Carbon Footprint and Associated Environmental Impacts in Construction of Fishing Vessels: A Preliminary Study

The pre-harvest, harvest and post-harvest sectors of fishery require intensive energy input which primarily depend on fossil fuels. Pre-harvest phase involves the dissipation of energy and other input to accomplish construction of fishing vessel and other fishing accessories. Analyses of energy in terms of fishing vessel construction, and changes in energy use over time can provide a powerful tool to know the environmental impact specially global warming potential (GWP) and carbon footprint associated with it. In the present study a comparative account of carbon footprint and global warming potential due to construction of mechanized gillnetter-cum-longliner made of two different materials (steel and wood) was made. Six numbers of vessels of both categories with size range of 65 feet were selected for comparison. Since goal of the study was to compare GWP and carbon footprint due to construction process only, a cradle to gate approach has been adopted. SimaPro® software package was used for analysis. Results showed that during construction of wooden vessel, CO2 equivalent was primarily contributed by FRP sheath (41.3%) followed by bronze (23.7%) and copper nail (19.6%), whereas for steel vessel construction, CO2 equivalent was contributed maximum by steel plates (65.8%) followed by bronze (24.1%) and welding arc (4.6%). During the study it was found that the wooden fishing vessel leaves 0.211 kg CO2 eq kg-1 of functional unit, compared to 0.709 kg CO2 eq kg-1 of functional unit for steel vessel. Outcome of the study shown that construction of steel fishing vessel (gillnetter-cum-longliner) of 65 ft LOA, createthree times more GWP and carbon footprint than wooden fishing vessel of similar type and size.