Catch and Trade of the Species Groups Mostly Caught — catch

This function compares the catch of one or more countries with their exports and imports of the same ISSCAAP species groups, by year, from the FAO capture and trade statistics (load_fao_data() and load_fao_trade()). It shows how much of a country's catch leaves as exports, how much of the same groups it imports, and the value of this trade.

Usage

catch_trade(
  country_name,
  min_capture_pct = 90,
  years = NULL,
  conversion = NULL,
  top_n = 8,
  data = NULL,
  trade = NULL,
  plot = TRUE,
  table = TRUE,
  lang = NULL,
  pptx = getOption("faofishingreport.pptx", FALSE),
  plot_show = fao_setting("plot_show"),
  label = NULL,
  data_version = "latest"
)

Arguments

country_name: One or more countries, as named in the FAO data (e.g. "Norway").
min_capture_pct: A group is compared when capture made up at least this percentage of its world production in every year analysed. Default is 90.
years: The years. Default is NULL, all years with both catch and trade data (from 1976).
conversion: NULL (default), or a data frame of conversion factors to live weight with the columns commodity_code (ISSCFC code, as Commodity..Code. of load_fao_trade()) and factor (live weight per product weight).
top_n: The number of groups shown in the chart by group. Default is 8.
data: Catch data in the format of load_fao_data(). Default is NULL, which loads load_fao_data(data_version).
trade: Trade data from load_fao_trade(). Default is NULL, which loads it.
plot: A logical value. If TRUE (default), charts are saved in figures/png/summary/.
table: A logical value. If TRUE (default), tables are saved in tables/.
lang: The language of the chart text and names: "en" (English), "zh" (Chinese) or "both" (Chinese and English). Default is NULL, which uses the language set with fao_settings() ("en" unless changed).
pptx: A logical value. If TRUE, charts are also saved as editable PowerPoint files in figures/pptx/summary/. Default is FALSE, which can be changed for all functions with fao_settings(pptx = TRUE).
plot_show: A logical value. If TRUE, each chart is also drawn in the plot window (e.g. the Plots pane of RStudio) as it is saved, to look at it at once. Default is FALSE, which can be changed for all functions with fao_settings(plot_show = TRUE). The charts are saved as files (plot = TRUE) either way.
label: The name used in the output file names. Default is the country, or "selected_countries" for several countries.
data_version: The FAO data release of the catch data; see load_fao_data().

Value

Invisibly, a list of three data frames:

yearly: one row per country and year, for the groups compared: catch (tonnes live weight), exports, imports and re-exports (tonnes product weight), export and import value (thousand USD), unit values (USD per kg), exports as a percentage of the catch, net exports, the share of the country's catch and export value in the groups compared, the share of the export value estimated, and the trade of fishmeal and fish oil not assigned to a group compared. With conversion, also the trade in live weight equivalent, the share converted and the apparent supply;
by_group: the same by country, group and year. In yearly and by_group, a value is NA when it is not known: the country reported no catch (or no trade) in that year, or the values are missing in the FAO data; it is zero when the country reported that year but not this group or trade flow;
groups: one row per country and ISSCAAP group with catch or exports in the last five years: whether it is compared, the lowest share of capture in its world production, the mean yearly catch, exports and export value of the last five years, and the group's share of the export value (export_value_pct).

Charts are saved in figures/png/summary/: <label>_catch_trade.png (catch, exports and imports by year, one panel per country) and <label>_catch_trade_groups.png (the same for the top_n groups; with several countries, one file per country ending in the country name). Tables are saved in tables/: <label>_catch_trade.csv, ..._by_group.csv and ..._groups.csv.

Which species groups are compared

Trade statistics do not tell whether a product was caught or farmed, so the trade of a group that is largely farmed (salmons, shrimps, carps, oysters, ...) cannot be compared with its catch (Golden et al. 2017; Guillen et al. 2019). The function therefore compares only the groups mostly caught: capture made up at least min_capture_pct percent of the world production of the group in every year analysed (see fao_capture_groups()). With the default 90 percent and 1976-2024, these are the cods and hakes, herrings and sardines, tunas, miscellaneous pelagic and demersal fishes, sharks and rays, shads, lobsters, king crabs, krill, miscellaneous marine crustaceans, squids and octopuses, and horseshoe crabs, which held about a third of the value of world exports in 2024. The table groups lists all groups of each country with their catch and exports, so the groups left out can be seen.

The catch is the country's whole catch (all FAO areas, inland and marine), because trade is recorded for the country as a whole. Catch is recorded by the flag of the vessel, and catch landed abroad by a country's vessels counts as an export of that country, so both refer to the same fleet.

