Ray Hilborn on the Global Fishing Index 2021 report

2 December 2021, Ray Hilborn, Sustainable Fisheries UW

Last month, the Minderoo Foundation released their 2021 Global Fishing Index report intending to give a global picture of fisheries status. Ray Hilborn has collaborated with the Minderoo Foundation in the past but says this report is highly flawed and should be viewed skeptically. The report claims that over 50 per cent of stocks are overfished and no country gets an A or B for its management efforts—only six manage to be graded C. Countries that have essentially eliminated overfishing and are clearly delivering near-maximum benefits for their people are only graded C. Why?

Read Ray Hilborn's full post here.


Ray Hilborn is a Professor in the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, University of Washington specializing in natural resource management and conservation. He authored several books including “Ocean Recovery: a sustainable future for global fisheries? (with Ulrike Hilborn) in 2019, “Overfishing: what everyone needs to know” (with Ulrike Hilborn) in 2012, “Quantitative fisheries stock assessment” with Carl Walters in 1992, and “The Ecological Detective: confronting models with data” with Marc Mangel, in 1997 and has published over 300 peer-reviewed articles. He has received the Volvo Environmental Prize, the American Fisheries Societies Award of Excellence, The Ecological Society of America’s Sustainability Science Award, and the International Fisheries Science Prize. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Washington State Academy of Sciences, and the American Fisheries Society.