Performance of the European-EU Seafood Sector - Veiwed through Aquaculture and Sea Bass & Sea Bream

Suggested Bibliographic Reference: Challenging New Frontiers in the Global Seafood Sector: Proceedings of the Eighteenth Biennial Conference of the International Institute of Fisheries Economics and Trade, July 11-15, 2016. Compiled by Stefani J. Evers and Ann L. Shriver. International Institute of Fisheries Economics and Trade (IIFET), Corvallis, 2016.Proceedings of the Eighteenth Biennial Conference of the International Institute of Fisheries Economics and Trade, held July 11-15, 2016 at Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference Center (AECC), Aberdeen, Scotland, UK.The seafood sector has been followed and presented through different data collected as for example by FAO over several years. Often these studies are globally and/or macro-oriented market and even though these studies clearly add insight and understanding they do not provide the details needed for assessing the different sectors as such. The seafood sector is separated into many commodity groups with clear differences and also within these groups there are significant differences between species with respect to drivers affecting the market and the balance between the market and the supplies from catches (fisheries) and (aquaculture). Regrettably, the availability of data supporting decision makers is sparse, and also the understanding of how different drivers affects the results and how they interrelate, is limited. Thus, when Primefish project aims at making available decision support tools for the seafood sector, one both need to look at data availability and establish a better and more detailed understanding of the economic performance for the selected sectors. Primefish has selected herring, demersal cod, sea bass/sea bream, salmon and trout, for detailed studies. At the meeting participants will be invited to comments on preliminary findings from the studies of the behavior of seafood prices in general and the development of market prices for the selected species, and among others factors characterizing the observed “boom and bust” cycles. Given data sparsity it’s crucial for the outcome of the project, to be able to engage industry experts for shedding light over observations made from the gathered data