NAICS 1141Industry group · 4-digitregional market1 market record

Fishing

SoftwareCommercial Fishing & Aquaculture Operations Software 114

This industry group comprises establishments primarily engaged in the commercial catching or taking of finfish, shellfish, and other marine animals from their natural habitats. — Statistics Canada, NAICS 2022A

Establishments · CanadaA: 4,828
Under 10 employeesA: 96%
Establishments · USA: 2,637
Employment · USA: 5,344
Payroll · USA: $447M

Size and shape

How many businesses there are and how small they are. Fragmentation is the first thing an entrant — or anyone selling software into this industry — needs to know, and it is one of the few things that is actually measured.

Canadian establishments by number of employeesA

1–44,12085%

5–952911%

10–19952%

20–49531%

50–99220%

100–19970%

200–49920%

500+0—

Of 4,828 Canadian establishments with employees, 96% have fewer than ten — an industry of very small operators.

Where they areA

Nova Scotia1,98841%

New Brunswick1,27726%

Quebec74115%

Prince Edward Island3147%

Largest four provinces by establishment count. Establishments with employees only — sole operators with no payroll are not in this table, so in trades and personal services the true number of businesses is higher.

How many new establishments are still tradingA

Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing and Hunting, US · opened 2020

88%

1 year

71.7%

3 years

61.8%

5 years

53%

10 years

opened 2015

Measured, not forecast: the share of US establishments opening in one year that were still active later. It counts good operators and bad ones together, which is exactly why it is the honest answer to “what are the odds”. It is for the whole sector rather than this market, and the ten-year figure comes from an older cohort because no younger one has reached ten years.

How businesses here compete

The structural profile of subsector 114, which every industry beneath it inherits. This is analyst judgment from how the subsector is organised — not research into this industry, and not a measurement.

regional competitionhigh capitalUNVERIFIEDinherited from 114 Fishing, hunting and trapping

The licence is the business. Entry means buying a licence or quota from someone leaving, at a price that already capitalises the fishery's returns.

Who sets the price: Processors and landed-price auctions; quota and licences cap who may fish at all.
The software it runs on: Catch reporting, quota tracking and vessel compliance, much of it regulator-mandated.

Market screens and studies

Market-entry records filed along this branch of the hierarchy. A record at or beneath this code is about this industry; one above it is about something wider that contains it.

Operating businessScreened

Atlantic Inshore Fishing EnterpriseStructure decides

binding constraint: entry cost + regulatory drag

The record at Commercial Fishing Licence & Quota screened the Pacific model, where quota became a leased financial asset. This group is mostly the other coast: 68% of the 4,828 establishments are in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick and 85% have one to four employees — a boat, a captain and a crew. The fishery itself is excellent. Canadian sea fisheries landed C$3.608B in 2023, of which lobster alone was C$1.76B [A]. The cut is that the Atlantic inshore has been closed to exactly the kind of entrant this research serves. The owner-operator and fleet-separation policies are no longer policy but regulation: an inshore licence can be issued only to an individual, a company that individual wholly owns, or an organisation holding an allocation for its membership, and it will not be issued to anyone who has transferred its use or control [A]. An investor cannot own the licence, a processor cannot own the boat, and a side agreement that tries is grounds for losing it. What remains is buying out a retiring harvester personally — and brokers on Prince Edward Island reported licence, boat and gear packages reaching C$1.8M [B], a price that already capitalises the lobster boom into the seller's pension. The offshore, where companies may hold licences, trades in blocks like the C$1B Clearwater sale [A]. The software sold to this fleet is screened separately.

NAICS 11415 vendors named12 sourced figuresOpen →

Filed above — wider than this industry

Operating businessScreenedfiled at 114 Fishing, hunting and trapping

Commercial Fishing Licence & QuotaStructure decides

binding constraint: entry cost

On the BC coast the licence and quota cost more than the fishing earns, which is the whole screen: quota has been capitalised into an asset held largely by non-fishing owners, and the active harvester leases it at a share of the landed value that leaves the boat with the risk and a thin margin. Entering means either buying an asset priced as a security or renting one from someone who already owns it. The sector's software is screened separately at the same code.

NAICS 1144 vendors named11 sourced figuresOpen →

Software serving this industry

The vertical software markets filed along the same branch — who sells to these businesses and who they would have to displace — and then the generic categories every business buys whatever it does.

Sold across the wider branch

Vertical softwareScreenedfiled at 114 Fishing, hunting and trapping

Commercial Fishing & Aquaculture Operations SoftwareStructure decides

binding constraint: capital intensity

Incumbent AKVA group (Fishtalk) and Innovasea (Canadian — Halifax)

The value in a fish farm sits in cages, feed barges, sensors and boats — the software is a readout on capital equipment sold by the same vendors, and it is priced accordingly. Wild capture is worse: electronic monitoring is a regulatory obligation whose buyer is a fleet owner already resisting the cost. Nothing is disclosed here. Every vendor named on this record is private, or sits inside a parent that does not break the line out, so no revenue floor can be built and the market size is genuinely unknown rather than estimated.

NAICS 1143 vendors namedOpen →

And what every business buys · 25 generic categories

Sold to every industry rather than this one, so they are filed against the software industry's own code. The same few vendors recur across most of them.

Companies in this industry · 2

Every company this research names that is filed here or beneath — the operators, and the vendors that sell to them — largest disclosed revenue first. The rank is within the company’s own six-digit industry.

Company	Filed under	Revenue	Rank
High Liner FoodsTSX:HLF	Fishing1141	$1.0B	1/2
Indigenous communal-commercial and moderate-livelihood licence holdersPrivate	Fishing1141	—	2/2

Who works here

The occupations employed in Agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting, most concentrated in it first. The share is measured against the whole sector, not this industry — the published cross-tabulation stops there.

Concentrated in this sectorA

Managers in agriculture, horticulture and aquaculture One industry 93.1%

Fishing vessel masters and fishermen/women One industry 92.4%

Workers in agriculture and fishing occupations One industry 88.9%

Agriculture, horticulture and harvesting labourers and related occupations One industry 85.4%

Logging machinery operators One industry 81.9%

Logging and forestry workers Mostly one sector 61.5%

Contractors and supervisors, agriculture, horticulture and related operations and services Mostly one sector 16.3%

Managers in natural resources production and fishing Mostly one sector 12.5%

Logging, forestry, landscaping and other related labourers Mostly one sector 6.5%

Tourism and amusement services occupations Mostly one sector 6.2%

These jobs are mostly done here. An operator in this industry is competing for them against others in the same industry, not against the whole economy.

And the jobs every business has

Other technical trades Across the economy 14.2%

Accounting, insurance and related business administrative occupations Across the economy 3%

Building maintenance installers, servicers and repairers Across the economy 1.6%

Legislative and senior managers Across the economy 1.5%

Financial, insurance and related administrative support workers Across the economy 1.4%

Office administrative assistants - general, legal and medical Across the economy 1.1%

Administrative, property and payroll officers Across the economy 1%

Shoe repairers, shoemakers and upholsterers Across the economy 1%

Found across at least fourteen of the twenty sectors. But note the shape of this industry: 96% of establishments have fewer than ten employees, and at that size most of these roles are one person wearing several hats, or bought in from outside.

All 162 occupations →

Inside this industry

1 row sits directly beneath 1141, and 3 in all once every level is counted. Each has a base report of its own.

Code	Industry	Establishments · CA	What is known
11411	Fishing	4,828	screened at 1141

Alongside it, under 114 Fishing, hunting and trapping

Code	Industry	Establishments · CA	What is known
1142	Hunting and trapping	116	Commercial Trapline & Game Preserve