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FAO’s Committee on Fisheries, meeting in Rome, Italy and online this week, called for broader participation in the FAO Global Record of Fishing Vessels, Refrigerated Transport Vessels and Supply Vessels (Global Record), during its discussions on illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing.

While it welcomed the launch of the second version of the FAO Global Record, released last month, COFI reiterated a call to strengthen engagement for broader participation, including the importance for Members to upload and update information on their fleets.

The FAO Global Record has been operative since 2017, reaching 40 percent of the global eligible fleet with IMO numbers, through contributions from 66 FAO Members as of April 2022.

An updated version was launched last month and is available for Members to upload additional information on the global fleet. This version is based in the cloud and is connected to the PSMA Global Information Exchange System (GIES) to strengthen its functionalities.

FAO sustains that for this tool to be really effective, efforts need to be scaled up to complete the full picture of the global fleet with international activity and keep that information updated.

In recent weeks, FAO established a Help Desk to scale up support to FAO Members. The Help Desk may be reached at: [email protected].