An economic study of the current state of fish resources and their uses at the global and local levels

Abstract

This research is to take up fish production trends in Libya and in the world as well, also it is to investigate fish consumption trends and the human been proportion of all consumption. The research highlight of aquaculture and its role to realize food security and to decrease the gap between production and consumption, therefore, to keep the current level of  human been consumption which is 16 kgm\ annually, that level of consumption needs to increase fish production from aquaculture to about 80 million tones to support fish production from natural resources. In Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, the current fish production level is very low, it's arrived to 33.6 thousand tones from the natural resources and about 380 tones from aquaculture in 2004, these levels should be increasing to cover the local demand and to increase fish export treatments.This study refers to that, the world fish production (from different resources) increases from about 118.2 million tones in 1998 to about 141.6 million tones in 2005. The internal waters contributed with about 38.5 million tones (27.2%) of world fish production in 2005, while fish production of marine waters reached 153.1 million tones (72.8%) of world fish production in the same year. World fish production from aquaculture reached about 45.5 million tones in 2004, China is  considered as the first country in fish production, it contributed more than 67% of all world production, India comes after china by about 5.5%, then Vietnam and Thailand of nearly 2.6%, Indonesia, Bangladesh and Japan contributed by 2.3%, 2%, 1.7% respectively. Chile, Norway and America contributed by 1.5%, 1.4%, 1.7% successively of world production from aquaculture. Fish farming (aquaculture)is one of the important fish resources that control the nutritional gap of animal protein food which will result in increasing and improving the quantity and quality of fish products. Aquaculture activity is growing faster than the other food sectors. One of international reports refers to that, the means of annual growing rate of aquaculture production from 1970 to 2004 reached around 8.8%, comparing with annual growing rate of natural catches which doesn't pass 1.2% for the same period of time. The time line function of sum total of aquaculture fish production refers to that, fish production rate is increasing annually by 6.2% during 1998-2005. The aquatic organisms rear in different environments, freshwaters, salt waters and semi-salt waters. The production from freshwaters still has the biggest percentage of world aquaculture production with 56.6% in 2004, while the production from salt waters comes secondly by 36% and at last fish production from semi-salt waters contributed by 7.4% of all world aquaculture production. Aquaculture play principal role to realize nutritional security in several developing countries, and that is because of large production of some freshwater species which have low value and locally consumption. Libya has a long coast , it's about 1900 Km from Ras-Ejdair in the west of country to Ras-Alrmla in the east. Mediterranean sea considered as a very poor seas of fish production that doesn't pass 2% of all world sea fisheries production, waters of Mediterranean sea lack to the nutrients, such as the plankton, perhaps because of the poverty of rivers which can bring the nutrients to the sea, and maybe because of the weakness of sea streams, especially, at south and west coasts, as Libyan coast. Aquaculture is a recent activity in Libya. It was started by farming freshwater fish species during the 1970s. But because of lack of freshwater resources (such as rivers and lakes) some of fish farmer chose to work on semi extensive farms by culturing some species of carp and cat fish which mainly imports from China. In 1980, marine and freshwater fish farming started within the governmental sector. Fish production from aquaculture in Libya is very limited, it was  wobble between 30-40 tones till the end of 1990 when the new farms under government sector were established. In 2004 fish production increased to about 230 tones.                                             

Generally, this study is recommending to concentrate on arise the investment fields in fish catch activities by making partnership with the pioneer countries in this activity. Libya has coastal and financial possibilities that could make it one of the important countries in fish culturing activity, but that required more support from Libyan government to developing this sector and transport the experiences and get more chances for privet sector, that to increase fish production for local consumption and exportation treatments. In additional, it advises improving catch fleet and studying the productivity and biological status of fishery.