Mediterranean Institute for Advanced Studies, IMEDEA (UIB-CSIC), C/Miquel Marques 21, CP 07190, Esporles, Balearic Islands, Spain.
Institute of Marine Sciences ICM (CSIC), Passeig Maritim de la Barceloneta 37, CP 08003, Barcelona, Spain.
Sci Rep. 2022 Jan 10;12(1):322. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-03777-9.
The global trade in cephalopods is a multi-billion dollar business involving the fishing and production of more than ten commercially valuable species. It also contributes, in whole or in part, to the subsistence and economic livelihoods of thousands of coastal communities around the world. The importance of cephalopods as a major cultural, social, economic, and ecological resource has been widely recognised, but research efforts to describe the extent and scope of the global cephalopod trade are limited. So far, there are no specific regulatory and monitoring systems in place to analyse the traceability of the global trade in cephalopods at the international level. To understand who are the main global players in cephalopod seafood markets, this paper provides, for the first time, a global overview of the legal trade in cephalopods. Twenty years of records compiled in the UN COMTRADE database were analysed. The database contained 115,108 records for squid and cuttlefish and 71,659 records for octopus, including commodity flows between traders (territories or countries) weighted by monetary value (USD) and volume (kg). A theoretical network analysis was used to identify the emergent properties of this large trade network by analysing centrality measures that revealed key insights into the role of traders. The results illustrate that three countries (China, Spain, and Japan) led the majority of global market movements between 2000 and 2019. Based on volume and value, as well as the number of transactions, 11 groups of traders were identified. The leading cluster consisted of only eight traders, who dominated the cephalopod market in Asia (China, India, South Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam), Europe (the Netherlands, and Spain), and the USA. This paper identifies the countries and territories that acted as major importers or exporters, the best-connected traders, the hubs or accumulators, the modulators, the main flow routes, and the weak points of the global cephalopod trade network over the last 20 years. This knowledge of the network is crucial to move towards an environmentally sustainable, transparent, and food-secure global cephalopod trade.
头足类动物的全球贸易是一个价值数十亿美元的产业，涉及十多种具有商业价值的物种的捕捞和生产。它还在全球范围内为成千上万的沿海社区的生计和经济生活做出了贡献。头足类动物作为一种主要的文化、社会、经济和生态资源的重要性已得到广泛认可，但描述全球头足类动物贸易的范围和规模的研究工作却很有限。到目前为止，还没有在国际层面上建立具体的监管和监测系统来分析头足类动物全球贸易的可追溯性。为了了解头足类海鲜市场的主要全球参与者是谁，本文首次对头足类动物的合法贸易进行了全球概述。对联合国商品贸易数据库（UN COMTRADE）中 20 年来的记录进行了分析。该数据库包含了鱿鱼和乌贼的 115108 条记录，以及章鱼的 71659 条记录，包括按货币价值（美元）和数量（公斤）加权的贸易商（领土或国家）之间的商品流动。通过分析中心性度量，本文使用理论网络分析对头足类大型贸易网络的新兴特性进行了识别，这些中心性度量揭示了贸易商作用的关键见解。结果表明，在 2000 年至 2019 年间，三个国家（中国、西班牙和日本）主导了大部分全球市场动向。基于数量和价值以及交易数量，确定了 11 组贸易商。主导集群仅由 8 个贸易商组成，他们主导了亚洲（中国、印度、韩国、泰国和越南）、欧洲（荷兰和西班牙）和美国的头足类动物市场。本文确定了作为主要进出口国或地区的国家和地区、连接最紧密的贸易商、枢纽或积聚者、调制器、主要流动路线以及全球头足类动物贸易网络在过去 20 年中的薄弱环节。了解网络的这些知识对于实现环境可持续、透明和有食品安全保障的全球头足类动物贸易至关重要。
