JAKARTA, April 20 Asia Pulse/Antara – Around 150 delegates from 30 Asia Pacific countries are attending a 5-day meeting starting yesterday in Bali to discuss sea fishing sustainability and illegal fishing.
Indonesian Fisheries and Maritime Minister Rokhmin Dahuri said when opening the meeting that growing shortfall in fish supply to the world market has prompted the meeting. Rokhmin said over-fishing has been recorded in 10 of 14 main fishing grounds in the world as fishing exceeded sustained yield from year to year.In some fishing grounds in a number of regions fishing has been banned temporarily to allow the remaining fish to breed and multiply.In 2001, the world’s fish production totaled 115 million tons and in 2003, the production shrank to 90 million tons as against requirement of 125 million tons . Demand is expected to continue to increase with the growing population and greater preference to fish over meat.China contributed 25 million tons to the world’s production in 2003 although its water territory is only 503,209 sq. km. as against Indonesia’s 5.71 million sq.km with production of only 4.5 million tons.
