Overfishing is a very serious ethical, conservation, and even economic problem that has reached unprecedented levels.
Overfishing is one of the most urgent threats facing our oceans today, and it is a direct assault on the lives and well-being of trillions of sentient marine beings. Officially, overfishing is defined by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation as catching fishes faster than they can reproduce, which means fish populations are declining below the levels needed to sustain themselves over time. This is not just a technical definition, but a dire reality for countless aquatic animals whose lives are cut short for selfish human interests, to the point that entire populations (with their precious genetic diversity) are at risk of disappearing.
The scale of overfishing is staggering. The number of overfished fisheries has been slowly creeping up since the 1980s. Globally, the number of overfished populations of fishes and aquatic invertebrates has tripled in the last fifty years. Now, about one-third of the world’s assessed fisheries are being exploited beyond their biological limits, and the trend is worsening, with the percentage of overfished populations rising from 35.4% to 37.7% from 2022 to 2024, according to the Marine Stewardship Council. In some regions, the situation is even more dire. In 2015, the Mediterranean and Black Sea, for instance, had over 62% of their fish populations classified as unsustainable, while the populations of the Southeast Pacific (61.5%) and the Southwest Atlantic (58.8%) were not far behind.
However, the exact percentage of sentient beings becoming the victims of overfishing may be difficult to calculate for a simple semantic reason. Populations of aquatic animals that are commercialised as food are often classified as overfished when their population is below the level that would maximise “harvest”, rather than biological sustainability. Therefore, “overfished” may not mean the population is declining beyond recovery (becoming a victim of “overfishing”), but it may simply indicate the population is below a target level set by a particular fishery industry that maximises its exploitation.“ Regardless of the actual percentage, though, we know that we are talking about a very significant number.
Who are the victims of overfishing?
When we look at which species are most affected, the devastation becomes even clearer, as some populations have indeed disappeared. About 80% of all the top predatory fishes are gone from the coastal areas of the North Pacific and North Atlantic. European eels have experienced up to a 99% decline in some regions in the last 30 years.
Tuna are among the most heavily overfished. The latest data shows that while 65% of tuna populations are considered relatively “healthy”, at least 9% are overfished and 26% are in an intermediate state, with particular concern for bigeye and bluefin populations. Bluefin tuna, especially in the Mediterranean, have been pushed to the brink by decades of intense fishing, much of it illegal or unreported. Pacific bluefin tuna has declined by over 97%, and Atlantic bigeye tuna populations are approaching collapse.
Sharks and rays are perhaps the most tragic victims of overfishing. More than one-third of all shark, ray, and chimaera species are now at risk of extinction, primarily due to overfishing and bycatch. Each year, an estimated 100 million sharks are killed, often just for their fins, in a practice that is not only ecologically disastrous but also deeply unethical. These apex predators play a crucial role in maintaining the balance of marine ecosystems, and their loss triggers cascading effects throughout the food web.
It’s not only happening in the oceans and seas, though. Salmons have disappeared from many rivers in areas of Europe and America, and global populations of wild Atlantic salmon have dropped from 8-10 million fish in the 1970s to 3-4 million today.
The Effects of Overfishing
The consequences of overfishing ripple far beyond the ocean. Ecologically, removing so many sentient beings from the seas disrupts entire ecosystems. The loss of predators like sharks leads to population explosions of smaller species, which can then devastate shellfish and coral communities. Bottom trawling, a common fishing method, destroys habitats and kills countless non-target animals as bycatch, including marine mammals, turtles, and seabirds.
The ethical implications are profound. Every year, between 1.1 and 2.2 trillion wild finfishes were taken from the oceans from 2000 to 2019 (and these figures exclude unrecorded capture, such as illegal fishing, discards and ghost fishing). This is an almost unimaginable number of sentient lives killed for human consumption and profit, each capable of experiencing pain and suffering, who are denied their natural lives for human interests. This immense suffering is rarely acknowledged in mainstream discussions about fishing, as many people are still denying that fishes are sentient beings.
Even within the non-vegan carnist paradigm, overfishing is bad news, as it threatens the livelihoods of millions of people who base their animal exploitation businesses on a flawed, unsustainable model, especially in coastal communities that have traditionally depended on fishing. The global fishing fleet is now up to two-and-a-half times the size that the industry itself claims is needed to catch what they think the planet can sustainably “provide” (classical carnist view), driven by harmful subsidies and unchecked industrial expansion. Additionally, illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing accounts for up to 30% of catches in some high-persecuted species.
So, how much overfishing is happening in the world? The answer is: far too much, and at a cost that goes far beyond numbers and economics. It is a crisis of ethics. The trillions of sentient beings caught and killed each year are not mere commercial commodities or conservation numbers. They are individuals whose lives matter. We must continue to challenge the narrative that the ocean is an endless resource and advocate for a world where marine animals are respected as fellow earthlings who deserve to live in peace, not just as products to be “harvested” or living in “stocks” to be exploited.
Only in the Vegan World of the future, where no fishing of any kind will occur, can we hope to restore balance to our oceans and justice for all who call them home.
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