We hope you’ve heard about FishSource, the backbone of SFP’s scientific information. SFP created FishSource to serve as a public and open database of scientific and technical information about the status of fish stocks and fisheries.
FishSource has built a broad base of stakeholders, boasting nearly 2000 registered users and many more unregistered users! Universities, nonprofits, government, industry, and other institutions rely on and reference information contained in FishSource reports to conduct their own evaluations of fishery status and sustainability.
We take a great deal of pride in getting the science right on FishSource since it’s our starting point developing our own improvement recommendations and advice to partners. FishSource strives to be the most comprehensive and up-to-date database of fishery status information and has gained global recognition as a trusted resource. However, there are challenges in achieving and maintaining this goal.
SFP’s internal team of scientists and researchers is relatively small. This team maintains a large number of updated reports on FishSource for fisheries that are of most importance to our donors, corporate partners, and staff. The remainder is a long list of fisheries that do not even exist in the database or that are often left with out-of-date or limited information.
We recently created the FishSource External Contributor Program as a way to provide solutions for companies, researchers, nonprofits, and anyone else using FishSource to generate public evaluations of fisheries that would otherwise not be conducted.
Anyone interested in an analysis of a particular fishery or fisheries can make a request and pay a fee to have it developed. The terms and contract are negotiated directly with an individual from SFP’s list of approved external contributors. SFP does not get involved in the contracting and payments (nor do we receive a cent), but we facilitate the process from start to finish to make sure it is successful for all involved. To learn more about the program, please visit our Fisheries Information page to have a look at the program overview and guidance documents.
For more information contact Brad Spear at SFP.