The world is eating more fish than ever and contrary to popular notions, fish farming and not marine wild catch is meeting the global demands, the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2016 report has revealed. FAO brings out this report every two years. It said that India is one of 35 countries that produced more farmed than wild-caught fish in 2014. According to the report, almost 90 per cent of aquaculture production takes place in Asia, most of it in the tropical and subtropical belts.

In the exhaustive report, encapsulating the trends of world fishing production, it has come to light that diversified production has increased the average per capita availability to a new high of more than 20kg. “World per capita apparent fish consumption increased from an average of 9.9 kg in the 1960s to 14.4 kg in the 1990s and 19.7 kg in 2013, with preliminary estimates for 2015 indicating further growth, exceeding 20 kg,” the report said.

Globally, total capture fishery production in 2014 was 93.4 million tonnes, of which 81.5 million tonnes from marine waters and 11.9 million tonnes from inland waters. In 2014, there were an estimated 4.6 million fishing vessels with Asia alone having 3.5 million of them and 64 per cent of global vessels were engine-powered.