Forage fish play a crucial role in marine ecosystems, serving as prey for larger predators and a foundational resource for global fisheries. Despite comprising roughly one-third of the global marine catch, their stock status remains inadequately reported due to widespread data scarcity. To briefly understand the tatus of these stocks, we applied the Catch Maximum Sustainable Yield (CMSY) approach to analyze FAO landing data. By combining historical catch time-series with population growth rate and carrying capacity, we simulated biomass dynamics to evaluate 851 stocks across 274 species, representing 99.9% of global forage fish landings from 2013 to 2022. The methodology revealed shifting exploitation trends, demonstrating that the number of landed species has more than doubled since the 1950s, indicating an increasing reliance on new species to sustain high-volume catches. Crucially, the assessment identified a widespread pattern of over-exploitation, with nearly one-third (292) of the evaluated stocks likely over-exploited or already collapsed. The Southeast Atlantic faces particularly acute threats, exhibiting up to a 71% collapse rate among its assessed stocks. Applying these stock status profile of forage fish to a shortfall impact model indicated that stricter fisheries management and climate impacts could reduce future forage fish catches by 4.5% to 19.4%, potentially causing an 8% to 35.2% decline in global fed aquaculture production. Ultimately, deploying data-limited methods like CMSY provides actionable scientific insights into stock vulnerabilities, emphasizing the critical need for globally coordinated fisheries management and alternative feed innovations.

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