Japanese jack mackerel (Trachurus japonicus).
An estimated 1.1 billion individuals of this species are caught each year.
Credit: Nemo's great uncle.
Our recent estimates of wild-caught fish numbers have been published in a peer-reviewed paper in the journal Animal Welfare. We estimate that 1.1-2.2 trillion wild fishes were caught annually, on average, during 2000-2019. Approximately half of these were used for reduction to fishmeal and oil, based on 2010 data. We have since extended this estimate to the period 2003-2022, for which estimates are available by species, country and by individual year.
We previously estimated (in 2019) that between 0.79 and 2.3 trillion* fish (ie 790,000,000,000 to 2,300,000,000,000) were caught from the wild globally each year for 2007-2016. Details of the 2019 estimate are available here.
This is an update to an earlier estimate (in 2010) of between 0.97 and 2.7 trillion* fishes caught from the wild globally each year for 1999-2007. Details of the earlier 2010 estimate are available here.
The fall in wild-caught fish numbers between the two estimates is very largely due to a decline in Peruvian anchovy catch between 1999-2016 and, to a lesser extent, a decline in capelin, Japanese anchovy, sandeels, European anchovy and Black and Caspian Sea sprat. See below for a more detailed analysis.
* rounded to 2 significant figures.
