Overfishing and the ocean economy: why your business is more exposed than you think

The ocean rarely appears on a procurement risk register. When really, it should. Whether you are buying seafood directly, sourcing ingredients that contain it, or depending on the wider natural systems the ocean supports, the health of global fish stocks is a commercial signal worth reading closely.

None of this is new. The Canadian cod fishery collapsed in 1992, putting tens of thousands out of work and closing a fishery that had sustained communities for centuries. More than three decades later, stocks are only now showing tentative signs of recovery, a reminder that these systems can take a generation or more to rebuild, if they rebuild at all.

What has changed is that we are finally doing something about it. In 2025 and 2026, the signal grew louder, with new global data being released, new regulations being introduced, and a well-known UK supermarket removing a popular fish from its shelves over sustainability concerns.

In this piece, we look at what overfishing means for the ocean economy, why it reaches further into supply chains than most businesses would think, and the practical steps a procurement or sustainability lead can take to reduce that exposure.

What is overfishing, in plain terms

Overfishing happens when fish are caught faster than their populations can naturally replace themselves. Catch more than a stock can regenerate, year after year, and the population shrinks. Keep going and it can collapse, sometimes for decades.

Manuel Barange, Assistant Director-General of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), put it simply at the 2025 UN Ocean Conference: “in banking terms, we are spending more than the interest the account pays us, and eating into the capital itself” (source: United Nations, 2025)

That framing is useful for an audience of business leaders because it shows fish stock as an asset. A well-managed stock pays a sustainable annual dividend. An overfished one is a depreciating asset that becomes more expensive, more unstable, and eventually unavailable.

The state of global fish stocks in 2025

The clearest picture we have comes from the FAO’s Review of the State of World Marine Fishery Resources 2025, launched at the UN Ocean Conference in Nice. It reviewed 2,570 individual fish stocks, the largest number reviewed to date by the FAO, drawing on more than 650 experts in the field across 90 countries (source: FAO, 2025).

The headline numbers are worth sitting with:

• 35.5% of those assessed marine fish stocks are now considered overfished.
• 64.5% are still fished within biologically sustainable levels.
• Overfishing has been rising by around 1% a year on average in recent years.

Interestingly, when weighted by how much fish reaches our plates, 77.2% of global landings come from sustainable stocks, because the best-managed fisheries also tend to be the most productive.

However, those averages do hide the current regional gaps. For example, in the Northeast Pacific, 92.7% of stocks are sustainably fished. Whereas in the Mediterranean and Black Sea, around 65% of stocks are unsustainable. And finally, in the northwest coast of Africa, more than half are overfished with little sign of recovery (source: United Nations, 2025).

There is genuine good news in the data, too. Tuna fish shows what recovery looks like: with roughly 87% of major commercial tuna stocks now sustainably fished, the result of consistent investment in monitoring, compliance, and international cooperation (source: Earth Journalism Network, 2025). As the FAO put it, where science-based management exists and is properly funded, stocks can recover. The barrier is rarely knowledge. It is cost, capacity, and political will.

What is the ocean economy?

The ocean economy, sometimes called the blue economy, describes the full range of economic activity that depends on the sea. That includes the obvious, such as fishing and aquaculture, but also shipping and ports, coastal tourism, and the many products whose ingredients or materials originate in the ocean. When fish stocks come under pressure, the effects ripple well beyond the fishing industry, which is exactly why it belongs on a procurement risk register.

Why the ocean economy matters to your bottom line

The ocean (or blue) economy is far broader than fishing alone. It spans shipping and global trade routes, ports and logistics, aquaculture, coastal tourism, energy, and the countless products whose ingredients or raw materials begin life in the sea. In short, it covers any activity that depends on healthy, functioning oceans.

The ocean (or blue) economy was valued at around $2.6 trillion in 2020 and is projected to grow even further by 2050 (source: World Economic Forum, 2025). A more striking statistic is that more than half of global GDP is moderately or highly dependent on nature and the services it provides (Source: World Economic Forum, 2025).

The World Economic Forum recently made the exposure specific with a memorable comparison. It described ocean-dependent businesses as carrying “subprime” risk: valuations that quietly assume healthy ecosystems while accounting for none of the ecological risk they accumulate. In short, the restaurant whose premium menu depends on depleting stocks (source: World Economic Forum, 2026).

