr/1978/7816.pdf

That marine ecological systems are tremendously productive of plant and animal life is an established fact. In assessing the potential for food production from the sea, however, marine scientists have produced quite a range of “estimates ” of the sea’s productivity. In 1965 Schaefer (1) con-servatively estimated that the world fishery production could be increas-ed to 200 million tons “with no radical developments, such as fish farm-. ing or far out kinds of fishing gear. ” This total production was to include all fish, molluscs, and crustaceans supporting traditional fisheries. Noting that the nutritional value of animal protein is essentially the same whether it comes from the bluefin tuna, the anchovy, or the lowly Antarctic krill, Chapman (2) surmised that any estimate of the sea’s poten-tial must assume something about man’s tastes and needs. If people need and desire a traditional mix of taste, texture and fragrance, then much of the food must come from the relatively scarce populations of third and fourth-stage carnivores. I f, on the other hand, man desires only a balanc-ed mix of amino acids, minerals and vitamins, then food production may rely upon the more abundant lower-stage plants and animals. The poten-tial annual yield of well-balanced, undifferentiated animal protein could, according to Chapman, range up to 2 billion tons. The annual sustainable yield of the more desirable predators would amount to only around 60 million tons. These estimates refer only to the harvest of wild stocks. More intense cultivation techniques, loosely termed “aquaculture”, are estimated to yield over 4 million metric tons worldwide annually (3). Much of this ton-nage is derived from fresh and brackish waters. True mariculture is really an infant industry, but Bardach, Ryther and McLarney claim that yields from existing aquaculture installations could increase tenfold over the next three decades if “there were no economic constraints on the upgrading of culture ” (3).