Fishing and fisheries industry

Industry Snapshot

GENERAL INDUSTRY: Agriculture and Food

CAREER CLUSTER: Agriculture, Food, and Natural Resources

SUBCATEGORY INDUSTRIES: Aquaculture; Finfish Farming and Fish Hatcheries; Finfish Fishing; Shellfish Farming; Shellfish Fishing

RELATED INDUSTRIES:Farming Industry; Food Manufacturing and Wholesaling Industry; Livestock and Animal Products Industry; Natural Resources Management

ANNUAL DOMESTIC REVENUES: Fishing, US$9.36 billion (IBISWorld, 2023); fish and seafood aquaculture, US$2.3 billion (IBISWorld, 2023)

ANNUAL GLOBAL REVENUES: Commercial fishing, US$254.42 billion (Statista, 2024)

NAICS NUMBERS: 1141, 11251

Summary

The fishing and fisheries industry raises and captures aquatic animals for use as food and for other applications. Fished creatures include finfish, shellfish, marine mammals, sea turtles, octopus, and squid. A variety of methods are employed to capture these creatures in the wild, from single-person angling with a hook and line to large commercial endeavors that harvest food using fleets of ships employing nets and traps. There are more than a dozen terms for different types of fishing vessels. In addition, aquaculturists raise fish and shellfish in aquatic farms rather than hunting them in open waters.

History of the Industry

The world's rivers and coasts have provided food for humans for millions of years. Scientists believe that humans began fishing during prehistoric times, perhaps 2.5 million years ago. Those early fishers might have used pieces of bone, wood, or stone to create fishhooks with fragments of bait. Archaeologists have found evidence that prehistoric European, American, and African coastal cultures gathered seafood, especially salmon and mollusks. The earliest known record of humans eating seafood is 380,000 years old. Some biologists have theorized that the human brain evolved in part as a result of diets including fish, which contain specific oils and proteins that help compose and maintain healthy brains.

While famous European cave art depicts horses and deer, ancient Egyptian art offers paintings of people hunting fish with spears and in boats. Naturally, people who lived along the shores of rivers or seas would gather what they could to supplement their diet with protein, in which fish and shellfish are rich. At some unknown point, ancient peoples discovered that fishes could be preserved in salt; salted preserved fish, such as pickled herring and lox, is still eaten today. A related term to salting is curing, which refers to the preservation of meat with salt, sugar, or other flavorings.

Science cannot determine when people first began using boats to fish. In South Korea, archaeologists have found a fishing boat dating from seventy-five hundred years ago, the oldest known vessel. Other ancient boats have been found in, remarkably, the desert of Kuwait, as well as in China, in Japan, off the coast of Devon, England, and in the Great Pyramid of Egypt.

Fish spearing and harpooning were practiced in Europe as much as 300,000 years ago. Line fishing and netting came in later, in Mesolithic times (roughly 11,000-5000 BCE). The Roman Empire, noted for its efficiency and ingenuity in a wide variety of methodologies from building and engineering to international trade, was a region successful in capturing, marketing, and distributing seafood. Increasingly sophisticated capture methods evolved during the Middle Ages in Europe: Vessels were built to larger sizes and capabilities, and fishing took place at farther distances offshore. Ecologists believe that herring and cod, two important staple fishes, began suffering from overfishing at this time. Archaeologists have found evidence that oysters and mussels also formed a major part of the medieval European diet.

Territoriality is an important concept in the fishing world. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, developed by scientists and diplomats, stipulates that countries own exclusive rights to their offshore resources, including fisheries, within an area extending twenty miles off their coasts. Earlier, these possessive rights had been considered to extend only three nautical miles from the coast, for an interesting reason: the Dutch legal writer Cornelis van Bijnkershoek (1673–1743) had argued that a reasonable distance for national control of the sea was the distance that a cannonball could be fired from shore.

To offset the effects of overfishing, aquaculture was developed in the nineteenth century. Aquaculture farmers raise and tend fish and shellfish in inland or coastal, fresh or salty waters. Small fish farms usually use ponds or raceways (canals); larger fisheries are usually coastal. Canneries were built in the United States in the nineteenth century, although traditional methods of processing and packing seafoods predate the settlement of the Americas.

The Industry Today

Around the world tens of millions of people work in aquaculture and capture fishing, with Asia, and particularly China, a hotbed of the industry. According to the market research firm IBISWorld, the US fishing industry employed 78,153 people in 2023, with aquaculture adding almost 10,000 more. Employers in the fishing industry vary in size, from single-person or small-family efforts to large corporate endeavors. The largest aquatic resources remain along marine coasts and the high seas—the most productive areas being the Pacific Northwest, the Pacific Southeast, and the Atlantic Northeast—while poor peoples in many parts of the world still rely for food on rivers such as the Nile, Mekong, and Amazon.

