Catch reconstructions reveal that global marine fisheries catches are higher than reported and declining

By Daniel Pauly, D. Zeller. Nature Communications, 2016

1,233 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Fisheries data assembled by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) suggest that global marine fisheries catches increased to 86 million tonnes in 1996, then slightly declined. Here, using a decade-long multinational ‘catch reconstruction’ project covering the Exclusive Economic Zones of the world’s maritime countries and the High Seas from 1950 to 2010, and accounting for all fisheries, we identify catch trajectories differing considerably from the national data submitted to the FAO. We suggest that catch actually peaked at 130 million tonnes, and has been declining much more strongly since. This decline in reconstructed catches reflects declines in industrial catches and to a smaller extent declining discards, despite industrial fishing having expanded from industrialized countries to the waters of developing countries. The differing trajectories documented here suggest a need for improved monitoring of all fisheries, including often neglected small-scale fisheries, and illegal and other problematic fisheries, as well as discarded bycatch. Officially reported fisheries statistics suggest that global catches have stabilized since their peak in the mid-1990s. Here, the authors supplement these reported data with best-estimate values of missing data from the literature, and find that global catches have steadily declined over this time period.

Subfields: Ecology, Global and Planetary Change

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6799a8906d5e558ef9197ce25a1a98907d3385c6

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Ecology

1. Daniel Pauly
2. Ray Hilborn
3. D. Zeller
4. N. Dulvy
5. T. McClanahan
6. Frédéric Le Manach
7. Tim Cashion
8. J. Baum

In Global and Planetary Change

1. Daniel Pauly
2. Ray Hilborn
3. D. Zeller
4. N. Dulvy
5. T. McClanahan
6. Frédéric Le Manach
7. Tim Cashion
8. B. Erisman

Citations in the corpus

• Economic Growth and Sustainable Development in Indonesia: An Assessment (2018, background): “…Ploeg, De Groot & Wang (2010) Forest area incl. mangroves, excl. cultivated forest FAO (2015) Fishery Catch in each country’s exclusive economic zone Pauly & Zeller (2016) Fossil fuels Reserves & production EIA (2015) Prices BP (2015) Rental rate Aguiar, McDougall & Narayanan (2012) Minerals…”
• Climate change and aquaculture: considering biological response and resources (2019, background): “Capture fisheries landings are reported to have either plateaued around 90 Mt annually (FAO 2018a) or decreased (Pauly & Zeller 2016) since the mid-1990s.”
• Achieving sustainable aquaculture: Historical and current perspectives and future needs and challenges (2020, background): “…(Balon, 2004; Nakajima, Hudson, Uchiyama, Makibayashi, & Zhang, 2019; Teletchea, 2019b), noteworthy efforts began during the early 1980s in response to both increasing demand of seafood coupled with a decrease in the contribution of global capture fisheries (Pauly & Zeller, 2016; Teletchea, 2019c).”
• Climate change and aquaculture: considering adaptation potential (2019, background): “However, other sources have suggested that global catches may have actually peaked at 130 Mt yr–1 in 1996 and have been strongly declining since (Pauly & Zeller 2016).”
• Valuable but vulnerable: Over-fishing and under-management continue to threaten groupers so what now? (2020, background): “[25,26]) and to apparent mis-reporting, as in the case of China.”
• Effective fisheries management instrumental in improving fish stock status (2020, background): “Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, “Report of the FAO/CECAF Working Group on the Assessment of Demersal Resources – Subgroup South Freetown, Sierra Leone, 9–18 October 2008” (CECAF/ECAF SERIES 11/73, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome, 2012), p. 328.”
• Fish conservation in freshwater and marine realms: status, threats and management (2016, background): “Instead, these are indirect measures of fishing mortality, imperfectly represented as estimates of numbers of fishers (Teh et al., 2013) and spatial maps of expanding fishing effort, catch, and activity (Anticamara et al., 2011; Pauly and Zeller, 2016).”
• Most fish destined for fishmeal production are food-grade fish (2017, methodology): “This must also be considered in the context of the spatial expansion of global fisheries (Swartz, Sala, Tracey, Watson, & Pauly, 2010), the declining trend of global marine catches since the mid- 1990s (Pauly & Zeller, 2016), and China’s massive distant water fleet development (Pauly et al., 2014).”
• Climate Change and Global Food Systems: Potential Impacts on Food Security and Undernutrition. (2017, background): “Rome: FAO 4.”
• Metabolic impacts of climate change on marine ecosystems: Implications for fish communities and fisheries (2018, background): “Fishing vessels are active123 throughout most of the world ocean (Kroodsma et al., 2018), and the global catch has124 recently approached, or slightly exceeded, the total production capacity for exploited125 species (Pauly and Zeller, 2016; Galbraith et al., 2017).”
• Microplastics in fisheries and aquaculture (2017, background): “Worldwide discard totals were estimated at approximately 10 million tonnes per year between the years 2000 and 2010 (Pauly and Zeller, 2016), much of which was probably consumed by scavenging benthic species.”
• Viewpoint – Ocean Plastic Pollution: a convenient but distracting truth? (2019, neutral): “The extent of this overfishing is becoming more apparent as we understand the true extent of historical under-reporting of catches [17].”
• The Rising Tide of Antimicrobial Resistance in Aquaculture: Sources, Sinks and Solutions (2017, background): “To feed the growing human population, global finfish and shellfish stocks (hereafter referred to collectively as ‘fish’) have been substantially exploited, with estimates of up to an 80% reduction [1,2].”
• Seafood substitution and mislabeling in Brussels' restaurants and canteens (2018, background): “…governing bodies, for instance through the reformed European Common Fisheries Policy (Council of the European Union, 2013a), overfishing and mismanagement issues can be exacerbated by illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing (Agnew et al., 2009; Pauly & Zeller, 2016; Petrossian, 2014).”