Introduction

One of the main services provided by the oceans to human societies is the provisioning service of food from capture fisheries and culturing operations. This includes fish, invertebrates, plants, and for some cultures, marine mammals and seabirds for direct consumption or as feed for aquaculture or agriculture. These ocean-based sources of food have large-scale benefits for human health and nutrition, economic returns, and employment.

A major challenge around the globe is to obtain these benefits without compromising the ability of the ocean to continue to provide such benefits for future generations, that is, to manage human use of the ocean for sustainability. In effect, this means that capture fisheries and aquaculture facilities must ensure that the supporting stocks are not overharvested and the ecosystem impacts of the harvesting or aquaculture facilities do not undermine the capacity of a given ocean area to continue to provide food and other benefits to society (see Chapter 3). Further, the social and economic goals of the fisheries and aquaculture should fully consider sustainable use in order to safeguard future benefits.

Dimensionality of the oceans as a source of food

Capture fisheries and aquaculture operate at many geographical scales, and vary in how they use marine resources for food production. Here, “small-scale” refers to operations that are generally low capital investment but high labour activities, relatively low production, and often family or community-based with a part of the catch being consumed by the producers (Bene et al., 2007; Garcia et al., 2008). Large-scale operations require significantly more capital equipment and expenditure, are more highly mechanized and their businesses are more vertically integrated, with generally global market access rather than focused on local consumption. These descriptions are at the ends of a spectrum continuum of scales with enormous variation in between.

The geography of harvesting and food production from the sea is also important. Williams (1996) documents that until the mid-1980s, developed countries dominated both harvesting and aquaculture, but thereafter developing countries became dominant, first in capture fisheries and later in mariculture. A general division of large-scale fisheries and mariculture in the developed world and small-scale operations in the developing world was never absolute.