For most of the twentieth century the wild ocean answered every new boat with more fish. Then it stopped. The world’s wild capture climbed steeply for thirty years, hit a ceiling near 90 million tonnes in the 1990s, and has bounced around that line ever since. This study pulls the full FAO capture record, cleans it, and asks what a flat wild catch means for the coastal economies that depend on it.
A steep climb, then a plateau
In 1960 the world landed about 31.6 million tonnes of wild fish. By the mid-1990s that figure had roughly tripled, and there it stuck. The catch peaked at 96.9 million tonnes in 2018 and sat at 88.0 million tonnes in 2022, the latest full FAO year. The solid line below is the historical record. The dashed line is a forecast through 2030, and the shaded cone is its 80% uncertainty band.
A handful of nations land most of it
Like coffee, the wild catch is concentrated. China alone accounts for about 15% of the world total, and together with Indonesia, India, and Peru the top four land more than a third of it. When a single fishery swings, for example Peru’s anchoveta in an El Niño year, the global total moves with it, and so do the prices and wages in dozens of fishing ports.
About 91 Mt by 2030, a plateau that holds
The damped model lands near 90.9 million tonnes in 2030, with an 80% band running from about 80 to 101 Mt. That is the whole point of choosing a damped trend over a straight line: the recent slope fades, and the forecast stays on the plateau rather than climbing forever. The economic stakes are real. Demand for fish keeps rising while the wild catch does not, which is why farmed fish has overtaken it, and why coastal fishing communities face flat or shrinking catches against rising costs. Treat the number as a baseline trajectory, not a prophecy: it assumes the plateau roughly persists, and it does not model stock collapse, policy change, unreported catch, or climate shocks. The model is simple, transparent, and fully reproducible from the script linked below.