World Fish Catch Tracker Screensaver
The World Fish Catch Tracker screensaver ranks countries by real global fish catch on a bar board, drawn from the FAO's published fisheries statistics. It's free, runs in your browser, and ESC exits.
Live preview
Press ESC to leave fullscreen. Settings are saved in your browser only.
How the World Fish Catch Tracker screensaver works
Countries rank top to bottom by real published annual fish catch tonnage.
Each bar is sized to scale against the largest fishing nation.
Choose how many countries appear on the board at once.
Figures are real FAO fisheries statistics, updated on their own publication schedule.
What FAO capture statistics measure
Global fisheries statistics come from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, which collects national reports from member countries. The catch figures count capture production: wild fish, crustaceans, molluscs and other aquatic animals taken from seas, rivers and lakes. FAO’s capture tables express it as live weight, the nominal weight of the organisms at the time of capture. Farmed fish are counted separately under aquaculture.
Reporting depends on each government’s own data collection, so quality varies, and FAO’s data are updated in periodic releases that run behind real time. A 2019 FAO report described a March release covering data through two years earlier, so the latest year on the board is typically a year or two old.
Ranking by tonnage favours countries that take large volumes of low-value fish. Tonnage also says nothing about sustainability, since the same catch can be taken from a healthy or a depleted stock. Because the figure is the weight as caught, it is not the weight of fish sold, which is lower after processing.
A worked example
At the top you'll see the world's largest real fishing nations — China, Indonesia, Peru among them — each bar reflecting the FAO's own published catch figures.
Settings & tips
- Countries shown sets how many bars appear.
- Accent recolours the bars.
- Figures include real wild-catch fisheries, not aquaculture.
Frequently asked questions
- Where does the data come from?
- The UN Food and Agriculture Organization's published global fisheries statistics.
- Is a key needed?
- No — it's a static, real-reference-data visualization with no live fetch.
- Does this include fish farming?
- No — it covers wild-catch fisheries, tracked separately from aquaculture production.
- Is it free?
- Yes — free, no download, in your browser.
- Why can a country’s catch change from year to year?
- Wild catches depend on fish stocks, fishing effort and each country’s reporting, so totals can move noticeably between years.
- Does the weight include the water or processing?
- FAO capture figures are in live weight, the nominal weight of the catch at the time of capture, before any processing.
- Is the ranking up to date?
- It reflects the latest year FAO has published. FAO releases have trailed the present by about two years.