Taking out of the sea more than natural population growth can sustain. Overfishing has a number of causes, the most ruthless being "chronic over capacity" of modern fishing fleets to effectively take far more fish than can be replaced. (Source: GEMET/WPR)

The practice of commercial or non-commercial fishing in which more fish are caught than the population can replace through natural reproduction, such that rate of remmoval exceeds the carrying capacity of the population, resulting in depletion of the fish stock. (Source: drafted/MMA)