The following summarizes key findings of the PAGE study on conditions and trends in coastal food production, as well as the quality and availability of data.

Conditions and trends

• Global marine fish production has increased sixfold since 1950, but the rate of increase annually for fish caught in the wild has slowed from 6 percent in the 1950s and 1960s to 0.6 percent in 1995-96.
• In 1997, fish and shellfish provided 16.5 percent of the total animal protein consumed by humans worldwide. Of the 30 countries most dependent on fish as a protein source, all but 4 are in the developing world.
• The capacity of coastal and marine ecosystems to produce fish for human harvest is highly degraded by overfishing, destructive trawling techniques, and loss of coastal nursery areas.
• Seventy-five percent of all fish stocks for which information is available are in urgent need of better management. Twenty-eight percent are already depleted from past overfishing or in imminent danger of depletion from current overharvesting, and forty-seven percent are being fished at their biological limit and therefore vulnerable to depletion if fishing intensity increases.
• The percentage catch of low-value species in the harvest has risen, as the catch from higher-value species has plateaued or declined, masking some effects of overfishing. This change in the piscivore/zooplanktivore ratio provides some evidence of likely ecosystem change.
• Notable ecosystem changes have occurred over the last half century in some fishery areas, such as the North Atlantic and Northeast Pacific.
• Some of the recent increase in the marine fish harvest comes from aquaculture, which has more than doubled in production since 1990.
• Worldwide, some 30 to 40 percent more harvest capacity exists than the resource can withstand.
• Bycatch levels are also high. FAO estimates the amount of fish discarded at about 20 million metric tons per year. This figure is the equivalent of about 25% of the reported annual production from marine capture fisheries.
• Expansion of oceanic fisheries still continues, with a start now being made at exploitation of deep-water resources, which to date are relatively unprotected by international agreements and regulations.

Information status and needs

• FAO fisheries production statistics are limited to providing proximate information on commercial fish population trends and are, therefore, insufficient to assess the capacity of coastal and marine ecosystems to provide food.
• The FAO database on marine fisheries landings is the most complete data set at the global level; however it has important limitations. Some of the main problems are that much of the catch is not reported at the species level, particularly in the Indian Ocean and Central Pacific, and the subsistence and small-scale fisheries sector is underrepresented in the data collection efforts.
• Catch statistics are also biased as a result of unreported discarding, misreporting of harvests, and exclusion of all information on illegal fishing.
• Data are fragmentary on how many boats are deployed, and how much time is spent fishing, which obscures the full impact of fishing on ecosystems.
• No comprehensive data are available for average fish size, which would help in the assessment of the condition of particular fish populations.
• More extensive stock assessments are necessary to identify Maximum Sustainable Yield (MSY) for various commercially important species.

Quality and availability of data

PAGE measures and indicators	Data sources and comments
Analysis of the condition of fish stocks	Grainger, R.J.R. and S.M. Garcia. 1996. Chronicles of Marine Fishery Landings (1950-94): Trend Analysis and Fisheries Potential. FAO Fisheries Technical Paper No. 359. Rome, Italy: FAO. Garcia, S.M. and I. De Leiva Moreno. 2000. ¡°Trends in World Fisheries and their Resources.¡± In FAO. The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture. Rome, Italy: FAO. Analyses include stock assessments covering the period 1950-1994 for the top 200 commercial fisheries, and assessments of 441 fish stocks covering the period 1974-1999.
Commercial harvest of important fish stocks	FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations). 1999e. FAO Fishery Statistics Database ¨C FISHSTAT Plus Software. Available On-line at: http://www.fao.org/WAICENT/FAOINFO/FISHERY/statist/statist.htm. Data refer to marine fisheries production for selected species in the Northwest Atlantic.
Percentage change in catch from the peak year	FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations). 1999e. FAO Fishery Statistics Database ¨C FISHSTAT Plus Software. Available On-line at: http://www.fao.org/WAICENT/FAOINFO/FISHERY/statist/statist.htm. FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations). 1999f. Yearbook of Fishery Statistics ¨C Capture Production 1997. Vol. 84. FAO Fisheries Series No. 52. Rome, Italy: FAO. Current catch figures for each FAO fishing area were compared to historical peak catches for that same area.
Change in trophic composition of fish catch	Caddy, J.F., L. Garibaldi, and R.J.R. Grainger. 1999. ¡°Changes in World Marine Fishery Ecosystems as Judged from the FAO Fishery Catch Database.¡± Unpublished paper prepared for PAGE. Analysis conducted by Caddy, Garibaldi, and Grainger (1999) at FAO Fisheries Department for this study. The analysis uses three indicators to assess the change in species composition of the catch in each FAO fishing area, with the exclusion of the Arctic and Antarctic. The three indicators are: a. sum of catches for the top five species in each of four trophic categories over the 1950-97 period; b. trend relationship between the piscivores and zooplanktivores catches; and c. percentage of catches of the different trophic levels early (1950-54) and late (l993-97) in the series.