OECD Review of Fisheries 2025

Fisheries and aquaculture provide food for billions of people thereby playing a key role in global food security. The sector also plays an important role in the local economy and cultural life of coastal communities around the world, while fish products are among the most traded foods. But fish stocks and ecosystems are under stress from climate change, illegal fishing, overfishing and pollution.

Sustainably managing fish stocks and ensuring government support to fisheries does not compromise the health of resources is fundamental to the social, economic, and environmental performance of the fisheries sector and its resilience against shocks, notably those driven by climate change.

Against this background, the OECD Review of Fisheries aims to monitor the sector’s performance and sustainability and explore how smarter public policies can reinforce fisheries’ role in global food security and the ocean economy.

This 2025 edition covers 41 countries and territories: 30 OECD Members and 11 non-Members, including the three largest global producers of fish – the People’s Republic of China (hereafter China), India and Indonesia. Together, they accounted for the majority of global fish production in 2020-22, namely: 87% of aquaculture production (excluding seaweeds), 69% of marine capture fisheries production and 93% of seaweed production. >> See Chapter 1

The overview of sector performance presented in this report underscores the major and increasing role the Asian non-Members play in global fisheries production, driven by the rapid growth of their aquaculture production. Taken together, however, the OECD Members remain a major actor in capture fishing, and the primary actor of international trade in aquatic products.

Overall, the fisheries and aquaculture sector is growing again (after a slow-down or even contraction during the COVID-19 pandemic): international trade is at a high; aquaculture production is seeing sustained growth (with a 450% increase in nominal value and a doubling of production volumes compared to 2005); and the value of capture fisheries peaked in 2021 (a 65% increase in nominal value since 2005) despite a decline in volume. In the OECD Members, employment in capture fisheries has declined by 20% since 2005. >> see Chapter 2

Healthy fish stocks are essential for economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable fisheries. Regular stock assessments are the basis of the science-based fisheries management needed to harvest fish stocks in ways that preserve their health and maximise their productivity and hence benefits to society including in terms of food security.

However, stock assessments can be expensive and complex, thus only a subset of harvested stocks are rigorously assessed. Examining stock status data provides information on what is known about stock health and productivity but also about the extent of knowledge gaps. The OECD gathers information on stocks assessed by the countries and territories covered in this Review and uses the data to compute country-level stock status indicators to provide policymakers with information on the extent to which their sectors rely on healthy and productive resources at the level of decision-making.

Based on the most recent data collected from 1 623 stocks assessed, fisheries management works. Where it was possible to determine a health status, 81% of assessed stocks were healthy. This is more than the Food and Agriculture Organization’s estimated global share of 62% of sustainable stocks. One explanation for this difference could be that fish stocks are healthier where scientific management is possible thanks to rigorous stock assessments. The proportion of healthy stocks has also increased by 5 percentage points since 2019.

However, more could be done to harvest healthy stocks optimally. Only 59% of healthy stocks also meet productivity targets aimed at maximising the catch or value of landings. This highlights the importance of improved fisheries management to optimise food production or fisher incomes and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, even for healthy stocks. >> see Chapter 3

Climate change is one of the major challenges facing fisheries. Variations in ocean temperatures, changes in currents and acidification, and more frequent extreme weather events are all having significant and growing impacts on fish stocks and fishers’ livelihoods across the globe. Understanding how climate change is already affecting the performance and sustainability of capture fisheries, as well as the projections of climate impact into the future is important for sustainable fisheries management both at domestic and multilateral levels.

At the same time, the sector needs to reduce its GHG emissions to contribute to national and international efforts to move towards net zero economies. This edition reviews evidence on fisheries GHG emissions, highlighting the use of fuel as the main source of emissions, and shows that fish is a relatively low-carbon and nutrition-rich food compared to other animal food products, noting vast difference in emissions intensity depending on targeted fishes and fishing techniques. Enhancing co-operation between scientists, stakeholders and policymakers from across the globe is key to help anticipate climate impacts and identify adaptation and mitigation strategies. >> see Chapter 4

Sustainable fisheries management is a win-win-win strategy to increase fisher welfare, preserve ocean health and contribute to climate change mitigation and adaptation. Effective management requires a co-ordinated collection of policy tools that limit how much, how and where fish can be caught. This usually includes regulating catch volumes through limits on the total allowable catch (TAC) of specific species in specific fisheries (and sometimes further dividing and distributing the TAC into individual or community quotas); regulating fleets (e.g. vessel size, power and type of gear); and defining where and when fleets can operate.

Using TAC limits allows managers to control the amount of fish caught and ensure it stays at levels that allow for healthy and productive fisheries. In 2022, the majority (60% by value) of fish production from commercially important fisheries came from species that were fully subject to TAC limits. However, scope for progress exists, with an overall 28% of the production value still coming from species that are not subject to any catch limit, and another 12% from species that are only partially covered by catch limits.

