Symposium 4: Nutrition and Sustainable Food Production

• Main Author: M Haddon
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Patagonian Toothfish
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.624.2582; http://apjcn.nhri.org.tw/server/apjcn/procnutsoc/2000+/2003/haddon.pdf

Review – Fisheries have been operating in Australia for well over a century and range from classics such as rock lobster, flathead, and barramundi to more exotic species such as bêche de mer and Patagonian toothfish. We are fishing deeper and further a field than ever before but fewer novel species are being added to the panoply of species already being harvested, although new markets continue to be found. Possibly all of Australia’s fisheries are well developed or if they are still developing, there is an excess of potential fishing effort available to be applied to each fishery. This excess or latent effort is a major problem for many fisheries around Australia and has immediate implications for sustainability of affected stocks. There are significant challenges currently being faced by the world’s living marine resources. Worldwide there are growing concerns1 about the sustainability of marine resource in the face of industrial scale fishing effort. Besides the depletion of stocks there are also concerns over “fishing down the food web”2, meaning that the larger, predatory species, which unfortunately for them are also often the higher value species, are first depleted, then the next level is fished down, until eventually fishers are left with fishing for what was previously lower value less appealing fish species. Along with signs of long-term slow depletion of marine resources there have been significant changes in the fishing fleets doing the