Page 14 - FAO Aquaculture News, May 2021 - No. 63

Seaweed Revolution: Where is the Next Milestone?

eaweeds, also known as macroalgae, make up an TABLE 1 – Global seaweed production, 2019
Simportant component of global aquaculture. In 2019,
Aquaculture
seaweed cultivation contributed nearly a quarter of the 120 Total production Share of share in total
from cultivation
million tonnes of world aquaculture production. In terms Country/area and wild collection world total production
1
(%)
of wet weight, red seaweed (Rhodophyceae) and brown (tonnes) (%)
seaweed (Phaeophyceae) were, respectively, the second- World 35 762 504 100.00 96.97
and third-largest species groups in global aquaculture, Asia 34 826 750 97.38 99.10
following “Carps, barbels and other cyprinids”. Being China 20 296 592 56.75 99.14
2
mostly low-value commodities, seaweeds accounted for Indonesia 9 962 900 27.86 99.55
5.4 percent of the USD 275 billion of world aquaculture Republic of Korea 1 821 475 5.09 99.52
production value in 2019. Yet, the 5.4 percent value share
was higher than “Tilapias and other cichlids” or “Catfishes”, Philippines 1 500 326 4.20 99.98
and only lower than four species groups (i.e. “Carps, Democratic 603 000 1.69 100.00 Global Aquaculture Updates
People’s Republic
barbels and other cyprinids”; “Marine shrimps and prawns”; of Korea
“Salmons, trouts, smelts”; and “Crayfishes”). Japan 412 300 1.15 83.80
Malaysia 188 110 0.53 100.00
However, seaweeds are not well known in many parts of Americas 487 241 1.36 4.69
the world, as seaweed production is mostly concentrated Chile 426 605 1.19 5.08
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in Eastern and South-eastern Asia (Table 1). In 2019, Peru 36 348 0.10 0.00
the Americas and Europe each accounted for only around
1 percent of global seaweed production, and most of their Canada 12 655 0.04 0.00
seaweed production came from wild collection. Seaweed Mexico 7 336 0.02 0.14
production in Africa and Oceania, which was mostly from United States of 3 394 0.01 7.75
America
cultivation, accounted for less than half of a percent of the Europe 287 033 0.80 3.88
world total (Table 1).
Norway 163 197 0.46 0.07
Seaweeds have recently become popular, drawing increasing France 51 476 0.14 0.34
attention to their potential as an alternative source of Ireland 29 542 0.08 0.14
healthy food to feed the growing human population and Russian 19 544 0.05 54.10
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their ecosystem services in reducing greenhouse gases. Federation
5
Iceland 17 533 0.05 0.00
Africa 144 909 0.41 81.29
United Republic 106 069 0.30 100.00
of Tanzania
Morocco 17 591 0.05 1.55
South Africa 11 155 0.03 19.32
Madagascar 9 665 0.03 91.72
Oceania 16 572 0.05 85.32
Solomon Islands 5 600 0.02 100.00
Papua New 4 300 0.01 100.00
Guinea
©FAO/A. Lovatelli Kiribati 3 650 0.01 100.00
1 923
0.01
Australia
0.00
Seaweed farmer preparing a line with Eucheuma cuttings for
ongrowing. West Sumba, Indonesia.
1. Unless noted otherwise, aquaculture and fisheries production statistics
used in this document are from FAO. 2021. Fishery and Aquaculture
Written by: Statistics. Global production by production source 1950–2019 (FishStatJ).
Junning Cai In: FAO Fisheries Division [online]. Rome. Updated 2021.
E-mail: Junning.Cai@fao.org www.fao.org/fishery/statistics/software/fishstatj/en
Alessandro Lovatelli 2. The methodology of species grouping and ranking can be found in “FAO.
2020. Top 10 species groups in global aquaculture 2018”.
E-mail: Alessandro.Lovatelli@fao.org www.fao.org/3/ca9383en/ca9383en.pdf
Austin Stankus 3. Country grouping in this article follows the United Nations M49 standard.
E-mail: Austin.Stankus@fao.org https://unstats.un.org/unsd/methodology/m49/
Xiaowei Zhou 4. Parodi, A., Leip, A., De Boer, I.J.M. et al. 2018. The potential of future
foods for sustainable and healthy diets. Nat Sustain, 1: 782–789.
E-mail: Xiaowei.Zhou@fao.org https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-018-0189-7
FAO Fisheries Division, Rome, Italy 5. Duarte, C.M., Agusti, S., Barbier, E. et al. 2020. Rebuilding marine life.
Nature, 580: 39–51. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2146-7

FAO AQUACULTURE NEWS – Nº. 63 ■ MAY 2021 13