On the northern, western and eastern coasts the shelf is narrow, not exceeding 1.6 km in width. The Marine fishery is divided into inshore and offshore fishery. The inshore fishery includes operations carried out on the island's shelf areas in areas not exceeding 64 km from the mainland. Historically, these regions, with a total area of 4,170 km2 have supported the bulk of the fishery activity both in terms of manpower and vessels. Operations outside the zone of in excess of 64 km from the mainland include operations on Jamaica's two largest offshore fishing areas, the Morant and Pedro banks.
Fishermen operating mechanised canoes utilise the offshore areas.
Species include snappers, groupers, parrotfish, large jacks, kingfish, grunts, docterfish and goatfish. Other fishery resources of commercial value include marine shrimp, conch and lobsters. Other methods include throw nets, hand-collections and spear guns used for both demersal and pelagic species accounting for 4 percent of total catch. Of all the gears used fish traps result in the highest value of catch per landing.