For businesses that buy or sell seafood, the most notable concern should be the scale of illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing. This activity is estimated to make-up 20% of all global wild-caught seafood, costing the global economy between $15 billion and $36 billion every year (source: Farr, 2024). This is not a distant externality; it is fraud, a lack of clarity and supply risk all embedded into one of the least visible supply chains.

Where the business exposure actually sits

Many procurement and sustainability leads underestimate these risks by focusing only on direct seafood purchasing. In reality, the exposure is wider and typically appears in four areas.

Sourcing continuity

When a stock is overfished, supply tightens, and prices move. The MSC’s 2026 outlook warned that businesses with long-standing commitments to selling certified fish could face sourcing challenges driven by quota cuts, political dysfunction, and a failure to follow scientific advice (source: The Grocer, 2026). If a single species underpins a product line, that is a concentration risk.

Reputational and consumer risk

UK shoppers are voting with their baskets. In a recent survey, nearly a quarter of UK consumers (22%) said they will not buy fish unless it is sustainable. Interestingly, 83% of those people under 30 say they actively choose sustainable seafood (source: SeaFoodSource, 2026). A brand caught sourcing from a collapsing stock is exposed in a way that is visible, public, and fast-moving.

Regulatory and disclosure risk

New traceability rules (covered below) turn weak supply chain visibility into a compliance burden, not just a sustainability gap. Under the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, marine resources and biodiversity sit directly in environmental topics that larger companies now need to assess and report on (source: European Commission, 2026).

For any organisation that buys seafood, relies on ocean-linked ingredients, or depends on shipping and marine supply routes, that materiality test is increasingly likely to be met, which is precisely why weak supply chain visibility becomes a reporting risk as well as a sustainability one.

Investor scrutiny

The investor coalition FAIRR, backed by investors representing trillions in assets, has been pressing major seafood companies on traceability, framing supply-chain transparency as material to nature, climate, and human-rights risk (source: Farr, 2024). What investors treat as material, boards eventually treat as urgent.

The common thread is visibility. You can’t manage exposure that you can’t see, and seafood supply chains are among the least visible in the food system.

The regulation is already here

For any business importing or handling seafood that touches the European market, the regulatory landscape changed at the start of 2026.

On 10th January 2026, the EU’s digital catch certification system, CATCH, became mandatory for imports of fishery products. It replaces the traditional and fragmented paper-based process with a digital system that tracks fish from the moment they are caught, showing where they were harvested, which vessel caught them, and what gear was used. Seafood imports account for around 70% of EU consumption, and roughly 80% of those imports fall under the IUU Regulation, so the reach is significant (source: European Commission, 2026).

UK exporters felt it directly. From January 2026, catch certificates require additional detail, including the start date of the fishing trip, more specific catch-area information such as the Exclusive Economic Zone, and the category and type of fishing gear used. In practice, that means the data demands on supply chains have stepped up significantly, and businesses without digital traceability will feel the friction first.

Layer the CSRD on top, with its double-materiality requirement covering water and marine resources, biodiversity, and value-chain due diligence, and the direction of travel is unmistakable. Traceability is moving from a nice-to-have to a baseline expectation.

What good looks like: lessons from recent news

There are many global companies out there leading the way, setting the standard for others to follow.

In February 2026, Waitrose became the first UK supermarket to suspend mackerel sourcing in response to overfishing concerns in the North-east Atlantic stock. The trigger was a result of a scientific discovery: the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) had advised a 70% cut in mackerel catches for 2026, after the stock had been consistently fished above sustainable thresholds. Conservationists noted the stock had declined by around 75% over the previous decade.

What makes the Waitrose move a useful case study is not just the headline. It is the supply-chain response behind it. The retailer introduced MSC-certified alternatives, such as smoked herring, and became the first UK retailer to sell 100% MSC-certified tinned sardines. This meant customers kept their choice while the business protected its sourcing standards. That is exposure being actively managed, not absorbed.

The wider market is moving the same way. The MSC UK Tuna Shopper Report 2026 found that 49% of all tuna on UK supermarket shelves now carries the MSC eco-label, up from 18% in 2021, with ten major supermarkets now stocking certified tuna (source: SeaFoodSource, 2026).

The good news is that sustainable seafood is becoming the default, not the premium.

For procurement teams, the lesson is clear. Businesses must absorb shocks. This means anticipating disruption, diversifying sourcing, and having the data needed to act quickly.

