¹ First Session of the Advisory Committee on Fisheries Research, FAO, Rome, Italy, 25-28 November 1997, FAO Fisheries Report No. 571, FIPL/R571(En).
² Working Party on Status and Trends of Fisheries, FAO, Rome, Italy, 30 November-3 December 1999
³ Second Session of the Advisory Committee on Fisheries Research, FAO, Rome, Italy, 6-9 December 1999.
⁴ Third Session of the Advisory Committee on Fisheries Research, FAO, Rome, Italy, December 2000.

This circular reviews recent progress and approaches made by FAO and other organizations to reporting on the status and trends of world fisheries. It includes a brief introduction on events that stimulated the creation of the ACFR Working Party on Status and Trends of Fisheries that resulted in this review, including the decision to prepare a draft International Plan of Action on the issue. Chapter 2 addresses the general issues that require attention as identified in the Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries, including the changing requirements resulting from international instruments and national laws, which are direct responses to changing perspectives on the information requirements to address sustainability, and the rising demand from all stakeholders for transparency and objectivity. The Circular then briefly reviews FAO’s global perspective (Chapter 3) and approaches to reporting and research by a range of global, regional and national institutions (Chapter 4). It concludes with a general discussion of approaches to meeting information standards, quality and accessibility, including issues concerning frameworks, standards, quality assurance, the conduct of working groups, and suggestions for the development of a method for improving fishery information upon which status and trends reports might be based. In the latter area it provides a conceptual and generalized framework for a user-oriented method (as part of the FIGIS programme) for registering stock assessment and stock status information. Suggested templates for this are in Appendix 1. Appendix 2 offers brief case studies on the ways fishery status and trends are reported by three institutions: the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES), the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) and the United States National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS).

The basis of all actions in support of the management, conservation and development of fisheries is good information, analysed appropriately, and presented accurately and objectively. FAO recognises its global role in responding to the information needs of those charged with the management of fishery sectors, in particular to the FAO Committee on Fisheries (COFI). Better information – from a wider range of sources – is becoming increasingly important to the multifaceted analyses required for modern fishery management decision-making, and now includes economic, social and environmental dimensions in addition to the ‘traditional’ biological/stock perspectives. The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture (SOFIA) is reported every 2 years and interim analyses of marine, inland and aquaculture resources are published separately. These publications increasingly reflect these wider dimensions of analysis and reporting. Recent international instruments5 lay great emphasis on the information required to fulfil their objectives. FAO has responded to these requirements in a number of ways, in particular in the ways in which information is disseminated, and in the research focuses that need to be adopted to generate it. As part of its regular programme, FAO is developing the Fisheries Global Information System (FIGIS) which aims to provide Internet access to the widest possible coverage of fishery information, from catches to markets, fishing vessels to human resources, species biology to large marine ecosystems, and to the references, bibliographies and other linkages that support these. A long-term project, Support for International Fisheries Research (SIFAR), aims to provide a global forum for the exchange of information, ideas, methods and results of researchers from all disciplines. The Director-General of FAO has reestablished the Advisory Committee on Fisheries Research (ACFR) to advise him and the Fisheries Department on ways to improve fisheries research and reporting within FAO and globally. The first meeting of the ACFR in 1997 called for FAO to address the issue of fishery status and trends reporting and established a Working Party on Status and Trends of Fisheries (WP/STF), which met in November 1999. The present Fisheries Circular summarizes the papers presented to the Working Party; the consideration of its report to the second session of the ACFR in December 1999; the intersessional work it carried out for submission to the third session of ACFR in December 2000 in the preparation of a draft International Plan of Action for Status and Trends Reporting on Fisheries for submission to COFI 2001.

Richard Grainger
Chief
Fishery Information, Data and Statistics Unit
FAO Fisheries Department