China catches and consumes more fish than any other nation, according to findings published Wednesday in National Geographic magazine, while the United States ranks third.
The study measures the “SeafoodPrint” of each country, factoring in the type of fish and total haul to gauge the extent to which a nation exploits the ocean. The United States comes in as high as it does in part because Americans prefer top predators such as Atlantic salmon.
Peru ranks No. 2 in terms of its annual catch, largely because its anchovies help supply fish meal for farm-raised pigs and chickens, as well as fish. Peru’s citizens consume little fish.
The researchers used a unit of measurement based on the microscopic organisms at the bottom of the marine food web that are required to make a pound of a given type of fish. A single thousand-pound tuna might need to eat as many as 15,000 smaller fish in a year, for example, which means eating 1 pound of tuna is equivalent to 100 pounds of tilapia.
“The footprint of fishing could be used as the common currency to determine what’s the limit of what we can take out of the ocean,” National Geographic fellow Enric Sala, a study co-author, wrote in an e-mail. “We could think about reducing our footprint like we’re thinking of reducing carbon emissions.”
