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Issue: Contributions of the coasts and oceans to human life - Food

This is an issue under the Coasts and oceans theme of the Data Reporting System.

Why we need to know about this issue

The ocean contributes many necessities to human life but extracting those contributions can exert pressures on the marine environment. Environmental degradation resulting from the pressure of extracting these contributions, combined with other pressures, has the potential ultimately to erode the ocean’s capacity to supply these contributions. In the shorter term, the additional effort needed to increase or even just to sustain contributions at current levels in the face of environmental degradation could exert greater and more damaging long-term pressure on the environment.

To have the full story, it is therefore important to track not only what is happening to the pressures, the resulting condition of the oceans, and the societal responses, but also what is happening to the contributions. If the contributions can be maintained or increased (or replaced) while responses are undertaken to ensure that environmental pressures are reduced and environmental condition maintained or improved, then the contributions to human life from the ocean can become environmentally sustainable.

Food, mainly provided through commercial fishing of wild species, but increasingly supplemented from aquaculture, is one of the most basic of all the contributions of the oceans to human life.

Indicators

• CO-07 Australian fisheries production - national tonnage and value of retained catch 
  Wild fish are a main source of food for human life, both domestically and exported. Aggregated tonnage and dollar value are reasonable ways of tracking trends in this contribution.
• CO-08 National tonnage and value of aquaculture production 
  Farmed fish are an expanding source of human food. Aggregated tonnage and dollar value are reasonable ways of tracking trends in this contribution.
• HS-48 Material Flows in Human Settlements 
  Material flows analysis provides insights into the movement of food from the sea.

Related issues

• Coasts and Oceans - Direct pressure of human activities on coasts and oceans- Pressure of fishing 
• Land - Contributions of land to human life- Living materials from the land 
• Human Settlements - Services provided by the environment to human settlements- Fisheries