Product weight and live weight

Trade quantities are product weight: a tonne of fillets comes from two to three tonnes of fish, a tonne of fishmeal from four to five. FAO publishes no conversion factors with the trade data; they are collected from countries and published in FAO Fisheries Circular 847 (FAO 2000), and factors for highly processed products are very uncertain (CWP handbook). Published studies use factors of the European Market Observatory for Fisheries and Aquaculture Products (EUMOFA) or others (Gephart et al. 2024; Zhao et al. 2024). Without conversion, the function compares product weight of trade with live weight of catch: export_catch_pct is then the exports in product weight as a percentage of the catch in live weight, usually lower than the share of the catch exported. With conversion, a table of factors by commodity, the trade is converted to live weight equivalent (commodities without a factor stay in product weight; converted_pct gives the share of the exports, imports and re-exports with a factor), and the apparent supply, catch + imports - exports - re-exports, is calculated as in food balance sheets (CWP handbook; Zhao et al. 2024).

Fishmeal and fish oil

FAO assigns fishmeal and fish oil to a species group when the trade records give the species (e.g. anchoveta meal, herring oil), but most are traded as "Fishmeals, nei" or "Fish body oils, nei" and classed as "Marine fishes not identified", which is not compared. They are made mostly from small pelagic fishes and from fish waste, so the catch of a reduction fishery (e.g. the Peruvian anchoveta) appears without its main export. Fishmeal, fish oil, solubles and silages (ISSCFC 081, 411 and 035.01) not assigned to a group compared are reported separately as meal_oil_export_tonnes and meal_oil_import_tonnes (product weight) and meal_oil_export_value.

Reading the results

Exports above the catch of a group (exports_exceed_catch) mean that the country processes and re-exports imported fish, that re-exports are not reported separately (26 countries reported them in 2024, not China), that the product is classed in another group than the catch (e.g. crustaceans traded as "Crustaceans nei", group 47), or that the data disagree (Asche et al. 2022; Dent and Clarke 2015).
Exports and imports of the same group are common: different species, sizes or products within a group, and processing of imported raw material.
Unit values (export_unit_value, USD per kg product weight) are in current US dollars, not adjusted for inflation, and change with the mix of products.
estimated_export_value_pct is the share of the export value estimated (by FAO or the country) or taken from the reports of trade partners.

References

Asche, F., Yang, B., Gephart, J.A., Smith, M.D., Anderson, J.L., Camp, E.V., Garlock, T.M., Love, D.C., Oglend, A. and Straume, H.-M. (2022). China's seafood imports - Not for domestic consumption? Science 375: 386-388. doi:10.1126/science.abl4756

Coordinating Working Party on Fishery Statistics (CWP). Handbook of Fishery Statistics: conversion factors; food balance sheets. https://www.fao.org/cwp-on-fishery-statistics/handbook/general-concepts/conversionfactors/en/

Dent, F. and Clarke, S. (2015). State of the global market for shark products. FAO Fisheries and Aquaculture Technical Paper 590. Rome: FAO. https://www.fao.org/3/i4795e/i4795e.pdf

FAO (2000). Conversion factors - landed weight to live weight. FAO Fisheries Circular 847, Revision 1. Rome: FAO. https://www.fao.org/3/x9144t/x9144t.pdf

FAO (2021). FAO Yearbook. Fishery and Aquaculture Statistics 2019. Rome: FAO. doi:10.4060/cb7874t

Gephart, J.A., Agrawal Bejarano, R., Gorospe, K., Godwin, A., Golden, C.D., Naylor, R.L., et al. (2024). Globalization of wild capture and farmed aquatic foods. Nature Communications 15: 8026. doi:10.1038/s41467-024-51965-8

Golden, C.D., Seto, K.L., Dey, M.M., Chen, O.L., Gephart, J.A., Myers, S.S., Smith, M., et al. (2017). Does aquaculture support the needs of nutritionally vulnerable nations? Frontiers in Marine Science 4: 159. doi:10.3389/fmars.2017.00159

Guillen, J., Natale, F., Carvalho, N., Casey, J., Hofherr, J., Druon, J.-N., Fiore, G., Gibin, M., Zanzi, A. and Martinsohn, J.T. (2019). Global seafood consumption footprint. Ambio 48: 111-122. doi:10.1007/s13280-018-1060-9

Zhao, K., Gaines, S.D., García Molinos, J., Zhang, M. and Xu, J. (2024). Effect of trade on global aquatic food consumption patterns. Nature Communications 15: 1412. doi:10.1038/s41467-024-45556-w

Examples

if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{
trade <- load_fao_trade()
norway <- catch_trade("Norway", trade = trade, lang = "zh")
norway$yearly
norway$groups                                   # the groups compared and those left out

# Several countries, one panel each
catch_trade(c("Peru", "Chile", "Morocco"), trade = trade, label = "fishmeal_countries")

# Groups at least 80 % caught (adds flounders, crabs, unidentified marine fishes, ...)
catch_trade("Iceland", min_capture_pct = 80, trade = trade)

# With your own conversion factors to live weight (e.g. from EUMOFA or FAO Circular 847)
factors <- data.frame(commodity_code = c("034.1.5.2.19", "034.4.1.5.2.19"), factor = c(1.17, 2.6))
catch_trade("Norway", trade = trade, conversion = factors)
} # }