Most Caught Wild Species 2024

What this chart shows. The fifteen wild species landed in the greatest quantity anywhere in the world in 2024. Values are nominal landings converted to live weight, which means the weight of the fish as it came out of the water rather than the weight of the fillet or the meal that reaches a buyer.

How the data is collected. Landings are reported by the flag state of the vessel that did the essential part of the fishing, and national returns are supplemented or replaced where necessary with figures from regional fisheries management organisations. Of the 93.2 million tonnes landed in 2024, 79.2 percent is flagged official, 6.3 percent estimated and 14.5 percent imputed by FAO.

Background. FAO records what is caught and landed for food and for feed, and excludes discards, escapes and losses before landing, so a species heavily discarded at sea appears smaller here than the quantity actually killed. Split-year fishing seasons, used in Antarctic waters, are shown under the calendar year in which the season ends.

Limits. As with farmed species, unidentified categories ending in NEI are excluded, and those bundles are large in capture statistics: unidentified marine fishes alone came to 8,655,372 tonnes in 2024. Stocks shared between fleets are still counted once, by species, so a single bar can span several oceans and dozens of national fleets.