COVID-19 has impacted almost all sectors of the global economy. Due to the continuous, restrictive measures imposed on travel, movement, and transportation, communities and stakeholders in the fisheries and aquaculture sector have been negatively affected. The present study reveals that fishermen and other supply chain actors have experienced several obstacles owing to COVID-19, such as input supply limitation, lack of technical support, inability to market their products, lack of transportation to the market, export restrictions on fish and fishery products, and low fish prices.
The COVID-19 pandemic had spread all over the world since its first detection in December of 2019. However, developing countries are more vulnerable to the adverse impacts of the pandemic than developed countries, due to their limited resources, expertise, and technologies.
COVID-19 has had an influence on all sectors of the economy; the fisheries and aquaculture sector in particular has faced great difficulty, mainly due to the perishability of the product. The fisheries and aquaculture industry provides significant employment opportunities all around the world. In 2018, the primary sector of fisheries and aquaculture employed a total of 59.5 million people, of which 85% were located in Asia.
Fish and fish products constitute an important part of a healthy diet. In 2018, around 88% of total fish production (179 million tons) was used for direct human consumption. Fish is often a fishing community’s primary source of protein, fatty acids, and micronutrients. Fish do not play a role in the transfer of COVID-19 to humans in terms of epidemiology. However, false perceptions about fish and the spread of COVID-19 have contributed to a decrease in the consumption of fish in some cases, such as in Bangladesh and China.
Because fish is an important food source for a large portion of the world’s population, the business of fishing requires changes, especially now during the current pandemic. Many of the governmental measures that have been introduced to limit the spread of COVID-19 have caused significant disruptions to human movement, physical business contact and the transport of goods. Many countries and regions (for example, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and China) continue to maintain isolation measures and movement restrictions that limit people’s ability to roam and interact.
Domestic and international trade has been hindered or stopped as a result of the lockdown and, as a result of this, the practically of the supply chain for all food goods has been compromised. Furthermore, due to the restrictions, restaurants and hotels are legally bound to close their doors. The demand for fish and fish products has decreased as a result of this. By disrupting fish supply and demand, fish distribution, labor, and production, COVID-19 exposes the existing vulnerabilities in small-scale fisheries, putting small-scale farmers’ livelihoods at risk.
The many value chains within the fisheries and aquaculture sector were also subject to the inevitable disruptions to international and domestic transportation; these disruptions have affected the supply of raw materials for processing, the supply of production inputs, and the shipping of the finished products for both export and domestic consumption.
Farm-made inputs, such as seed stock and feed, have become unavailable due to the stringent restrictions that have been placed on the movement of materials and persons, including workers. Small-scale fish farmers have lost money because they either had to sell off their fish or couldn’t sell their fish at all. Fish farmers could not harvest their fish in order to be able to begin a new production cycle, leading to a reduction in fish availability and the loss of downstream and upstream employment opportunities.
COVID-19 has depressed the demand for fish and fishery products and negatively impacted the supply chain, forcing hatcheries to close, feed imports to halt, and many value chain entities to lose money right from the start of the culture season. Medium and small businesses and seafood producers have been hit particularly hard, many of them are still unable to resume their normal operations.
COVID-19, in fact, has posed complex and long-term challenges for the aquaculture value chains’ continued operations and the livelihoods of the millions of people who rely on them. However, the major impact on supply chains and demand is not from COVID-19 itself, but instead from the measures that have been introduced in order to control it.
There is much burgeoning literature on the impacts of COVID-19; in the fisheries and aquaculture sector these studies particularly focus on local case studies in countries such as the USA, China, Canada, Indonesia, Malaysia, Kenya, Thailand, and Bangladesh. However, a global perspective is still missing.
As a provider of an essential food item, understanding how COVID-19 affects the fisheries sector and the supply chain of fish, and to what extent the different stakeholders can be assisted to overcome this situation, is crucial. Since each fish food chain comprises several stakeholders, an understanding of the impacts and challenges that are influencing the input suppliers, fish farmers, traders, processors, exporters and importers is needed.
The existing studies focus on many important issues, such as the overall impact of COVID-19 on small-scale fisheries, aquaculture (including when COVID-19 synergizes its impacts with anthropogenic stressors), vulnerability, resilience, consumption patterns, fish food, seafood, and the food system. However, there is a lack of a thorough study that focuses on COVID-19′s overall effect on the fisheries sector and the fish food chain; this is a study that is needed in order to gain insights that can assist policy design in order to improve the sector’s resilience.
Therefore, the aim of the present study is to extend the understanding of the impacts of COVID-19 on the fisheries and aquaculture sector, through a systematic literature review, to help fishery-dependent communities to cope, adapt, and build resilience, particularly in developing countries.
COVID-19 has impacted almost all sectors of the global economy. Due to the continuous, restrictive measures imposed on travel, movement, and transportation, communities and stakeholders in the fisheries and aquaculture sector have been negatively affected. The present study reveals that fishermen and other supply chain actors have experienced several obstacles owing to COVID-19, such as input supply limitation, lack of technical support, inability to market their products, lack of transportation to the market, export restrictions on fish and fishery products, and low fish prices.
Many small-scale fishermen have faced food insecurity due to COVID-19. COVID-19 has exposed pre-existing vulnerabilities and limited resilience by disrupting fish supply and demand, fish distribution, labor, and production, therefore posing a threat to small-scale fishing households’ well-being.
Fish farmers have also confronted several obstacles, including a shortage of inputs and technical assistance, market difficulty, transportation issues, and low prices. These difficulties have resulted in inadequate output, unanticipated stock retention, loss of returns and food insecurity. Fish farmers may well lose interest in producing fish and related items.
Many COVID-19-related restrictions have contributed to a significant gap between demand and supply in the fish food chain, resulting in a decline of the fishery industry. This study recommends measures to address the COVID-19 crisis and its impacts on aquaculture and the fish food chain, in particular suggesting the provision of interest-free loans for the fisheries sector’s stakeholders, which could help to enhance their resilience. Looking forward, this study also suggests future lines of research which investigate the key impacts of COVID-19 on each stakeholder involved in the fish and aquaculture sector.
Read the study:
Alam GMM, Sarker MNI, Gatto M, Bhandari H, Naziri D. (2022) Impacts of COVID-19 on the Fisheries and Aquaculture Sector in Developing Countries and Ways Forward. Sustainability. 14(3):1071.
