{"chart":{"title":"Fish discards","subtitle":"Discards are animals thrown back, alive or dead, into the sea after being caught during fishing activities. This represents bycatch (fish caught unintentionally) that is not brought ashore for use.","citation":"Sea Around Us (2022)","originalChartUrl":"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fish-discards","selection":["World"]},"columns":{"Wild fish discards":{"titleShort":"Wild fish discards","titleLong":"Wild fish discards - Sea Around Us","descriptionShort":"Estimated catch of fish and other marine animals that are caught and then thrown back into the sea.","descriptionKey":"- Sea Around Us attempts to reconstruct the full catch of each country. It starts from the official figures that countries report to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), and adds estimates of the catch these figures leave out, such as much of the catch by small-scale, subsistence, and recreational fishers, unreported catch by industrial fleets, and the fish thrown back into the sea. These estimates draw on scientific studies, government reports, and local experts.\n- The catch of each country is the catch of its own fishers and fleets, wherever they fish: in its own waters, in other countries’ waters, or on the high seas. The world total also includes catch whose fishing country is unknown.\n- This data covers marine fish and invertebrates (such as shrimp, squid, and crabs). It does not include marine mammals, reptiles, corals, sponges, seaweed, freshwater fishing, or fish farming (aquaculture).","descriptionProcessing":"Sea Around Us data goes up to 2019, but its 2019 figures look unfinished for several large fishing countries. For example, it counts almost all of Peru’s anchoveta catch, which is mostly turned into fishmeal and fish oil, as eaten directly by people; it doesn’t say which gear caught large parts of the catch of Peru, Indonesia, and India; and Japan’s catch is about 20% higher than Japan’s and FAO’s official figures. Because of this, we only show on our charts data up to 2018.\n\nSea Around Us lists some overseas fleets separately from the country they belong to. We add them to that country: the Azores and Madeira to Portugal; Ascension and Tristan da Cunha to Saint Helena; and Bonaire, Saba, and Sint Eustatius to Bonaire Sint Eustatius and Saba.","shortUnit":"t","unit":"tonnes","timespan":"1950-2018","type":"Numeric","owidVariableId":1354491,"shortName":"discards","lastUpdated":"2026-10-24","nextUpdate":"2029-10-23","citationShort":"Sea Around Us (2022) – with minor processing by Our World in Data","citationLong":"Sea Around Us (2022) – with minor processing by Our World in Data. “Wild fish discards – Sea Around Us” [dataset]. Sea Around Us, “Sea Around Us reconstructed marine fisheries catch” [original data].","fullMetadata":"https://api.ourworldindata.org/v1/indicators/1354491.metadata.json"}},"dateDownloaded":"2026-10-31"}