Drawing on the sectors of fisheries management, small-scale fisheries, seafood corporates, academia and civil society, an ongoing project attempts to define ‘destructive fishing’. The language of fisheries, conservation and sustainable development can be fraught with jargon. Of course, aquatic ecosystems are inherently dynamic and fluid; it’s easy to see why technical language like ‘maximum sustainable yield’ and ‘adaptive co-management’ is needed to rationalize and describe their management and use.