The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution's twenty fifth report

The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution's twenty fifth report: Turning the Tide - Addressing the impact of Fisheries on the Marine Environment focuses on both capture fisheries and aquaculture. For capture fisheries the report notes: "The decreasing fuel efficiency of many fisheries and the large contribution that fuel makes to overall running costs, has led to suggestions that this may be the Achilles' heel of the industry. The rising costs of fuel are likely to impact heavily on certain fishing methods that have low fuel:fish efficiency ratios, such as trawling, in fisheries with diminished target populations, to the point that these fisheries will no longer be economic: Marine emissions from fuels used for international journeys (which are known as bunker fuels) remain outside international agreements to control greenhouse gases. A significant proportion of UK marine greenhouse gas emissions (17%) are related to fishing,but the sector contributes a relatively small amount to overall national emissions (0.01%)." It also considers the life cycle impacts of aquaculture, noting here that by comparison with meat production, fish farming is a relatively efficient means of providing protein for the human diet. It also observes that it is difficult to make comparisons between the life cycles of farmed and capture fish with the efficiency conversion between capture fisheries and farmed fish depend on the different weightings given to the various areas of sustainability, and the fish species used in comparison.