The FAO Fisheries and Aquaculture Department provides advice and objective information to Members to help promote responsible aquaculture and fisheries. To fulfil this role, the Department compiles, analyses and disseminates fishery data, structured within data collections.

Statistical collections

To ensure quality assurance, each collection is documented to highlight definitions and to specify the structure, sources, coverage, processes, intended use, etc. This is further complemented with the CWP Handbook of Fishery Statistical Standards which includes comprehensive definitions of concepts and details of standard classifications.

Available products: Global time series are maintained over 50 year time spans. To meet diverse user needs, data from each statistical collection are available through various formats, tools and information products:

Yearbooks provide a full range of tables with detailed statistics. (Click here to navigate the CD-ROM).

The following downloadable pages provide an at-a-glance overview:

• OVERVIEW: MAJOR TRENDS AND ISSUES
• Summary tables of fishery statistics: Capture, aquaculture, commodity and food balance sheets

Online Query Panels enable advanced users to extract customized information and reports.

FishStatJ - Software for fishery statistical time series offers experts and scientists a stand-alone application for complex and sophisticated data exploration and extraction.

FishStat Plus - Universal software for fishery statistical time series offers experts and scientists a stand-alone application for complex and sophisticated data exploration and extraction.
This application, developed in 1998 (FishStat+), has now been replaced with an updated version FishStatJ (above) and will no longer be available as of January 2012.

Other data collections

Other data collections, also fully-documented, are organized by records, Fact Sheets and maps, thus complementing the overall statistical collections... full list of data collections

Software

A collection of fishery software is available for diverse user needs, ranging from fishery statistical applications through biologic, socio-economic, or ecosystem modelling for fisheries assessment... full list of software