China tops global aquaculture production

China still dominates world aquaculture production since year 2000, accounting for 67 percent or 34.43 million tonnes of the total global output.

In a paper by Ms. Shirlene Maria Anthonysamy of Infofish, India is a distant second accounting for six percent, followed by Thailand and Vietnam with 3.2 percent and Indonesia by 2.5 percent.

While the growth of global capture fisheries has more or less stagnated during the current decade, aquaculture production has grown by 45 percent since 2000, the paper said.

Global shrimp production has risen sharply since 1996 and touched 3.18 million tonnes in 2006, almost on par with global captured shrimp in quantity.

Asia has been the major shrimp producing area followed by Latin America. Black tiger was the predominant species accounting for 46 percent of the global production but there was a major shift to vannamei shrimp by China and Thailand in recent years. Consequently, vannamei shrimp production has spurted and contributed 63 per cent of the global farmed shrimp harvest in 2006. This has also elevated China and Thailand to the top position in global farmed shrimp production.

Meanwhile, world fishery trade has continued to surge during the past decade. In terms of value, the top seafood importing countries were Japan, the US, Spain, France, Italy and China. However, in terms of quantity, China was the top importer.

Imports of seafood continue to be quite strong in the US markets and shrimp remains the top product group to be imported.

In per capita consumption, shrimp is far ahead of other seafood such as tuna, salmon and pollack.