The Fisheries Department of FAO has long realised that due to the inherent spatial characteristics of marine fisheries there is great potential for using Geographical Information Systems (GIS) in the analysis of fisheries data and in the development of fisheries management tools that take explicit account of the spatio-temporal domain within which fisheries operate.

Conventional approaches to fisheries have focused on the direct interactions between a fishery and the resources that it is targeting, its limitations in ensuring sustainable utilization of aquatic ecosystems as a whole have led to the development of the concept of an ecosystem approach to fisheries (EAF)

GISFish sets out the issues in marine fisheries, with particular emphasis on EAF and demonstrates the benefits of using GIS, remote sensing and mapping to resolve them. The global experience provided by GISFish is captured in Issues, Publications, Activities, Training, Data and Tools, Contacts, Discussions, News and events.

Material in GISFish is constantly updated and expanded. Near future improvements will include increased coverage of abstracts and of full papers. Links to Aquatic Species fact sheets will be made available for each GISFish publication record in which scientific names of plants and animals are mentioned.