Commercial Fisherman
Commercial fishing sits behind one of the strongest legal walls on this site, and it's a numerical one, not just a competency test.
In real usage data, AI shows up in this job about as often as the average occupation: not high, not negligible.
Technical detail
Based on Microsoft's "Working with AI" study of real Copilot conversations mapped to O*NET tasks (arXiv 2507.07935): Fishing and hunting workers scored 0.065 on AI applicability, within one standard deviation of the cross-occupation mean (0.159, stdev 0.098) across all 785 SOC codes studied — banded here as Medium real-world AI usage relative to other occupations.
What a commercial fisherman actually does
Commercial fishermen catch wild fish and shellfish for sale, working aboard vessels ranging from small day boats to large ocean-going trawlers and crabbers. The work means navigating to fishing grounds using charts, sonar, and experience with local waters, setting and hauling nets, traps, longlines, or dredges, sorting the catch by species and legal size while discarding bycatch, and icing or processing fish immediately to preserve quality.
Crews work in open-ocean conditions that change hour to hour — a calm morning can turn into a gale, and gear that snags or a sudden weather shift both demand an immediate, hands-on response with no time to consult a manual.
Beyond the physical work, commercial fishing is a tightly regulated business: federal and state permits govern which species a vessel can target and how much it can land, and in fisheries like Alaska halibut and sablefish, a capped, transferable quota system determines who can legally fish commercially at all, independent of skill or interest.
Most commercial fishermen learn the trade by crewing for years before working toward their own boat or permit, and operating a vessel commercially requires a US Coast Guard captain's credential.
Why it reads this way
Commercial fishing sits behind one of the strongest legal walls on this site, and it's a numerical one, not just a competency test. Federally managed species require NOAA/NMFS permits tied to the vessel, and fisheries like Alaska halibut and sablefish operate under an Individual Fishing Quota system that caps who can legally fish commercially to holders of historically issued, transferable quota — a hard ceiling on labor supply that exists independent of whether the work could technically be automated.
A USCG Merchant Mariner Credential is separately required to operate a vessel commercially. On the technology side, AI tools are real but pre-commercial: SeafoodAI's CrabScan360 biometric sizing system is still in field-model development for Alaska's crab fishery, and a National Robotarium bycatch-sorting net ('Smartrawl') remains a university-industry pilot — as one trade publication put it, 'robots have yet to make it into any of Alaska's 176 fish processing shops.
' No commercial-fleet-scale autonomous catching or sorting system was found in current operation. Alaska's commercial fishing workforce did hit a record low in 2024, down 7. 6% year over year, but that decline is attributed to an aging workforce and labor-supply issues, not automation. The open-ocean judgment this job demands — reading sea state, handling live catch under real-time legal-size and bycatch rules — remains squarely human, protected as much by quota law as by task difficulty.
Skills this role draws on
We don't yet have task-by-task time-share data for this occupation, so we can't show which specific tasks carry the exposure score above. This is the real skill set instead.
Typical salary range (USD)
$31,760–$58,220
Average: $36,630/yr
Range source: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025
Average source: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, Fishing and Hunting Workers (45-3031), May 2025 (Median Annual Wage)
Related careers
Head-to-head comparisons
Commercial Fisherman scores 92/100, but that score rests on a single structural pillar — AIOE has no matching entry for O*NET code 45-3031.00, so structuralConfidence is capped at Low. What lifts the overall confidence to Medium is independent, non-structural evidence: this occupation carries one of the strongest legal walls on this site, and a numerical one, not just a competency test. Federally managed species require NOAA/NMFS permits tied to the vessel, and fisheries like Alaska halibut and sablefish operate under an Individual Fishing Quota system that caps who can legally fish commercially to holders of historically issued, transferable quota — independent of skill, interest, or any AI capability. A USCG Merchant Mariner Credential is separately required to operate a vessel commercially. On the technology side, AI tools remain pre-commercial: SeafoodAI's CrabScan360 biometric sizing system is still in field-model development, and a National Robotarium bycatch-sorting net remains a university-industry pilot — 'robots have yet to make it into any of Alaska's 176 fish processing shops,' per trade coverage. Alaska's commercial fishing workforce did hit a record low in 2024 (down 7.6% year over year), but that's attributed to an aging workforce and labor-supply issues, not automation.
This is a researched judgment (checklist v1.2), not a statistical measurement — it sits alongside, not instead of, the structural exposure signal above. Next scheduled review: 2027-02-10.
Sources (7)
- https://www.bls.gov/ooh/farming-fishing-and-forestry/fishers-and-related-fishing-workers.htm
- https://www.onetonline.org/link/localwages/45-3031.00
- https://www.nationalfisherman.com/seafoodais-crabscan360-ai-powered-crab-sorting-revolution
- https://thenationalrobotarium.com/ai-empowered-fishing-net-to-help-prevent-marine-bycatch/
- https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/alaska/sustainable-fisheries/pacific-halibut-and-sablefish-individual-fishing-quota-ifq-program
- https://www.adn.com/business-economy/2025/11/05/alaska-commercial-fishing-job-numbers-sink-to-record-low-state-report-says/
- https://www.onetonline.org/link/summary/45-3031.00
Data sources & methodology
Salary data: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. Min/max figures represent the 10th–90th percentile annual wage range across the United States. Average figure sourced separately: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, Fishing and Hunting Workers (45-3031), May 2025 (Median Annual Wage).
Automation Risk Score: Based on O*NET occupational analysis (45-3031.00) evaluating task complexity, physical requirements, social intelligence, and environmental variability. Methodology based on research from Frey & Osborne (Oxford, 2017).
Growth projections: -1% (2024-2034), based on BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook.