Foreword

This edition of the OECD Review of Fisheries is the latest in a longstanding series of OECD reports covering developments in both production and policies in fisheries and aquaculture. This version broadly covers the period 2015-16 and includes 35 countries and economies, comprising 28 OECD countries as well as a regional chapter covering developments in the European Union. Also participating in this edition are Argentina, the People’s Republic of China, Colombia, Indonesia, Lithuania, Chinese Taipei, and Thailand. Together, the participants in this Review represent nearly half of global fisheries production, and the majority of production of aquaculture.

This edition follows a new structure and contains much in the way of new content. An entirely new layout of country presentations makes it easy for the reader to find the main policy developments and put their hands on key facts and figures. The presentation of information is improved, with chapter headings that point out key developments and a new table identifying important management features for major stocks. Also new is more evidence on the degree of success that participating countries and economies have had in achieving their quantitative targets for fisheries stock management.

Chapters 1, 2 and 3 of this report comprise the General Survey of fisheries and aquaculture policies. It gives a thematic summary of the information present in the individual chapters for each country or economy. For example, the reader can easily find the latest developments in marine protected areas for each participating economy, or changes in aquaculture regulation in the Country Snapshots (Chapter 4).

A completely revised and expanded presentation of the OECD Fisheries Support Estimate (FSE) database is also new for this year. The FSE is an inventory of policies supporting fishers and the fishing sector that shows the different ways in which budgetary policies are designed and delivered. This publicly available database is the only comprehensive and authoritative source of recent information on these kinds of polices and is a useful resource for policy-makers and academics. More information is available at http://www.oecd.org/agriculture/fisheries/fse.htm.

The print version of this report contains the General Survey of fisheries and aquaculture plus a short summary for each participating country or economy. More in-depth chapters as well as a statistical annex containing detailed background tables with indicators of fisheries support and values for aquaculture production are available in electronic form on the OECD iLibrary (https://doi.org/10.1787/rev_fish_stat_en-2017-en).

The General Survey of fisheries and aquaculture was declassified by the OECD Fisheries Committee at its 120th Session on 14-16 November 2017 and prepared for publication by the OECD Secretariat. Individual Country Profiles were produced in co-operation with the participating country or economy.