Environmental impacts from Danish fish products: hot spots and environmental policies

This dissertation presents an assessment of the environmental impacts from Danish fish products in a life cycle perspective (from sea to table). The assessment is carried out in three steps ? and includes a MECO analysis, a quantitative LCA and a qualitative LCA. The results are used to discuss current environmental policies addressing the fishery, landing and auction, the fish processing industry, wholesale, transport, retail, and use.It is concluded that considerable improvement potentials exist in the fishing stage, which also represents the largest environmental impact potential compared to other life cycle stages. The energy consumption is significant, particularly from some fishing methods, and it generates a considerable impact potential. In addition, other types of impacts such as seafloor damage and discard tend to be proportional to energy consumption per kg caught fish. It is suggested that passive and semi-active fishing methods such as Danish seine, purse seine, gillnet and long line represent a significant improvement potential compared to trawl. And it is shown that the energy consumption can be reduced with a factor 15 by substituting beam trawl with Danish seine in the Danish flatfish fishery.