New report anticipates future increases in fishmeal and fish oil prices

The EU funded CERES project has investigated how climate change is affecting different European fish/shellfish species – and how Europe’s fishermen and fish farmers can adapt to climate change in the future.

The CERES project’s synthesis report is now available for everyone to read: CERES synthesis report (PDF, 18MB)

The report focuses on the most commercially valuable fish and shellfish to identify the risks, opportunities, and uncertainties of climate change for Europe’s fishery and aquaculture communities.

Climate change influence both fisheries and aquaculture by, for example, impacting the global trade of fishmeal and fish oil used in aquaculture feeds. Decreased supply of small pelagic fish in other parts of the world such as the Peruvian anchovy could result in substantially higher prices for fishmeal and fish oil, which could markedly increase production costs for certain farmed species. Higher fish prices are predicted also because of higher demand for fish in the future, which may lead to substitution of fish with other sources of protein (e.g. poultry or vegetable proteins).

Among the scenarios, the highest prices for fishmeal (€2,282 tonne-1) and fish oil (€1,921 tonne-1) were obtained in National Enterprise (NE), followed by Local Stewardship (LS) (Fig. 6.1 – see below).

Several research priorities were identified by the CERES project e.g. technological advances in the development of new feeds will make the aquaculture industry less sensitive to climate-driven shocks in the availability of feedstuffs from aquatic (e.g. fishmeal and fish oil) and terrestrial sources.