The changing face of global fisheries—The 1950s vs. the 2000s

Spatialized catch and effort data, representing the world's marine fisheries in the 1950s and the 2000s are presented in form of cartograms, i.e., global maps in which the surface areas of continents are made proportional to the magnitude of the annual catches and fishing effort by their fleets. This is complemented by an analysis of the flows of seafood between the continents in whose waters the fish were captured, in the 1950s and the 2000s, and the continents where fleets originated. Such broad-brush analyses of temporal changes and trade patterns are helpful to understand major trends of fisheries, which, are increasingly dominated by scarcity of fish, and competition, notably off the coast of West Africa, and in newly accessed polar waters. ⺠Mapped global fisheries catch and effort in cartograms show changes since the 1950s were dominated by European fleets in Atlantic and Asian in the Pacific. ⺠By the 2000s, European share had diminished and Asia's had increased. ⺠Landings are limited by ocean primary productivity, and fleets shift as fisheries fail. ⺠Management will need to take note of important global and regional trends.