World abalone fisheries and aquaculture update: Supply and marketdynamics

摘要

Continued increases in cultured production, combined with an unfortunate proliferation in the illegal wild catch have resulted in a world abalone supply for the year 2002/2003 exceeding the historical abalone abundance of the mid 1970s. Sparked by the rising middle class in China, a global shift in abalone availability and distribution has occurred. These significant shifts demand inventive thinking on the supply side if prices are to remain at strong levels. Examples are given of approaches using new creativity in the world of abalone marketing, distribution, and processing. FAO country by country abalone reporting for both wild caught and cultured abalone totals change significantly when further dissected and standardized. FAO practice of reporting totals for abalone shucked or not and the continuing practice of some countries still reporting their production by large groups of species, distorts historical and current totals. The information that we present on worldwide legal and illegal wild catch and on cultured production has been adjusted to account for these anomalies.