Global macroeconomic indicators improved in early 2025 but have since taken a cooler outlook. In its April World Economic Outlook, the International Monetary Fund lowered its baseline forecast for world growth in 2025 to 2.8 percent, citing newly announced tariff measures and the persistence of above-target inflation in several advanced economies. This points to prolonged tight monetary policy in major economies and continued weak consumer spending.
For 2025, total output from capture fisheries and aquaculture is expected to reach 196.6 million tonnes, a year-on-year increase of 1.5 percent. This growth continues to come almost entirely from aquaculture, which is forecast to reach 104 million tonnes (an increase of 2.6 percent), while wild harvests are projected to increase by 0.3 percent in volume to 92.6 million tonnes. Quota cuts for Barents Sea cod and western Mediterranean hake are expected to offset larger Alaska pollock and Argentine Illex squid catches. Although the fishmeal supply has stabilized after strong catches of Peruvian anchoveta, fish oil supplies remain tight.
Trade policies remain a major concern for the fisheries and aquaculture industry due to the dynamic international trade landscape, which creates challenges for business continuity. In April 2025 the United States of America introduced a universal 10 percent ad-valorem duty on all goods entering the country, with provisions for markedly higher rates on selected partners and commodities. Customs authorities began collecting the baseline surcharge on 5 April, and a schedule of country-specific increases is due to follow, although currently many rate rises have been put on hold. Major trading partners have already signalled retaliation. The World Trade Organization consequently revised its 2025 merchandise-trade projection from modest expansion to a 0.2 percent contraction, its weakest outlook since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Global trade in aquatic products is projected to edge up to USD 183.8 billion (a 1.7 percent increase), accompanied by a 0.5 percent rise in volume, which represents an effectively flat trade scenario. The gentle real-term contraction in trade of aquatic animal products that began in late 2022 is expected to extend into its third consecutive year, with retail behaviour surveys in the European Union and the United States pointing to the prolonged period of inflation between 2021 and 2023 as the main factor that is continuing to put a dent in consumer confidence, and thus trade.
The FAO Fish Price Index averaged 117.6 points over the first four months of the year, broadly unchanged from the same period in 2024. Prices for capture-fishery species have softened slightly as inventories normalize, whereas farmed-product quotations have firmed.
Atlantic salmon output plateaued at about 2.8 million tonnes last year, although export volumes from Norway continued to increase to a record 1.2 million tonnes abroad worth USD 11.3 billion, even as average export prices slipped and farmers faced challenges from higher taxes, sea-lice losses and algal blooms. World farmed shrimp production volumes have also stalled as Ecuador’s previously meteoric expansion paused amid weak prices and local power shortages. Meanwhile, some farmers in South and Southeast Asia are pivoting to lower volume but higher-value black tiger shrimp. Meanwhile, on the freshwater farmed fish front, Viet Nam expects to see a seven percent rise in pangasius harvests this year, reaching 1.65 million tonnes and with a consequent uptick in frozen fillet exports. Slumping tilapia prices in China, which fell below USD 1.04 per kg, has prompted processors there to trim throughput, while Brazilian exports to the United States are set to double, aided also by relatively low tariffs.
Several key capture fisheries stocks have come under intensifying pressure from tighter quotas and weather shocks. Norwegian frozen cod fillet prices climbed to USD 13 per kg following a 31 percent cut to the Barents Sea quota. There has been greater substitution in processing supply chains of cod with Alaska pollock, the latter of which has benefited from higher Gulf of Alaska quotas. Indeed, Germany saw a doubling of Alaska pollock imports from the United States last year. Prices for skipjack tuna have steadied at about USD 1.60–1.70 per kg CFR Thailand as lacklustre West and Central Pacific catches and weather-hampered Ecuadorian trips have kept supplies tight. At the same time, demand for canned tuna in major markets such as the United States remains robust, pointing to probable firmer prices later in the year. Elsewhere, cephalopod landings in Morocco and Mauritania have been curtailed by poor weather, pushing European Union imports down 19 percent and lifting prices to multi-year highs, while European bivalve producers battle both sanitary incidents in French oyster areas and mass clam mortalities in the Northern Adriatic—developments that together keep shellfish availability constrained.
