What's in FishSource™?

FishSource offers distinct levels of information on every Fishery Profile covered. Each Fishery Profile is structured in the following sections:

• An Identification page, with information on the species, geographical distribution of the stock, jurisdiction authorities, and fishery management areas among other basic information.
• A Scores page, with summary statistics for select measures of sustainability, as well as plots of trends over time of key variables such as biomass, fishing mortality and catch. The FishSource Scores provide a quick “sustainability snap-shot” of some among the most relevant aspects of fisheries' sustainability. The scores make use of quantitative measures from the fisheries and rely on the Marine Stewardship Council standards the most widely accepted, transparent metric of its kind. Hence these statistics provide an indication of how far away a fishery is from the requirements of the MSC. FishSource tracks how these statistics change over time, and so also provides an indication of progress towards meeting the requirements of the MSC. To learn more about how FishSource scores have been derived you may download a PDF document here.
• A Sustainability Info (SI) page, where experts collaborate to write on different aspects of the sustainability of each fishery. Each SI page is structured into three main sections and twelve sub-sections:
  1. Management Quality
  1. Stock Assessment
  2. Scientific Advice
  3. Managers' Decisions
  4. Compliance
  2. Stock Status
  1. Reference Points
  2. Current Status
  3. Trends
  4. Recovery Plans
  3. Environment and Biodiversity
  1. PET species
  2. Other Target and Bycatch Species
  3. Habitat
  4. Marine Reserves
• A Summary page, which condenses the information provided on the main SI page into a concise, non-technical text yet preserving all relevant highlights identified on the respective Sustainability info section. The Summary page heads with a very concise Strengths, Weaknesses and Options section sharing down further the same twelve-section structure of the SI page. The Summaries are not SFP opinion. Whenever a Sustainability Info report is provided to FishSource the Summaries are developed as a standardized accurate summation of the former. This is the case except when initiating a new profile and creating a "seed" for other contributors to add to. In this situation, when no Sustainability Info section yet exists, Summaries are developed directly from referenced sources.
• A Basics page, with some facts and history about the fishery (e.g., biology of the fish stocks, ecology of the ecosystem, catch history, management procedures, products and markets).
• A Sources page, where all references and bibliography are listed, providing either direct links to the documents, or the full quotation (e.g., for peer-refereed articles). Acknowledgements are also included on the Sources page.
• A Reviews page, where user reviews are reproduced in full.

FishSource brings together the information needed by seafood sustainability experts to make their own judgments about the sustainability of different fisheries. These experts may reside in environmental groups or aquariums, or may be on the staff of seafood companies. FishSource is designed to save them time and resources - thus reducing a barrier to entry for buyers considering sustainable sourcing of seafood. By providing different levels of information on every profile we expect to better address the interests from different groups of users, namely, the seafood industry (scores, summaries) the NGO / Aquarium community (Sustainability info, Basics, Sources), or the scientific community (Sustainability Info, Scores, Scores data, Sources). The bulk of the work in judging the sustainability of a fishery is in collecting publicly available source documents and synthesizing and summarizing them in useful ways. FishSource reduces the workload by making this neutral, scientific and technical information freely available in a common shared “database.” This eliminates duplication of effort and reduces costs, thus enabling experts and companies to evaluate and generate recommendations for many more fisheries. FishSource leaves it to users to define and apply their own sustainability metrics, and to decide how much information they wish to reveal about their methods and results. Whatever standard you use, the information here is designed to make it easier, quicker, and less costly to evaluate the sustainability of fisheries around the world.

Click here to browse the FishSource profiles.