Over the course of the 20th century, fossil fuels became the dominant energy input to most of the world's fisheries. Although various analyses have quantified fuel inputs to individual fisheries, to date, no attempt has been made to quantify the global scale and to map the distribution of fuel consumed by fisheries. By integrating data representing more than 250 fisheries from around the world with spatially resolved catch statistics for 2000, we calculate that globally, fisheries burned almost 50 billion L of fuel in the process of landing just over 80 million t of marine fish and invertebrates for an average rate of 620 L t -1. Consequently, fisheries account for about 1.2% of global oil consumption, an amount equivalent to that burned by the Netherlands, the 18th-ranked oil consuming country globally, and directly emit more than 130 million t of CO 2 into the atmosphere. From an efficiency perspective, the energy content of the fuel burned by global fisheries is 12.5 times greater than the edible-protein energy content of the resulting catch. © Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences 2005.

Item Type:	Refereed Article
Keywords:	fossil fuel; fishing industry; fossil fuel; fuel consumption; air pollutant; animal; article; cost benefit analysis; economics; environmental protection; evaluation; fish; food industry; invertebrate; protein intake; ship; Air Pollutants; Animals
Research Division:	Agricultural, Veterinary and Food Sciences
Research Group:	Fisheries sciences
Research Field:	Aquaculture and fisheries stock assessment
Objective Division:	Animal Production and Animal Primary Products
Objective Group:	Fisheries - wild caught
Objective Field:	Wild caught fin fish (excl. tuna)
UTAS Author:	Watson, RA (Professor Reginald Watson)
ID Code:	84058
Year Published:	2005
Web of Science® Times Cited:	192
Deposited By:	Sustainable Marine Research Collaboration
Deposited On:	2013-04-16
Last Modified:	2013-04-16
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