Commercial Catch

Commercial catch is the volume of fish and shellfish taken by licensed commercial fleets for sale, as opposed to recreational, subsistence, or research removals. It is reported in live weight and recorded through logbooks, landings declarations, and sales notes, then aggregated by FAO into the global capture-production series that has held near 90 to 92 million tonnes since the late 1980s. Commercial catch feeds stock assessment as the catch time series alongside catch-per-unit-effort, and the gap between reported commercial catch and total removals is where illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing sits. Managers cap it through total allowable catch and individual quota under instruments such as the EU Common Fisheries Policy.