FIRMS and GRSF Databases. Global indicators on fish stocks and related fishing activities

Fish stocks and fisheries management relies on an overwhelming amount of data that needs costly and timely expensive analysis when a global overview of the status of marine resources is needed. Nowadays, with computation advances and the spread of online databases, this work that traditionally has been carried every few years, can be minimized stablishing a global database that feeds from Fisheries Management Organizations and others, allowing an almost real time tracking of all fish stocks and fisheries globally. That is the purpose of the Fishery and Resources Monitoring System (FIRMS) and the Global Record of Stock and Fisheries (GRSF) databades, from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. These FAO databases already count with thousands of marine resources and fisheries, including quantitative (captures, exploitation rate, biomass, etc.) and qualitative (stock status, sustainability, harvest evaluation, etc.) data provided by trustworthy bodies and organizations. All this information is open access available, so anyone can access he database, search for the stocks or fisheries they are interested in and access to all available data related with the exploitation rate, biomass levels, sustainability, number of catures, etc. Moreover, the potential of the databases relies on the presentation of indicators. Computational analysis and automatic calculation of indicators that provide global or specific information about the database records, opens the door for a new era in the fisheries industry: a transparent and real time track of the fishing activities and the status of exploited stocks is possible. Therefore, the inclusion of indictors in FIRMS and GRSF databases would allow not only to consult each of the marine resources independently, but also to know how sustainably all marine resources of a given area are being exploited, or how many assessment units are being analysed globally among all marine resources. The present thesis aims to analyse and report these type of indicators for data coverage on FIRMS and GRSF databases.