Towards a common exchange format and a regional database for large pelagic fisheries

To ensure an efficient use of financial and human resources, European Commission now focuses on improving data-cataloguing and on increasing data-exchanges between national and international partners. This requires more coordination in data collection and some common predefined and validated exchange formats. In that sense, EC establishes the Data Collection Framework, a Community framework for the collection, management and use of data in the fisheries sector and support for scientific advice. Within this new regulatory framework, ICES, founded and supported by the European Union, proposes the use of the FishFrame format as the data-exchange format for sampling, landings and effort data from commercial fisheries between the various institutes of Member States and for their restitution next to data calls. IRD has been working for several years in order to introduce standard formats within its IS and now proposes some possible solutions i) to export fisheries data according to “standard” formats (e.g. Fishframe, SDMX etc.) and ii) to centralize exported Fish-frame compliant datasets in a unique database. The IRD-Fishframe prototype database could be used as support within the framework of the creation of a Large Pelagic Fishes regional database (DCF).