The Status, Importance and Future of Australian Fisheries

Through numerous media reports everyone knows that fisheries all over the world are collapsing from overfishing. To better appreciate what is actually happening let’s look at some statistics. Since 1950 the Food and Agriculture Organization of the U.N. has compiled world fishery statistics and they are available online1. These are voluminous and include coverage for regions, nations, areas, species and species groupings with options for selecting and displaying information in both tabular and graphic form. The accompanying 14 graphs from this data are instructive.