Food provision

This goal assesses our ability to sustainably maximize wild-caught or farmed marine foods.

Overview

One of the most fundamental services the ocean provides is the provision of food. Fish provide nearly 20% of global animal protein, helping to meet the basic nutritional needs of over half of the world’s population (FAO 2020)!

Scores

The Food Provision score for the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden region was 35.

The Food Provision scores are low for all regions. This is due to low levels of marine aquaculture and weak fisheries management.

The interactive map below shows the scores for the different countries.


For the Global OHI, this goal assesses seafood obtained from wild-caught fisheries and marine farming, or mariculture.

We calculate each of these subgoals separately and average them to estimate the overall goal score. For this goal we weight the contributions to the final score based on the tonnes of production. A score of 100 means that food production is sustainably maximized.

The subgoal scores can be viewed below.

Subgoal scores (click to expand)

Mariculture

The Mariculture subgoal score for the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden region was 3.

These scores are low, but mariculture scores are low for most of the world.

The interactive map below shows the scores for the different countries.


Wildcaught fisheries

The Wildcaught Fisheries subgoal score for the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden region was 43.

Fisheries scores are low throughout the region, but are particularly low in Egypt, Jordan, and Eritrea.

The interactive map below shows the scores for the different countries.

Model description

The Food Provision goal measures the amount of seafood sustainably harvested through any means for human consumption, and thus includes both mariculture and wild-caught fisheries (commercial, artisanal, and recreational). For the global assessment, the contribution of these two subgoals to the overall score is weighted by their total seafood yield. However, other approaches for weighting the contribution of these subgoals are reasonable.

A high score indicates that a region has maximized the amount of sustainably produced seafood from wild or ocean-cultured stocks. For fisheries, both over- and under- harvesting should be penalized. For mariculture, production should be at the sustainable “potential”.

Mariculture

As humanity’s population continues to expand, we must increasingly rely upon new and improved methods for cultivating food on land and in the ocean. The term aquaculture refers to the cultivation in water (fresh and saltwater) of animals or plants for human consumption. Mariculture refers to the commercial harvest of seafood that is farm-raised in the ocean and along the coast.

Aquaculture is the fastest growing animal food production sector in the world, with a 527% rise in production from 1990 to 2018 (FAO 2020)! As the population contines to grow, it will become increasingly important to efficiently grow food using sustainable mariculture practices.

Mariculture scores are based on two factors:

  • Maximizing the amount of seafood that can grown based on conditions.
  • Ensuring that mariculture practices are sustainable.

The status of the mariculture subgoal, \(x_{mar}\), was calculated using three sources of data:

  • Mariculture production: Tonnes of production for both marine and brackish waters, excluding species that were not used as a source of food for human consumption is from FAO.

  • Potential production: Gentry et al. (2019) estimates the tonnes of possible production for marine aquaculture at a high resolution spatial scale. To account for social and economic realities and other constraints to these ecological potentials, we constrained the per-country potential to 1% of this tonnage estimate and used these country values as reference points.

  • Sustainability: Additionally, we include a sustainability score for each species in each region which is based on the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch aquaculture recommendations [@2023].

Wild caught fisheries

The wild-caught fisheries subgoal evaluates how well we maximize harvest without damaging the ocean’s ability to continue providing fish for people in the future. The sustainable harvest of wild-caught seafood avoids excessively high exploitation of target species and does not target threatened populations. Each year’s catch must not take so much from the population that future catches will decline.

We assess food provision from wild caught fisheries by estimating population biomass relative to the biomass that can deliver maximum sustainable yield (\(B/B_{MSY}\)) for each stock. When available, we obtained \(B/B_{MSY}\) values from the RAM Legacy Stock Assessment Database.

When RAM data were not available, we used data-limited approaches that have been developed to estimate \(B/B_{MSY}\) values using globally available catch data.

To calculate the status for each region and year, \(B/B_{MSY}\) values were converted to a stock status score between 0-1 that penalizes over-harvesting. To obtain the overall status for each region, the stock status scores for all the stocks within a region were averaged using a geometric mean weighted by the average catch (tonnes) of each stock using Sea Around Us catch data.

A closer look at the data

The biggest factor driving scores, by far, is the current status component. Here, we take a closer look at the data underlying the status scores for each country with EEZ territory in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.

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Other components of an OHI score: Pressures, resilience, and trend

OHI scores are primarily driven by the current status dimension of the score, but pressures, resilience, and past trends are also important components of the goal score. In most cases, these variables will nudge the score a bit higher or lower than the current status score.

There are over 20 pressure variables (e.g., ocean warming, ocean acidification) and about 15 resilience variables (e.g., good governance and high gdp) used in the global assessment.

Each country gets a score for each pressure and resilience variable. For example, for each country we estimated the intensity of increase in ocean temperature, and rescaled these data to range from 0 to 1 (no pressure vs. highest pressure).

Each goal is affected by a subset of the pressure and resilience variables.
We provide a brief description of all the pressure and resilience variables along with how they affect each goal. A brief description of how these variables are incorporated into the final score is here. :::

Current status

We will first look at the data underlying the mariculture subgoal and then then wildcaught fisheries subgoal.

Mariculture sustainability

Mariculture scores are based on two factors:

  • Maximizing the amount of seafood that can grown based on conditions.
  • Ensuring that mariculture practices are sustainable.

The following table provides the tonnes of production and sustainability of rearing practices for each species that is currently grown in each country. Sustainability is rescaled to values between 0 and 1, with 1 indicating perfect sustainable.

The sustainability scores for reared seafood are fairly high for all countries and taxa, with the exception of Egypt. Egypt has low sustainability for European seabass, Gilthead seabream, and Meagre.

Mariculture production

To determine whether the farming of seafood is maximized relative to potential we determined the tonnes of production relative to the tonnes of production that is possible based on environmental conditions.

Given the potential, there is very little farming of seafood throughout the region.


Wildcaught fisheries management: data (click to expand)

The wildcaught fisheries score is based on how well fisheries are managed. We use B/Bmsy values to assess how stocks are managed. This table describes recorded fisheries catch with corresponding stock status scores (i.e., bbmsy). B/Bmsy scores of 1, or greater, indicate the stock is healthy and current biomass is at, or above, maximum sustainable yield.

In this case, many stock throughout the region lack assessments, indicating that fisheries could be better managed.

Implications

Overall, both mariculture and fisheries scores are low for all the countries in this region.

Based on these data, mariculture scores are very low primarily because production is low compared to the potential for production. About 226,000 tonnes of seafood are farmed each year in this region, with Egypt producing the most (~138,00 tonnes) and Saudi Arabia next (~85,000). However, this is small relative to the 3.7 million tonnes that could, theoretically, be produced.

The sustainability scores for reared seafood are fairly high for all countries and taxa, with the exception of Egypt. Egypt has low sustainability for European seabass, Gilthead seabream, and Meagre, which have, relatively, high production.

Fisheries scores are low primarily because most of the wild-caught fish from this region do not have stock stack scores, which we use as an indicator of weak fisheries management for the global assessment. Only about 40% of the fish catch is identified to species, which means that it can not be assessed using stock assessments and this is heavily penalized in the global Ocean Health Index fisheries model.

Future assessments should carefully assess the underlying data and models to meet their objectives.

Other OHI+ analyses have revised mariculture and fisheries subgoals to better reflect local concerns.