Fisheries Statistics for the United States

The Fisheries Statistics Division in the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) provides both commercial and recreational fisheries statistics.

One of the primary goals of the NMFS is to use science based decision making to manage fish stocks in U.S. waters. Maintaining catch statistics is one important factor in the management process.

Statistical data sets useful to a variety of visitors are freely available. Recreational fishermen, for example, might be interested in knowing the top five fish caught in 2004. They turn out to be :

Atlantic and Gulf Coast

1. Spotted Seatrout
2. Atlantic Croaker
3. Summer Flounder
4. Striped Bass
5. Bluefish

Pacific Coast

1. Barred Sandbass
2. Pacific Bonito
3. Kelp Bass
4. Black Rockfish
5. Coho Salmon

Commercial and trade statistics are of most interest to industry actors. Both sets of data in the commercial and trade areas cover medium term time spans. The trade data provides information about transactions of specific species from anchovy to sea urchins in time spans ranging from 1989-2006. The NMSF compliments the statistics section with two additional useful categories of information. First, there is an annual text summarizing the state of U.S. Fisheries. Copies of Fisheries of the United States dating back to 1995 are available online.

The second category, the Fishery Market News provides even more immediate pricing data. For example, daily New England Auction Prices for specific species are listed. Every Friday quotes for frozen fish products from New York are printed. Records for all the listings in the Fishery Market News date back to 1990.

The only weakness of the fisheries statistics is their lack of immediate access to spreadsheet files. The statistics come either in HTML or PDF form, making it almost impossible to do independent work desk top work.

© 2007 Patricia A. Michaels.