Globally, commercial wild-capture fishing has not undergone a sustained decline in total production. Instead, capture production has largely plateaued since the late 1980s. That stable global total does not mean every fishery is stable, and it does not by itself show whether fish stocks are healthy.
What the global trend shows
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) estimates that global capture production was about 92 million tonnes in 2024. It says annual output has stayed within a range of 86–94 million tonnes since the late 1980s. In other words, the broad trend is a long plateau, not a steady fall or a large rise. FAO’s 2026 report summary presents the latest estimate.
“Capture production” means fish and other aquatic animals taken from the wild. The figure is a global aggregate: it cannot tell you whether catches rose or fell in a particular country, fishing area, species, or community. Local trends may differ substantially from the worldwide total.
Why rising seafood production does not mean wild catches rose
Wild capture is only one source of aquatic food. Aquaculture is farmed production, and nearly all growth in aquatic production since the late 1980s has come from aquaculture rather than wild capture. FAO estimated farmed aquatic-animal production at 103 million tonnes in 2024. That is a separate measure from the approximately 92 million tonnes of capture production; adding the two categories describes aquatic production overall, not growth in commercial wild fishing. FAO’s 2026 summary reports both figures.
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Does a stable catch mean fish stocks are sustainable?
No. The amount caught and the biological condition of the stocks behind those catches are different measures. A steady global harvest can coexist with depleted stocks in some fisheries and healthier or improving stocks in others; the aggregate alone does not resolve those differences.
FAO says 72.6% of all landings in 2023 originated from biologically sustainable stocks. This is a landings-weighted measure: it describes the share of landed catch by volume, not the share of fish stocks that are sustainable. FAO’s 2026 report summary gives this figure.
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An earlier FAO report used a different measure: 62.3% of monitored marine stocks were fished within biologically sustainable levels in 2021. That percentage counts assessed stocks, rather than weighting landings by volume, and refers to a different year. It should not be compared directly with the 72.6% landings figure. FAO’s 2024 summary reports the stock-based figure.
How to read claims that fishing is declining
- Check what is being counted. A claim about wild capture is not the same as a claim about total aquatic production, which also includes aquaculture.
- Check the geography and species. The global plateau does not prove a local fishery or a particular species has stayed stable.
- Separate catch volume from stock status. Production totals measure harvest; sustainability assessments address the biological condition and fishing pressure of stocks.
- Check the year and metric. The 2024 production estimate, 2023 landings-weighted sustainability measure, and 2021 stock-based measure describe different things.
Where the production data comes from
FAO’s FishStat capture database covers production from 1950 through 2024 and was updated in March 2026. FAO describes its Global Capture Production collection as the only global source of capture-production data, compiled by country or area, species item, and major fishing area. The database can help investigate narrower geographic or species questions, but a country-, area-, or species-level trend should be checked directly rather than inferred from the global total. FAO FishStat.
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