The first set of FAO Species Identification Sheets for Fishery Purposes (2 volumes) covered the bony fishes, sharks and rays, crustaceans and molluscs of the relatively well-known Mediterranean basin (FAO Fishing Area 37). The present series (4 volumes, bony fishes only), covers the immensely larger and faunistically richer Eastern Indian Ocean and Western Central Pacific, reaching southward to southern Australia (Fishing Areas 57 and 71). Included is the Indo-Australian archipelago, a region with the richest marine fauna of any part of the world. For those who have worked there, the need for some guide to commercial species is obvious.

It might be claimed that the issuing of Identification Sheets for such a region is premature since it will be many years before the taxonomy of certain groups of fishes is properly understood. Hitherto it has been virtually impossible to correlate unequivocally the very considerable amount of fishery data collected in this region with particular species, genera or even in some cases families. The Species Identification Sheets should thus play a significant role in increasing the accuracy of the basic data obtained from resources surveys, or used in the compilation of fishery statistics, and in the planning of rational exploitation of fish stocks. They also provide a common framework of names and identifications for the exchange of information between fishery biologists, statisticians and economists.

This publication is the result of a fruitful cooperation between individual scientists, scientific institutions, projects operating in the area, regional fishery bodies, DANIDA and the Government of Thailand. Such collaboration is essential to the continued usefulness of the Sheets, their testing in the field and their subsequent revision.

However, the Sheets are in no respect final products. They constitute a working tool which, by the nature of the system adopted, can be continuously updated and augmented. Certainly, fishery projects in these two areas deserve what taxonomic help is available and, in particular, the benefit of recent work that has either not yet been published or is still buried in the specialist literature.

Hiroshi Kasahara
Director
Fishery Resources and Environment Division
Department of Fisheries