Overfished

adj, verb

adj, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Verb
  1. 1
    simple past and past participle of overfish form-of, participle, past

    "More recently, researchers have reported that cod, overfished for decades off New England and the Canadian Maritime Provinces, have begun reproducing at younger ages and smaller sizes."

Adjective
  1. 1
    Fished to the point of sustained reduction of fish species population.

    "The Gulf of Thailand became more overfished than ever, causing acrimonious conflicts between domestic artisanal and large-scale fishers."

Example

More examples

"The report said 90 percent of the country's seabirds and about a quarter of its marine mammals are threatened with extinction, and that 16 percent of New Zealand's fish stocks had been overfished."

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.