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What you should know about this indicator

  • Sea Around Us attempts to reconstruct the full catch of each country. It starts from the official figures that countries report to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), and adds estimates of the catch these figures leave out, such as much of the catch by small-scale, subsistence, and recreational fishers, unreported catch by industrial fleets, and the fish thrown back into the sea. These estimates draw on scientific studies, government reports, and local experts.
  • The catch of each country is the catch of its own fishers and fleets, wherever they fish: in its own waters, in other countries’ waters, or on the high seas. The world total also includes catch whose fishing country is unknown.
  • This data covers marine fish and invertebrates (such as shrimp, squid, and crabs). It does not include marine mammals, reptiles, corals, sponges, seaweed, freshwater fishing, or fish farming (aquaculture).
Wild fish discards
Sea Around Us
Estimated catch of fish and other marine animals that are caught and then thrown back into the sea.
Source
Sea Around Us (2022) – with minor processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
October 24, 2026
Next expected update
October 2029
Date range
1950–2018
Unit
tonnes

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

Sea Around Us – Sea Around Us reconstructed marine fisheries catch

Sea Around Us, a research initiative at the University of British Columbia, estimates how much fish and other marine animals the world’s fishers catch each year, from 1950 onward.

Most countries report their catch to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), but these official figures leave out a lot: much of the catch by small-scale, subsistence, and recreational fishers, unreported catch by industrial fleets, and the fish thrown back into the sea. Sea Around Us attempts to reconstruct the full catch of each country by combining the official figures with estimates of these missing parts, drawn from scientific studies, government reports, and local experts.

The catch is given in tonnes and broken down by fishing country (the country of the fleet doing the fishing), by fishing sector (industrial, artisanal, subsistence, recreational), by type of fishing gear, by what the catch is used for (eaten directly by people, turned into fishmeal and fish oil, mostly for animal feed, or other uses), by whether it was brought to land or thrown back, and by whether it appears in official statistics.

The catch of marine mammals, reptiles, corals, sponges, and seaweed is not included, nor is fish farming (aquaculture).

Retrieved on
October 24, 2026
Retrieved from
https://www.seaaroundus.org/data/#/global
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Pauly D., Zeller D., Palomares M.L.D. (Editors), 2020. Sea Around Us Concepts, Design and Data (seaaroundus.org).

Sea Around Us, a research initiative at the University of British Columbia, estimates how much fish and other marine animals the world’s fishers catch each year, from 1950 onward.

Most countries report their catch to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), but these official figures leave out a lot: much of the catch by small-scale, subsistence, and recreational fishers, unreported catch by industrial fleets, and the fish thrown back into the sea. Sea Around Us attempts to reconstruct the full catch of each country by combining the official figures with estimates of these missing parts, drawn from scientific studies, government reports, and local experts.

The catch is given in tonnes and broken down by fishing country (the country of the fleet doing the fishing), by fishing sector (industrial, artisanal, subsistence, recreational), by type of fishing gear, by what the catch is used for (eaten directly by people, turned into fishmeal and fish oil, mostly for animal feed, or other uses), by whether it was brought to land or thrown back, and by whether it appears in official statistics.

The catch of marine mammals, reptiles, corals, sponges, and seaweed is not included, nor is fish farming (aquaculture).

Retrieved on
October 24, 2026
Retrieved from
https://www.seaaroundus.org/data/#/global
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Pauly D., Zeller D., Palomares M.L.D. (Editors), 2020. Sea Around Us Concepts, Design and Data (seaaroundus.org).

How we process data at Our World in Data

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

Read about our data pipeline
Notes on our processing step for this indicator

Sea Around Us data goes up to 2019, but its 2019 figures look unfinished for several large fishing countries. For example, it counts almost all of Peru’s anchoveta catch, which is mostly turned into fishmeal and fish oil, as eaten directly by people; it doesn’t say which gear caught large parts of the catch of Peru, Indonesia, and India; and Japan’s catch is about 20% higher than Japan’s and FAO’s official figures. Because of this, we only show on our charts data up to 2018.

Sea Around Us lists some overseas fleets separately from the country they belong to. We add them to that country: the Azores and Madeira to Portugal; Ascension and Tristan da Cunha to Saint Helena; and Bonaire, Saba, and Sint Eustatius to Bonaire Sint Eustatius and Saba.

Reuse this work

  • All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
  • All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Wild fish discards”, part of the following publication: Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser (2021) - “Fish and Overfishing”. Data adapted from Sea Around Us. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20261024-212145/grapher/fish-discards.html [online resource] (archived on October 24, 2026).

How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

Sea Around Us (2022) – with minor processing by Our World in Data

Full citation

Sea Around Us (2022) – with minor processing by Our World in Data. “Wild fish discards – Sea Around Us” [dataset]. Sea Around Us, “Sea Around Us reconstructed marine fisheries catch” [original data]. Retrieved October 24, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20261024-212145/grapher/fish-discards.html (archived on October 24, 2026).

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