As the oceans become busier and climate change upends our expectations of stability, information about where and when fishing happens is vitally important. Location data is critical to achieving NMFS’ fisheries conservation and management mission and for planning for a sustainable ocean future. However, there is limited spatial information on fishing areas to support science, management, and business; and data products that do exist are difficult to find and access.
NMFS should take proactive steps to improve the availability of spatial data about fisheries. In addition, managing data as an asset—a commitment of NOAA’s Data Strategy–depends on making data findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable.
