Environmental assessment of Irish seafood: a case study of pelagic fishing

The Northeast Atlantic has some of the most productive fishing grounds in the Atlantic Ocean. Recent European Union policy (e.g. Farm to Fork Strategy) has highlighted the environmental efficiency of marine sourced proteins and the need for their increased inclusion in human diets. To assess the changes this transition may bring it is important to analyse the environmental performance of marine protein production activities such as fishing. One such way of measuring the performance of an activity is life cycle assessment (LCA), which has increasingly played a role in assessing the environmental profiles of food production. In this study, LCA was applied to benchmark the environmental impact of landing 1 kg of mixed pelagic fish caught by Irish refrigerated seawater trawlers in the Northeast Atlantic. Several life cycle impact categories were assessed, notably global warming potential, energy use and ozone depletion potential. Within the study boundaries, key operational inputs for this type of fishing were provided by 74 % of the Irish pelagic refrigerated seawater fleet (n = 17). The LCA methodology was applied to the Irish RSW pelagic sector, and it was found that fish caught by these vessels have a low environmental impact and are an efficient means of food production. The results indicated that the associated impacts of the fishing activity were low, but that there existed variance between the vessels. The edible protein energy return on investment across the species caught at 34 % was comparable with previous studies and, in some instances lower than what has been reported. The results of the present study confirm that mid-water pelagic species are a low environmental impact protein source. There is a need for additional investments in knowledge, development, skills, and education to enable the sector to meet policy requirements and leverage such insights to improve value creation for key receptive markets.