| The reality of global biophysical limits and the likelihood that the current scale and prevalence of industrial practices are nearing or exceeding those limits, heralds a need to assess industrial systems against a variety of environmental criteria. Food production systems, including modern fisheries and supporting distribution activities are industrial practices that make non-trivial contributions to global environmental problems. This research demonstrates how evaluating the Nova Scotia lobster (Homarus americanus) fishery with life cycle assessment (LCA) can provide information on the performance of this industrial seafood production system with respect to a variety of categories (global warming potential, ozone depletion potential, acidification potential, cumulative energy demand, and abiotic and biotic resource depletion). Evaluated against these criteria, lobster fishing is by no means an environmentally benign activity, particularly when the harvesting activity is followed by complex and often resource intensive post capture storage and delivery systems. For example, the system modeled here consumes nearly 140,000 MJ of energy and result in approximately nine tonnes of CO2 equivalents per tonne of live lobster delivered to a major market in the western U.S. Information that speaks to these broader environmental issues is necessary to guide lobster management and more broadly, food production management now and into the future. |