Developed nations have fleets of ships as large as football fields on which commercial fishers use electronic equipment and satellite communications to track fish. As these vessels have enormous freezers to store tons of "catch" (the professional term for seafood that is harvested), employees may live onboard for six months. The industry harvests hundreds of billions of creatures every year, more than any other industry. International fishing efforts saw a dip in production and profits during the first decade of the twenty-first century, although fishing remained a flourishing business.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations Fisheries and Aquaculture Department reports that the steadily growing endeavor of seafood farming contributes more than half the seafood consumed by humans worldwide. Aquaculture employees have, for many decades, tinkered with optimal food for the fishes they nurture. Developments allowing the substitution of plant-based feed for naturally predatory fish made possible a significant reduction in business costs for fishery farmers, as fish feed makes up about 60 percent of the total cost in salmon farming alone. Scientists predict that future experiments with feed will greatly help the world's aquaculture economies, although such a radical change in salmon's diet necessarily also alters its nutritional content for consumers.

Fisheries are theoretically renewable resources, but countries around the globe report overfishing, in which fishers take such big catches that they deplete neighborhood stocks. Organizations such as the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) note the many marine species that are threatened or endangered directly or indirectly due to fishing. Hunting a marine species to extinction can have dire and unpredictable results for the entire ecosystem, in addition to economic markets. The issue of sustainability—defined in 1987 at the World Commission on Environment and Development as development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs—is an important consideration for the future of the fishing industry. Many governments, environmental advocates, and other groups exert efforts to prevent overfishing.

Every country with a fishing industry has enacted legislation concerning fishing. An important concept is "illegal, unreported, and unregulated" (IUU) fishing. This refers to fishing activities that violate national or international laws or rules, which were defined by NOAA as follows:

(A) Fishing activities that violate conservation and management measures according to an international agreement, including capture limits or quotas, capacity restrictions, and bycatch (that is, marine animals caught unintentionally) reduction requirements;

(B) Overfishing; or

(C) Any fishing activities that endanger undersea mountains ("seamounts"), hydrothermal vents ("fumaroles"), and coral reefs.

In the United States, federal laws regulate fishing in all US territories, while other rules vary from state to state. For example, in 1994, to protect several species suffering bycatch status, Amendment Three of the Florida Constitution, otherwise known as the "net ban," outlawed the use of entangling nets in Florida's waters and restricted the use of other forms of nets, such as seines and shrimp trawls. The amendment was considered a pioneering measure and was enacted by a popular referendum. The law damaged the profits of fishers in the short term but favored the preservation of local renewable resources.

Climate change is another hazard for fishery stocks. The melting of the polar ice caps leads to warmer water and greater acidity in the oceans. Warm-water areas are becoming warmer, which leads to changes in fish behavior and to damages to coral reefs and other ecosystems. Fishes in tropical and equatorial regions have begun to migrate northward and southward toward the poles, where they can become invasive species. Fishing communities in these regions may find that their local hatcheries are decreasing, while fishers in colder climes must deal with the unpredictability of species behavior when invasion occurs. Extreme weather events, such as hurricanes and flooding that may be exacerbated by climate change, jeopardize the lives and livelihoods of all people who work outdoors in the regions affected. For example, the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 harmed fishing operations in fourteen countries for more than a year. In 2010, a catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico endangered the livelihoods of thousands of Gulf Coast fishers, seafood restauranteurs, and tourism companies; that region is home to one of the largest seafood industries in the United States.

After seafood is captured from fisheries or wild stocks, most of it is processed. Three stages of processing are handling (the initial stage of processing), packing, and manufacturing related products, such as fish oil, clam sauce for pasta, and pet food. The beginning step of processing can occur at sea—if the vessel contains a workroom with the proper tools and refrigeration—or at fish processing plants.

Processing companies of all sizes employ people as handlers: They sort, clean, cut, eviscerate, and scale (remove fish scales) or shuck (remove mollusk shells). The next step is to dress the products, which can include salting, filleting, blanching, precooking, spicing, and breading. Seafood may be preserved with salt and spices or by drying, smoking, or pickling in brine. Aquatic products—including fresh, canned, or frozen fish (whole or filleted), caviar, fish oil, and fish meal —may be delivered to grocery stores, restaurants, wholesalers, exporters, or directly to the public.

The popularity of seafood restaurants remains on the rise, as seafood is considered to be healthful. The United States is among the world's largest consumers of seafood and related products.

Industry Outlook

Overview

The outlook for the fishing industry reveals significant challenges, mainly regarding overfishing, but also the potential to improve over the long term. Both fishing and aquaculture were negatively affected by the global financial crisis of 2008 and the global COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, both because restaurants and other businesses closed at least for a time and because of the health effects of the virus on people working in the fishing and aquaculture industries. In the United States, legislation to combat overfishing, including commercial fishing license buyback plans, is a major influence on the industry, likely leading to short-term falls in revenue but repositioning the industry to be more efficient in the future. According to the market research firm IBISWorld, the fishing industry saw stable growth of 2.9 percent over the last five years, with revenues of $9.3 billion in 2023. The US aquaculture industry, on the other hand, was expected to grow somewhat faster thanks to declining yields from wild fisheries.

