Fisheries economic and fisheries effort analyses: the need for a ‘one stop shop’ for data definitions, coding and regulatory requirements

In recent years considerable progress has been made in performing management strategy evaluations taking into account the biology of a stock to assess its response to different management measures.
Such work is now being extended to multiple stocks exploited by mixed fisheries. Similar progress has been made in considering the economic effects of management strategies. In addition the 2013 CFP requires that multi-annual management plans are implemented for all regulated fisheries resources in European waters, and the expectation is that each will first be assessed for its suitability in terms of both ecological and economic sustainability. To this end the EU Joint Research Centre (JRC) hosts and maintains probably the most comprehensive fleet disaggregated effort, catch and economic fisheries data in Europe. But a stumbling block in advancing bio-economic modelling is that the data has been collected under data calls designed without consideration of producing merged data. This paper outlines the work taking place to bring about the harmonization of data calls. It highlights the need for common codes and specific definitions to avoid conflicting interpretations of what is required and also the need for the requirements for data collection under EU legislation to be transparent and easily found.