Moreover, to adequately address the impacts of climate change, management institutions at both national and international levels need to be flexible and able to make changes in a timely manner. For fisheries where stocks shift across borders, this may mean regional fisheries bodies, and other types of co-operative agreements, have to adjust overall catch limits and quota allocations, to prevent the overall pressure on stocks exceeding sustainable levels.

Restoring the health and productivity of fish stocks is critical to increase the resilience of the sector, because more abundant stocks are less impacted by and recover more quickly from short term extreme climatic events such as marine heat waves. More abundant stocks will also reduce the emissions intensity of production by increasing catch per unit of fishing effort, meaning less energy is required to catch the same volume of fish. >> see Chapter 5

Over USD 10 billion goes to support capture fisheries in the countries and territories covered in this report every year. Over 2020-22, government support amounted to 10.6% of the value of fish landed, or an average of USD 552 per fisher per year. To ensure support benefits the fishers who need it and contributes to stated goals, governments need to understand how public money is being spent, where benefits are distributed and how it impacts all dimensions of the sector’s performance.

Six economies accounted for 85% of the support reported in the period 2020-22, therefore driving the overall trends observed in spending: China (36.1%), Japan (12.4%), the United States (11.0%), Canada (10.7%), EU Member states (combined; 8.0%) and Brazil (6.4%). Overall, support to fisheries in 2020-22 was 3% lower than what it was in 2010-12. Over the period considered, total support peaked in 2012-14 (at USD 12.9 billion) and was the lowest in 2016-18 (at USD 9.0 billion)

Three other key trends are, first, an increase in spending on fisheries management, monitoring, control and surveillance in the OECD Members, which is good news, as assessing the health of fish stocks and managing fisheries sustainably is vital to ensuring they are profitable in the long term and resilient to climate change. The gap in spending on management, monitoring, control and surveillance between the OECD Members and the non-Members is however growing as spending has decreased in a number of non-Members. Second, support to income has almost doubled since 2010-12, with most of the increase occurring during and after 2020, as governments aimed to mitigate the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on fishers. Third, fisheries support to fuel consumption has fallen in recent years, albeit at a slower pace than in the first half of the last decade. However, the lack of information on broader fuel support policies that target fisheries alongside other sectors means the true scale of fuel support and how it is changing over time are not completely understood. >> see Chapter 6

Some government support to fisheries is critical to ensure sustainability and help boost productivity and build resilience in the sector. But subsidies that make it easier and cheaper to fish can drive unsustainable and illegal fishing, particularly where fisheries management is weak. When it results in above-optimal fishing effort, support not only risks fish stock health and productivity but also ultimately harms the fishers governments seek to help and undermines other policy objectives such as reducing GHG emissions.

The OECD has developed a framework to identify the policies that may present a risk of encouraging unsustainable fishing in the absence of effective management. It shows that across all countries and territories, in 2020‑22, almost two-thirds (65%) of all support to fisheries presented a risk of encouraging unsustainable fishing in the absence of effective management. In the OECD Members, almost half (49%) of total support presented no risk in 2020-22; this consisted mainly in spending on fisheries management and enforcement. However, scope for reform remains: 42% of support still presented a high (8%) or moderate (34%) risk of encouraging unsustainable fishing. In the non-Members, 90% of fisheries support in 2020-22 presented a risk (moderate or high) of encouraging unsustainable fishing.

Ensuring fisheries sustainability calls for policy reform along three priorities: 1) favouring support policy types that do not present a risk of encouraging unsustainable fishing; 2) designing support policies carefully to target the provision of support to sustainable fisheries and fishing practices; and 3) mitigating the risk inherent in the support policy mix by ensuring the effectiveness of fisheries management and enforcement with adequate and sufficient funding. In practice, this means that a significant share of the current spending could be re-purposed away from policies such as subsidies for fuel, vessels, and access to infrastructure and instead be directed to investment in stock assessments, management and enforcement as well as targeted time-bound income support for fishers detrimentally affected by crises with higher social benefits. >> see Chapter 7

Gender equality and equity is a fundamental human right, and it is proved to support economic performance and sustainability. However, in capture fisheries and aquaculture, across the world, women and girls continue to face persistent and long-standing barriers and systemic disadvantages as in many domains of social and economic life. A review of available evidence shows that the lack of relevant gender-disaggregated data only provides a limited understanding of gender issues in the sector. Information on the policies being used to promote gender equality and equity in the sector also remains limited but suggests that in many cases, impulse for gender equality and equity comes from cross-sectoral policies. The report concludes that a systematic effort to research and better understand gender issues in fisheries and aquaculture in the OECD Members is needed to complement existing research, which focuses on developing country case studies, and help understand how solutions can be transferred to different contexts. Such research would benefit from a cross-sectoral perspective. >> see Chapter 8