Subsidies reduce marine fisheries wealth.
(book chapter (chapter 10) in The Changing Wealth of Nations 2018: Building a Sustainable Future)
- After steadily increasing over decades, annual global production of capture fisheries has plateaued just above 80 million metric tons. From a peak of 86 million tons in 1996, global marine catches have shown a small downward trend of about 0.2 million ton per year.
- Globally, the proportion of fully fished stocks and overfished, depleted, or recovering fish stocks has increased from slightly more than 50 percent of all assessed fish stocks in the mid-1970s to about 75 percent in 2005, and to almost 90 percent in 2013.
- As global marine catches have stagnated and even declined, fishing effort has greatly expanded over the past 70 years. Over the same period the level of global marine catches has not even doubled, suggesting a steep decline in the catch per unit effort, often considered a measure of fishing productivity.
- At the global level, the data show that, overall, global fisheries have foregone US$83 billion of rent in 2012. Fisheries are heavily subsidized and in many countries resource rents from fisheries are negative—meaning that revenues do not fully cover the costs of fishing.