How businesses reduce their exposure

You don’t need to run a fishery to reduce ocean-related risk. The practical levers sit firmly within procurement and sustainability functions.

Map the exposure first

Identify where seafood (or seafood-derived ingredients) sit in your products and supply chain, even in the less obvious places. Being reliant on a single species or a single source region seems to be the highest-risk position.

Build traceability before you are forced to

Full-chain, digital traceability is the foundation for everything else, from regulatory compliance to reputational protection. The regulatory direction (CATCH, CSRD) means this is now a question of when, not if.

This is not solely an EU agenda. Across the major seafood-importing economies, the rules are converging on the same principle, that businesses must be able to prove where their seafood came from and that it was legally caught:

• European Union: Alongside the CSRD’s sustainability reporting duties, a recent amendment makes use of the EU’s IUU catch certificate database (CATCH) mandatory for EU importers from 2026, replacing today’s paper-based certificates with a digital system (Source: Nature, 2025)
• United States: The Seafood Import Monitoring Program (SIMP) already requires catch and traceability data for high-risk imported species. In November 2024, NOAA Fisheries published an action plan to expand SIMP traceability requirements to all US seafood imports through a risk-based, two-tier system, and in January 2026 Congress funded the agency to move forward with that implementation (Source: NOAA Fisheries, 2024)
• Japan: Japan’s Fishery Products Distribution Act came into force in December 2022, requiring record-keeping along the supply chain and a certificate of legal catch for imports of designated species such as squid, cuttlefish, mackerel, Pacific saury, and sardine, bringing the country into line with the EU and US (Source: Seafood Legacy Times, 2023)
• United Kingdom. Post-Brexit, the UK operates its own catch certificate regime for seafood imports and exports, and larger UK businesses fall under sustainability reporting obligations that increasingly intersect with marine and biodiversity risk.

The common thread is clear. Whichever markets a business buys from or sells into, the expectation is shifting from voluntary assurance to demonstrable, auditable proof, and the organisations that can already trace their supply chains end to end will be the ones least disrupted as these rules take hold.

Use credible certification as a floor, not a ceiling

Recognised standards such as the MSC eco-label give a verifiable baseline. They are a strong start, though leading businesses pair certification with their own deeper supply-chain visibility.

Diversify deliberately

The Waitrose example shows the value of having credible alternatives ready before a stock forces your hand. Resilience is built in advance and shouldn’t be improvised.

Connect it to your circular strategy

Overfishing is, at its core, a linear-economy problem: extract, consume, discard, faster than nature can regenerate. The same circular thinking that closes loops on packaging and materials applies to natural resources. Reducing waste across the seafood value chain, where roughly a third of seafood is lost or wasted, directly relieves pressure on stocks (Source: World Economic Forum, 2024). The shift from a linear to a circular economy is the structural answer to a structural problem.

This connects to a broader truth we see across every sector we work in. The pressure on the ocean is the same pressure driving the global circularity gap: we take more from natural systems than we give back. In 2025, the global economy was only 6.9% circular (source: Circularity Gap Report, 2025), meaning 93% of resources were used once and then discarded rather than reused, repaired, or repurposed. Tackling that gap, whether on land or at sea, is the work.

Where Reconomy fits

Here at Reconomy, we are an international circular economy specialist. We help businesses understand and improve the flow of materials through their operations, so that resources stay in use and remain out of waste streams.

The principles that reduce ocean exposure are the principles we apply every day. In 2025, we managed almost 8.5 million tonnes of material, reusing or recycling more than 6.8 million tonnes, and we divert 98.3% of processed waste from landfill in the UK. By tracking the materials we manage, we have narrowed our own circularity gap to 23% below the global average.

That same combination of data, expertise, and circular design is what helps procurement and sustainability teams move from reacting to resource risk to getting ahead of it. Whether the resource is packaging, textiles, or the natural systems your supply chain depends on, the discipline is the same: see it clearly, measure it honestly, and design the waste out.

The ocean is telling us what happens when we do not. The encouraging part, which the FAO’s data shows, is that recovery is possible where businesses and governments choose to act. As UN Secretary-General António Guterres said at the 2025 conference: “What was lost in a generation can return in a generation” (source: United Nations, 2025).

For procurement and sustainability leads, the opportunity is to be on the right side of that recovery, and to build the resilience that protects the business while you do.

Want to understand where resource risk sits in your supply chain? Explore our sustainability consulting services, or read more on how a circular supply chain builds resilience.