Try our Mapping Tool


Want to see where countries fish around the world? And where they fished globally through time — from 1950-2010?

Watch the above tutorial on how to use our interactive Mapping Tool.

And to use the Mapping Tool — click the link here.

Media following Global Paper

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

On Janurary 21st the Sea Around Us published in the journal Nature Communications the results of over a decade of research.

Data were collected from over 200 countries and territories to reconstruct the amount of fish that is being pulled out of our oceans.

After the research was published, media from around the world reported on the story. Here is just a sampling of those stories:

The Guardian – Overfishing causing global catches to fall three times faster than estimated

The Washington Post – Why we’ve been hugely underestimating the overfishing of the oceans

BBC – Global fishing catch significantly under-reported, says study

Nature News – Independent study tallies ‘true catch’ of global fishing

Le Monde (France) – La surpêche et le déclin des ressources ont été largement sous-estimés

El Pais (Spain) – La humanidad pesca 32 millones de toneladas de peces a escondidas

O Globo (Brazil) – Peso do pescado global é subestimado, diz pesquisa

The Missing Fish


The trailer for a new documentary about Danial Pauly and the Sea Around Us has just been released.

Produced by the Living Oceans Foundation, the documentary — “The Missing Fish” —  traces Pauly’s mission to understand and study global fish catch.

Travelling to different areas of the world, from Senegal to Newfoundland to Nicaragua, Pauly and a team of researches piece together data that are not included by countries in their official reports.

The documentary will be released by summer — check out the trailer here!

Sea Around Us study finds 30 per cent of global fish catch is unreported

Fish basket on head
Countries drastically underreport the number of fish caught worldwide, and the numbers obscure a significant decline in the total catch .

The new estimate, released today in Nature Communications, puts the annual global catch at roughly 109 million metric tons, about 30 per cent higher than the 77 million officially reported in 2010 by more than 200 countries and territories. This means that 32 million metric tons of fish goes unreported every year, more than the weight of the entire population of the United States.

Researchers led by the Sea Around Us, a research initiative at the University of British Columbia supported by The Pew Charitable Trusts, and Vulcan Inc., attribute the discrepancy to the fact that most countries focus their data collection efforts on industrial fishing and largely exclude difficult-to-track categories such as artisanal, subsistence, and illegal fishing, as well as discarded fish. Continue reading →