Environmental assessment of sardine (Sardina pilchardus) purse seine fishery in Portugal with LCA methodology including biological impact categories

Purpose

The purse seine fishery for sardine is the most important fishery in Portugal. The aim of the present study is to assess the environmental impacts of sardine fished by the Portuguese fleet and to analyse a number of variables such as vessel size and time scale. An additional goal was to incorporate fishery-specific impact categories in the case study.

Methods

Life Cycle Assessment methodology was applied, and data were collected from nine vessels, which represented around 10 % of the landings. Vessels were divided into two length categories, above and below 12 m, and data were obtained for the years 2005 to 2010. The study was limited to the fishing phase only. The standard impact categories included were energy use, global warming potential, eutrophication potential, acidification potential and ozone depletion potential. The fishery-specific impact categories were overfishing, overfishedness, lost potential yield, mean trophic level and the primary production required, and were quantified as much as possible.

Results and discussion

The landings from the data set were constituted mainly by sardine (91 %), and the remainders were other small pelagic species (e.g. horse mackerel). The most important input was the fuel, and both vessel categories had the same fuel consumption per catch 0.11 l/kg. Average greenhouse gas emissions (carbon footprint) were 0.36 kg CO₂ eq. per kilo sardine landed. The fuel use varied between years, and variability between months can be even higher. Fishing mortality has increased, and the spawning stock biomass has decreased resulting in consequential overfishing for 2010. A correlation between fuel use and stock biomass was not found, and the stock condition does not seem to directly influence the global warming potential in this fishery. Discards were primarily non-target small pelagic species, and there was also mortality of target species resulting from slipping. The seafloor impact was considered to be insignificant due to the fishing method.

Conclusions

The assessment of the Portuguese purse seine fishery resulted in no difference regarding fuel use between large and small vessels, but differences were found between years. The stock has declined, and it has produced below maximum sustainable yield. By-catch and discard data were missing but may be substantial. Even being difficult to quantify, fishery impact categories complement the environmental results with biological information and precaution is need in relation to the stock management. The sardine carbon footprint from Portuguese purse seine was lower than that of other commercial species reported in.