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Data

Global fishing discards by type of fishing gear

About this data

Source
Pérez Roda et al. (2019) – processed by Our World in Data
Last updated
June 1, 2021
Date range
2014–2014
Unit
tonnes

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Fish and Overfishing

Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

Pérez Roda et al. – A third assessment of global marine fisheries discards

Discards are animals thrown back (alive or dead) into the sea after being caught during fishing activities.

This is one subset of "bycatch": animals that are not the target species but are caught during fishing activities. Some bycatch is still used as human food, or animal feed. The proportion that is not used, and is instead, thrown back into the sea is called "discards".

Retrieved on
June 1, 2021
Retrieved from
http://www.fao.org/3/CA2905EN/ca2905en.pdf
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Pérez Roda, M.A. (ed.), Gilman, E., Huntington, T., Kennelly, S.J., Suuronen, P., Chaloupka, M. and Medley, P. (2019). A third assessment of global marine fisheries discards. FAO Fisheries and Aquaculture Technical Paper No. 633. Rome, FAO. 78 pp.

Discards are animals thrown back (alive or dead) into the sea after being caught during fishing activities.

This is one subset of "bycatch": animals that are not the target species but are caught during fishing activities. Some bycatch is still used as human food, or animal feed. The proportion that is not used, and is instead, thrown back into the sea is called "discards".

Retrieved on
June 1, 2021
Retrieved from
http://www.fao.org/3/CA2905EN/ca2905en.pdf
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Pérez Roda, M.A. (ed.), Gilman, E., Huntington, T., Kennelly, S.J., Suuronen, P., Chaloupka, M. and Medley, P. (2019). A third assessment of global marine fisheries discards. FAO Fisheries and Aquaculture Technical Paper No. 633. Rome, FAO. 78 pp.

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At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

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  • All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
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Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Global fishing discards by type of fishing gear”. Our World in Data (2026). Data adapted from Pérez Roda et al.. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260512-095313/grapher/fish-discards-gear.html [online resource] (archived on May 12, 2026).

How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

Pérez Roda et al. (2019) – processed by Our World in Data

Full citation

Pérez Roda et al. (2019) – processed by Our World in Data. “Global fishing discards by type of fishing gear” [dataset]. Pérez Roda et al., “A third assessment of global marine fisheries discards” [original data]. Retrieved May 16, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260512-095313/grapher/fish-discards-gear.html (archived on May 12, 2026).

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Data API

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Data URL (CSV format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fish-discards-gear.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false
Metadata URL (JSON format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fish-discards-gear.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false

Code examples

Examples of how to load this data into different data analysis tools.

Excel / Google Sheets
=IMPORTDATA("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fish-discards-gear.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
Python with Pandas
import pandas as pd
import requests

# Fetch the data.
df = pd.read_csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fish-discards-gear.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", storage_options = {'User-Agent': 'Our World In Data data fetch/1.0'})

# Fetch the metadata
metadata = requests.get("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fish-discards-gear.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false").json()
R
library(jsonlite)

# Fetch the data
df <- read.csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fish-discards-gear.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")

# Fetch the metadata
metadata <- fromJSON("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fish-discards-gear.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
Stata
import delimited "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fish-discards-gear.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", encoding("utf-8") clear