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Topic Overview (Summary of NOAA data & products related to Overfishing)

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Commercial fishing activities contribute over $28 billion a year to our economy, and over 17 million Americans spend about $25 billion a year on recreational marine fishing activities. In the United States, our appetite for seafood has kept pace with our population growth, which has grown from 151 million to over 300 million U.S. residents in the last 50 years. Our nation currently imports over 60% of its seafood, resulting in a trade deficit of more than $7 billion annually, second only to oil among natural products being imported.

Many valuable fish species are disappearing from our oceans through over harvest, loss of habitat and pollution. A stock that is subject to overfishing has a fishing mortality (harvest) rate above the level that provides for the maximum sustainable yield. A stock that is overfished has a biomass level below its prescribed biological threshold. When important fish stocks are overfished regional ecosystem dynamics are altered and may take years or decades to recover.

NOAA monitors and reports to Congress the status of U.S. fishery populations. For 2007, NMFS reviewed 528 individual stocks and stock complexes and made determinations of both overfishing and overfished status for 179 stocks and complexes; an additional 76 have either an overfishing or overfished determination. In addition, 244 stocks or stock complexes have known overfishing determinations: 203 (83%) are not subject to overfishing; 41 (17%) are subject to overfishing. These percentages represent an improvement from 2006 report, in which 80% (20%) were not (were) subject to overfishing (NMFS, 2007).

NOAA works to end overfishing by 2010, as required by the Magnuson Stevens Act through continued and new sustainable management practices such as aquaculture, annual catch limits and marine protected areas (MPAs).

Annual catch limits are the amount of fish allowed to be caught in a year, and are required by a 2007 amendment to the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act. NOAA investment in aquaculture helps to establish an environmentally sustainable, profitable offshore aquaculture industry in the U.S. and the Caribbean that will alleviate stress on natural fish stocks, create thousands of jobs, provide healthy protein to Americans at a reasonable cost, improve food safety and security, and address our nation's trade deficit.

In addition, there are more than 1,700 MPAs across a range of U.S. marine habitats, including the open ocean, coastal areas, inter-tidal zones, estuaries, and the Great Lakes. Each MPA has a unique conservation objectives, from conserving important habitats and preserving sunken historic vessels to protecting fish spawning grounds important to commercial and recreational fisheries.

NOAA fisheries research is significantly supported in partnership with the National Sea Grant College Program and its network of 30 university-based state Sea Grant Programs nationwide. Sea Grant addresses fisheries research and extension in nine key areas including new approaches to fisheries management, population dynamics, socioeconomics, advanced sampling technology, stock enhancement, essential fisheries habitat, harvest technology/conservation engineering, fisheries oceanography, and Great Lakes fisheries.