Graph of the Day: World Capture Fisheries Production, 1950-2008

Global capture fisheries production in 2008 was about 90 million tonnes, with an estimated first-sale value of US$93.9 billion, comprising about 80 million tonnes from marine waters and a record 10 million tonnes from inland waters. World capture fisheries production has been relatively stable in the past decade, with the exception of marked fluctuations driven by catches of anchoveta – a species extremely susceptible to oceanographic conditions determined by the El Niño Southern Oscillation – in the Southeast Pacific. Fluctuations in other species and regions tend to compensate for each other to a large extent. In 2008, China, Peru and Indonesia were the top producing countries. China remained by far the global leader with production of about 15 million tonnes. Although the revision of China’s fishery statistics reduced reported catches by about 2 million tonnes per year in the Northwest Pacific, this area still leads by far the ranking of marine fishing areas, followed by the Southeast Pacific, the Western Central Pacific and the Northeast Atlantic. The same species have dominated marine catches since 2003, with the top ten species accounting for about 30 percent of all marine catches. Catches from inland waters, two-thirds of which were reported as being taken in Asia in 2008, have shown a slowly but steadily rising trend since 1950, owing in part to stock enhancement practices and possibly also to some improvements in reporting, which still remains poor for inland water fisheries (with small-scale and subsistence fisheries substantially underrepresented in the statistics).

The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2010 [pdf], FAO Fisheries and Aquaculture Department, FOOD AND AGRICULTURE ORGANIZATION OF THE UNITED NATIONS, Rome, 2010