Looking up underwater at the sun with two fish in silhouette.
Essay
Out of sight, out of mind? Addressing the invisibility of aquatic foods in food systems debates
Blue food is too often left out of debates on food systems and food security. The physical inaccessibility of aquatic creatures, habitat and resources create their cultural invisibility - meaning their role in solutions goes unexplored, and key issues unaddressed. Learning from the Blue Humanities, IIED Researcher Giulia Nicolini calls on us to think blue food back into food systems - and so into their transformation. This essay draws on IIED’s ‘What about seafood?’ paper and work on aquatic foods. Giulia Nicolini is a researcher at the International Institute for Environment & Development (IIED). She works at the intersection of food and environmental issues, including blue foods and their role in the future of the UK food system. Giulia is also a PhD student in Anthropology at the University of Exeter, based in the Centre for Rural Policy Research. Her doctoral research explores how taste and demand for seaweed as a food are changing in the UK.
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The cover of “Fishing Europe’s Troubled Waters: Fifty Years of Fisheries Policy”
Books
Fishing Europe's Troubled Waters: Fifty Years of Fisheries Policy
This book, coming at the end of the author’s celebrated career in social science, reflects on 50 turbulent years of fisheries management and policy in Europe, across a period in which the globalisation of trade, increasing regulation and declining fish stocks have had a radical impact on North Atlantic fisheries. The author considers the origins of the Common Fisheries Policy and the roots of its failure to deliver sustainable fisheries, the flaws of a centralised system and the consequences of Brexit for the UK fishing industry.
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Living Planet Report 2022
Reports
Living Planet Report 2022
The WWF sets out global trends in biodiversity over the past 50 years, concluding that land use change is currently the greatest threat to nature, but that climate change could overtake land use change in impact if we cannot keep warming to 1.5°C. The relative abundance of monitored vertebrate wildlife populations has declined by an average of 69% between 1970 and 2018, with particularly large declines (of 94%) in Latin America and the Caribbean. (For a definition of relative abundance, see page 9 of the Living Planet Index technical report). The report also emphasises the importance of indigenous knowledge and a rights-based approach to solving the nature, climate and pollution crises.
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Krill, Baby, Krill – The corporations profiting from plundering Antarctica
Reports
Krill fishing is harming Antarctic ecosystems
This report from the UK Changing Markets Foundation investigates the impacts of krill fishing in the Antarctic. Krill - tiny crustaceans that are near the base of many marine food chains - are caught for use in omega-3 dietary supplements and as feed for aquaculture. In light of krill fish’s impacts on fragile ecosystems, the report calls for an immediate moratorium on krill fishing; for retailers to phase out the use of wild-caught fish, including krill, for aquaculture; for retailers to stop selling krill dietary supplements; and for consumers to stop using krill supplements and to demand krill-free seafood.
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WUR
News and resources
Simon Bush: Boycotting seafood will not save the seas
Prof Simon Bush, Chair of the Environmental Policy Group at Wageningen University, has written an opinion piece critically reflecting on the Netflix documentary Seaspiracy and its argument that we should stop eating fish to protect ocean ecosystems. Bush queries some of the factual claims of the film, including statements about whether fish stocks will collapse by 2048, the fraction of fish that is illegally caught and the presence of pollutants in fish. He argues that seafood is an essential source of nutrition for billions of people, including many of the poorest people.
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