OceanCanada Research Director Rashid Sumaila and his collaborators from the Global Fisheries Cluster(Sea Around Us and the Nereus Program) have published an updated estimate of global fisheries subsidies in the international journal Marine Policy. The researchers found that the global fishing industry is being supported by $35 billion yearly in government subsidies, the majority of these, upwards of $20 billion annually, promote increased capacity that can lead to harmful impacts such as overfishing. The differences between countries were analyzed, with developed countries contributing 65 percent of the total. The top three subsidizing countries were found to be Japan, China and the United States. The EU as a block also looms large.
Here co-author and CORU Research Associate Wilf Swartz discusses what fisheries subsidies are, the difference between the types, and the implications of these results.
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