Digital innovation supports data gathering for better fisheries management

Effective fisheries management, which is crucial for maintaining healthy fish stocks, relies on decisions about species selection, fishing locations, seasons, and catch limits. These decisions must balance social and economic benefits with the preservation of marine ecosystems. Reliable, up-to-date data is essential for making informed choices, but obstacles such as a lack of data standardization, underreporting, and data gaps often hinder this process. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has developed tools and platforms to supply the data that facilitates the effective management of fisheries. To support the standardization of data collection for bottom trawl surveys in the Mediterranean and Adriatic regions, FAO developed the AdriaMed Trawl Survey Information System (ATrIS). ATrIS is now the de facto reference data management tool for several Mediterranean countries, for example Algeria, Libya, Malta, and Tunisia as well as for Oman, showcasing its potential for supporting global fisheries management. FAO also developed Calipseo, a web-based application that integrates diverse data sources to produce fisheries statistics for policymaking and reporting. It enables real-time data collection on fishing activities, catch details, and environmental factors, facilitating evidence-based decision-making. The Fisheries Performance Assessment Toolkit (FPAT) is a tool that enables the assessment of fisheries’ sustainability via simulations of management outcomes for data-limited fisheries.