Europe’s Appetite For Seafood and Overfishing Threatening Domestic Industry Sustainability

Decades of European overfishing is now reaching crisis levels. Without new sustainability regulations in place, the European Union’s fishing industry continues to overexploit its waters, and now needs to increasingly depend on imported fish to meet domestic consumer demands.

Overfishing in European Union waters. Cartoon from the World Wildlife Fund.

“EU catches have steadily declined since 1993 at an average rate of two percent per year,” according to the new report, Fish Dependence - 2011 Update: Increasing reliance of the EU on fish from elsewhere, by the nef and the OCEAN2012 alliance.

The report finds that as the EU’s domestic fish populations continue to decline, “fish consumption in the EU continues to increase and remains at levels beyond what EU waters can produce.” It estimates that Europeans eat about 29 percent more seafood that the global average.

This trend is having both a devastating effect on the ecology of the EU’s domestic waters and on the ability of EU states to maintain profitability in their fishing industries.

If this trend continues, it means less fish for European consumers, and higher prices for the fish. For decades, the EU has had to import a portion of its fish supplies to meet consumer demands, and every year that number has grown.

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