Fish Fry Day: Surprising Importance of Freshwater Fish to Global Food Security

by Matt Miller, The Nature Conservancy – If you’re thinking about how fisheries feed people around the globe, chances are you start picturing oceans. The images of saltwater commercial fishing are everywhere around us: on popular cable television shows, on the supermarket shelf, even on conservation blogs like this one.

A man pulls a cast net onto his boat from the waters directly below the opened gates of the Pak Mun Dam. In an hour-and-a-half of fishing, the man in the boat pulled up the solitary fish seen here. Photo © Aaron A. Koning/UW–Madison

But what about freshwater fisheries? Perhaps these words conjure up images of fried walleye caught at the local lake: tasty but not exactly an essential part of our food supply.