FAO fisheries publications

Background

One of the most important mandates of FAO and its Fisheries Department is to analyse and distribute fishery data and information and provide advice and objective information services to Member governments in order to promote responsible aquaculture and fisheries. The guiding principles that ensure that information products elaborated by the Department are relevant, and that they reach the target clients, are encompassed in the FAO Fisheries Department Information Strategy. Aiming at sustainable development and utilization of the world's fisheries and aquaculture, the strategy intends to:

• promote a responsible fisheries sector management;
• stimulate an increased contribution of responsible fisheries and aquaculture to world food supplies and food security;
• provide a global monitoring and strategic analysis of fisheries.

As a contribution to the implementation of the strategy, the Fisheries Department produces a wide range of publications targeting different communities within the fisheries and aquaculture sector.

The most well-known and widely-distributed publications are those within the regular series category, such as FAO Fisheries Technical Papers and FAO Fisheries Reports, which reach a global audience and are normally produced in at least two official FAO languages. The FAO Yearbooks of Fishery Statistics, dating back to 1947, and in recent years the Technical Guidelines for Responsible Fisheries and the State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture (SOFIA), are distributed worldwide. Other regular series such as the FAO Fisheries Circulars, regarded as a quicker means of spreading more informal information, and the Technical Papers of FAO regional fishery bodies such as the Committee for Inland Fisheries of Africa (CIFA) related to specific regions, normally target narrower audiences. The FAO Training Series include fisheries and aquaculture titles for the benefit of extension and training activities and the publications of the Species Identification and Data Programme (SIDP) relate to taxonomic groups or geographic regions. All in all, the Department produces fifteen serial publications, together with occasional monographs and CD-ROM products, the total output of regular publications is some 100 titles per year.

In addition, there are documents often referred to as 'grey literature' because they are published in limited numbers, have a narrow distribution and, in some cases, are restricted to FAO and individual Members. These include reports of FAO fisheries projects and FAO fisheries bodies as well as papers presented at many FAO technical meetings. Fisheries projects often collect and analyse unique information and data for the benefit of FAO Members. The published results of this work, in the form of non-restricted project reports, are therefore frequently requested by specialists in fisheries and aquaculture around the world. Organizing, disseminating and making available this 'grey literature' is one of the functions of the FAO Fisheries branch library.

The Fisheries Library, through its Internet access or by e-mail: [email protected], provides guidance on where to search and how to obtain copies of FAO Fisheries publications.