There are three principal industry sectors:
- The commercial sector: comprises enterprises and individuals associated with wild-catch or aquaculture resources and the various transformations of those resources into products for sale. It is also referred to as the "seafood industry", although non-food items such as pearls are included among its products.
- The traditional sector: comprises enterprises and individuals associated with fisheries resources from which aboriginal people derive products in accordance with their traditions.
- The recreational sector: comprises enterprises and individuals associated for the purpose of recreation, sport or sustenance with fisheries resources from which products are derived that are not for sale.
Commercial sector
The commercial sector of the fishing industry comprises the following chain:
- Commercial fishing and fish farming which produce the fish
- Fish processing which produce the fish products
- Marketing of the fish products
World production
Fish are harvested by commercial fishing and aquaculture.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the world harvest in 2005 consisted of 93.3 million tonnes captured by commercial fishing in wild fisheries, plus 48.1 million tonnes produced by fish farms. In addition, 1.3 million tons of aquatic plants (seaweed etc.) were captured in wild fisheries and 14.8 million tons were produced by aquaculture. The number of individual fish caught in the wild has been estimated at 0.97-2.7 trillion per year (not counting fish farms or marine invertebrates).
Following is a table of the 2005 world fishing industry harvest in tonnes by capture and by aquaculture.
| Capture | Aquaculture | Total | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fish, crustaceans, molluscs, etc. | 93,253,346 | 48,149,792 | 141,403,138 |
| Aquatic plants | 1,305,803 | 14,789,972 | 16,095,775 |
| Total | 94,559,149 | 62,939,764 | 157,498,913 |
This equates to about 24.4 kilograms a year for the average person on Earth.