STRENGTHENING REGIONAL COOPERATION IN FISHERIES DATA COLLECTION

fishPi was a research project with the aim of “Strengthening regional cooperation in the area of fisheries data collection”. The project brought together over 40 experts from 13 scientific institutes in 12 countries (10 member states (MS)) and two internationally recognised survey design experts. It was funded by EU MARE grant MARE/2014/19, with a 14 month timeline commencing in April 2015. This project has trialled the way sampling designs would be developed in a regional setting and showed that collaboration and consultation is required at face to face meetings through regional groups that focus on a particular group of fisheries. The project was the first step in this process and one of the main outcomes is the framework to take the process forward; developing data formats, data sharing agreements and easily accessible software for data sharing, checking and analysis, and for the simulation testing of sampling designs.European Unio