The Climate Change Impact of Finnish Fish Products

This study focuses on counting the climate impacts of the most common Finnish fish products. The selected fish species were rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss), Baltic herring (Clupea harengus membras), pikeperch (Sander lucioperca), perch (Perca fluviatilis) and vendace (Coregonus albula). Rainbow trout was farmed, and all the other fish species were caught wild fish. On the product level this study was limited to cover only fresh fillets and gutted fish (vendace). The data was collected by surveys from typical enterprises from fisheries sector, like fishermen, aquaculture and fish processing companies. LCA methodology was used to count the impacts. The farmed rainbow trout had the highest climate impact with 3.7 kg CO2 eq/kg/functional unit and the lowest Baltic herring caught with fish trap with 0.7 kg CO2 eq/kg/functional unit. In average the farmed products (rainbow trout) had higher climate impact than studied captured species. Gillnet fishing had higher climate impact than the action of trawling, seine and fish traps. The main reason for higher impacts for farmed fish was a consequence of feed consumption. The differences between caught fish species were caused by different distance to fishing areas and volumes of catch. According to the results the carbon footprint of Finnish citizen can be lowered by using domestic caught fish.