Catches are falling, despite the fact that expanding fleets are fishing harder, spending more time, effort and money than ever before in trying to maintain them. Some commercially important stocks are in such a critical state that all fishing has been shut down, or sharply curtailed. Hundreds of millions of people traditionally dependent on fishing for food and livelihoods face resource depletion, competition from industrial and distant water fleets, and loss of access to traditional marine food supplies. The biological diversity of the world's oceans is threatend by the highly competitive race to catch enough fish to keep pace with rising international demand. A modern 'factory' supertrawler can be longer than a football field and capable of catching and processing into various products up to 200 tons of fish daily.
Ships deploying such nets have a capture rate of about ten tons of fish per hour.
Since 1970, the world's fishing fleet has expanded twice as fast as world catches. The fishing fleet in China, the world's leading fish producer, is now around six times the size it was in 1979. As a result, excess fishing capacity has reached alarming proportions. There are about 3.5 million vessels boats currently fishing in the world's oceans. Intense competition between countries and rival fleets over access to fishing grounds has sparked numerous international disputes over fishing rights in recent years.