Reconstruction of Freshwater Fisheries Catches: Canada, Minnesota (USA), and ASEAN Countries

This Fisheries Centre Research Report (FCRR) presents ‘reconstructions’ of the catch of inland (i.e., freshwater) fisheries for all 10 provinces and 3 territories of Canada, for the U.S. state of Minnesota and for the 10-member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations or ASEAN.

These catch reconstructions, like the previous catch reconstruction of the marine fisheries catches of the world’s maritime countries performed by the Sea Around Us (see www.seaaround.us.org) are required because, unfortunately, the catch statistics submitted to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) by its member countries are incomplete.

These ‘official’ statistics do not include discards and usually ignore the catch of subsistence and recreational fisheries, the latter being an issue that is far worse in inland than in marine fisheries. Thus, in Canada, the ‘commercial’ fisheries whose catches are the only statistics reported to the FAO, make up a small fraction of overall catches, which are overwhelmingly dominated by recreational catches, i.e., fish killed for sport.

This is the first of a series of which will be a series of Fisheries Centre Research Report by the Sea Around Us which will document the world’s inland fisheries catches. Thus, they will establish a baseline, which jointly with our marine catch reconstruction, will provide a realistic account, also available on our website, of the fish and invertebrates that have been extracted from the global ocean and the Earth’s inland waters. This should improve not only our evaluation of their contribution to our food security and livelihoods, but also of their impact on marine and freshwater biodiversity and animal welfare.

All FCRRs