Environmental assessment of the Atlantic mackerel (Scomber scombrus) season in the Basque Country. Increasing the timeline delimitation in fishery LCA studies

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this study was to evaluate the environmental impacts linked to fish extraction on a temporal basis, in order to analyze the effect that stock abundance variations may have on reporting environmental burdens. Inventory data for the North-East Atlantic Mackerel (NEAM) fishing season were collected over an 8-year period and used to carry out a life cycle assessment (LCA). The selected fishery corresponds to the Basque coastal purse seining fleet. Materials and methods The functional unit (FU) was set as 1 t of landed round fish in a Basque port during the NEAM fishing season for each of the selected years. The selected data for the life cycle inventory were gathered from personal communication from ship owners and from a fish first sale register in the Basque Country. A series of fishery-specific impact categories and indicators were included in the evaluation together with conventional impact categories. Results and discussion Conventional LCA impact categories showed that the environmental impact is dominated by the energy use in the fishery, despite of the low fuel effort identified with respect to other purse-seining fisheries. Nevertheless, strong differences were identified between annual environmental impacts, attributed mainly to remarkable variations in NEAM stock abundance from 1 year to another, whereas the fishing effort remained relatively stable throughout the assessed years. Fishery-specific categories, such as the discard rate or seafloor impact showed reduced impacts of this fishery respect to other small pelagic fish fisheries. Finally, the fishery in balance (FiB) index identified the evolution of NEAM stock abundance for this particular fishery. Conclusion To our knowledge, this is the first fishery LCA study in which there is sufficient inventory data in order to conduct the methodology throughout a wide period of time. The outstanding variance in environmental impacts from one season to another evidences the need to expand fishery LCAs in time, in order to attain a more integrated perspective of the environmental performance of a certain fishery or species.The extension of LCA inventories in the timeline may be an important improvement for activities that rely entirely on the extraction of organisms from wild ecosystems. For instance, future research will have to determine the importance of increasing the timeline in fishery LCAs for species that do not show large stock abundance variations through time, unlike NEAM.

Assessing broad life cycle impacts of daily onboard decision-making, annual strategic planning, and fisheries management in a northeast Atlantic trawl fishery

“…This catch rate varies with many aspects: fishing area, season, type of fishing vessel and fishing gear, technology used, individual skills, and weather conditions. Temporal variability in resource use of fisheries has been found to be substantial in some cases (Ramos et al 2011) and less pronounced in others (Almeida et al 2014). Both of these studies focused on variability between years, while temporal variability within a year has only recently been studied, with indications that it can be considerable (Almeida et al 2014).…”

“…A company choosing between different suppliers will find average environmental performance over, e.g., the time period of a contract more relevant than for a specific fishing trip. As a result, seafood LCA studies and product-specific carbon footprint standards (Ramos et al 2011;BSI 2012;Standard Norway 2013), for example, advocate a 3-to 5-year average for important input data to account for inter-annual variability and make results valid for a longer time. The detailed level, on the other hand, can be more relevant for understanding what is important and how to internally improve within a company.…”

Energy efficiency of Norwegian fisheries from 2003 to 2012

“…Therefore, energy use is suggested as an indicator of the overall environmental burdens associated with fisheries (Ziegler et al, 2013). Ramos et al (2011) performed life cycle assessment (LCA) of Basque coastal purse seiners over an eight-year period. Energy use in the fishery dominated most of the impact categories.…”

“…Thorough knowledge of the current level of energy efficiency is required to identify the status of a fishery in the market and to identify the explanations for the current state of efficiency. Additionally, energy analyses over long periods are relevant to fisheries' LCA due to the acknowledged importance of fuel consumption to the associated environmental impacts (Avadí and Fr eon, 2013;Ramos et al, 2011). Long-term energy analyses can serve as an input to the LCI of seafood products and enable a more accurate LCA.…”

SENSE tool: easy-to-use web-based tool to calculate food product environmental impact

“…Time scale: The selection of the time limits of the study is a difficult issue in the food LCAs especially in the studies based in the sourcing of Bwild^raw materials or dependent on factors not controlled by humans. For example, the fish stocks vary considerably from year to year and therefore it is recommended to collect data of at least 3 years in order to obtain a robust result (Ramos et al 2011;Vazquez-Rowe et al 2012b). iv.…”