Globally, ongoing industry problems include the shrinking of fisheries and fish stocks, the aging of the overall workforce and difficulties with recruitment and retainment, competition with importers and with aquaculturists, poor management by agencies that police the industry, poor choices made by many fishers (from ignorance of or disregard for the laws) that lead to overfishing, climate changes that affect the oceans and coastlines, and coastal and marine pollution. Such challenges have left many small communities and even large companies facing significant slumps in fisheries production. Small-scale fishers may also struggle with factors such as fuel prices and privatized waterfront areas that limit access.

However, the outlook is not totally grim. The worldwide fishing and seafood production industries still remain one of the fastest growing food sectors; in 2022 FAO reported fisheries and aquaculture production was at a record high, producing 214 million tonnes globally in 2020. Much of this increase was in the aquaculture sector. While fishing in the wild has suffered diminished returns in many regions, new technologies and methodologies offer the potential to increase aquaculture production while reducing waste and other environmental impacts.

In addition to commercial fisheries and aquaculture, fishing also provides opportunities in other economic sectors. For example, there is a chartered boat industry for recreational fishing on inland rivers and many coastal regions. Commercial fishing is done only to a very slight extent in US rivers, chiefly because of overfishing and increased regulations. Rivers are chiefly a natural resource for recreational fishers and guided tours, which often encourage catch-and-release (captured fish are thrown back into the water).

Employment Advantages

There are a great many and varied occupations in the fishing industry and its support industries. Inexperienced civilians travel in large numbers to Alaska and the Pacific Northwest to hire on as fishers and processors for a summer or simply to enjoy the adventure of gaining experience. The diversity of positions in all areas of fishing, aquaculture, and related fields offers job satisfaction to workers of all kinds, in the hands-on physical side or the office-based, regulatory and research side.

Employment in the recreational fishing industry, for example as a guide or tour leader, can offer outdoor activity and the experience of attractive natural areas as part of the work day. Leisurely tourist activities within the fifty states include fishing from chartered boats on rivers or lakes and wading through the Everglades to learn about wetland ecosystems. Tourism guides knowledgeable about local and regional aquatic resources are in increasingly high demand. Specialist sight-seeing companies can employ all kinds of transport from speedboats to helicopters to cruise liners.

Fishing and aquaculture are industries that greatly reward ambition and provide gratification to the workers who know how much their labors are enjoyed by the average family sitting down to a good seafood meal.

Annual Earnings

The commercial fishing industry earned global revenues of about $254.42 billion in 2024 according to the market research firm Statista, as reported by Reuters. According to IBISWorld, the US fishing industry brought in $9.36 billion in annual revenues as of 2023, with aquaculture contributing an additional $2.3 billion. As of 2022, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), grouped fishers with farming and forestry workers, reporting an annual wage of $33,970.

Bibliography

"Commercial Fishing Market Report Overview." Business Research Insights, 4 Mar. 2024,

www.businessresearchinsights.com/market-reports/commercial-fishing-market-106914. Accessed 24 Mar. 2024.

Barrett, James, Alison Locker, and Callum Roberts. "The Origins of Intensive Marine Fishing in Medieval Europe: The English Evidence." Proceedings: Biological Sciences 271, no. 1556 (2004): 2417-2421.

"Fish & Seafood Aquaculture Industry in the US—Market Research Report." IBISWorld, 26 Feb. 2023, www.ibisworld.com/united-states/market-research-reports/fish-seafood-aquaculture-industry/. Accessed 24 Mar. 2023.

"Fishing Industry in the US—Market Research Report." IBISWorld, Apr. 2023, www.ibisworld.com/united-states/market-research-reports/fishing-industry/. Accessed 24 Mar. 2024.

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Aquaculture Development. Rome: Author, 2001.

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Report of the Expert Consultation on the Development of a Comprehensive Global Record of Fishing Vessels. Rome: Author, 2008.

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture, 2022, www.fao.org/publications/sofia/2022/en/. Accessed 24 Mar. 2024.

Haggan, Nigel, Barbara Neis, and Ian G. Baird, eds. Fishers' Knowledge in Fisheries Science and Management. Paris: UNESCO, 2007.

"Industries at a Glance: Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing, and Hunting: NAICS11." Bureau of Labor Statistics, US Dept. of Labor, 22 Mar. 2024, www.bls.gov/iag/tgs/iag11.htm. Accessed 24 Mar. 2024.

Morris, Steven, and Severin Carrell. "Enforcement and Voluntary Deals Prompt a Renaissance." The Guardian, March 25, 2008. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/mar/25/fishing.food1. Accessed 24 Mar. 2024.

Myers, Ransom, and Boris Worm. "Rapid Worldwide Depletion of Predatory Fish Communities." Nature 423 (2003): 280-283.

Pillay, T. V. R., and M. N. Kutty. Aquaculture: Principles and Practices. Ames, Iowa: Blackwell, 2005.

Stickney, Robert R., ed. Encyclopedia of Aquaculture. New York: Wiley, 2000.