Signal Two thirds of assessed marine stocks fished sustainably, with regional outliers far higher

Summary

The Food and Agriculture Organization's most comprehensive global evaluation of fish stocks covers 2,570 marine stocks. It finds that 64.5% of them are fished at sustainable levels, while the remaining 35.5% are overfished. Regional results show a much wider spread than the global average suggests. In the north-east Pacific, 92.7% of stocks are sustainably fished, and in the south-west Pacific the figure is 85%. These outliers indicate that strong fisheries management works, and that better monitoring could let other regions reproduce the same gains.