Life cycle assessment of fisheries: A review for fisheries scientists and managers

This review aims to synthesise and discuss current literature applying the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) framework for the environmental assessment of fisheries. The review introduces and illustrates the LCA framework, and highlights energy use by fishing vessels, among other key factors determining environmental impacts of fisheries operations. Moreover, the review concludes with recommendations on future developments of LCA in the fisheries and seafood sectors.We reviewed 16 studies on LCA applied to fisheries, with perspectives from a few additional publications on closely related topics. The main Aspects considered in the ad hoc comparison of studies include: scope and system boundaries, functional units, allocation strategies for co-products, conventional and fishery-specific impact categories used, fuel use, impact assessment methods, level of detail in inventories, normalisation of results and sensitivity analyses.A number of patterns and singularities were detected. Fishery-specific impact categories, despite not being standardised, and fuel use in fishing operations were identified as the main contributors to environmental impacts. Energy efficiency was found to be strongly related to the fishing gear used. Several studies discussed the impacts of antifouling substances and metals use. The need for standardisation of fisheries LCA research is justified and ideas on how to do so and what elements to standardise (fisheries-specific impact categories, inventory details, normalisation references, etc.) are discussed. Finally, fisheries LCA constitute a useful research field when studying the sustainability of seafood and fisheries-based agrifood, and it should likewise contribute to an ecosystem approach to fisheries.

► Published LCA studies focus on few fishing areas worldwide (e.g. North Atlantic).
► LCA needs to be further standardised towards an accepted seafood LCA framework.
► Species removal and other fisheries-specific impact categories are rare in LCAs.
► Future fisheries LCAs would ideally include the whole life cycle of vessels.