"As more data are input and more partners join this collaborative effort a fuller overview of world fisheries will emerge that will add a high level of extra detail to regular reports on fishery resources assessments of FAO and other agencies," Richard Grainger, FAO's chief of fishers information and statistics, said Tuesday.

"By standardizing data and putting it through such a rigorous quality control process, the partners are creating an authoritative and highly reliable source of information on world fisheries that is truly unique," he said. "There are a lot of inaccuracies on fisheries floating around out there and good decisions and responsible management require complete, reliable and authoritative and easily accessed information."

The system announced by FAO is the Fisheries Resources Monitoring System, which the U.N. agency has dubbed FIRMS and which pools information gathered from regional fisheries management organizations and other agencies. They are intergovernmental organizations established by blocs of countries to jointly oversee shared fisheries.

They include such organizations as the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, the Commission for the Conservation of Southern Bluefin Tuna and FAO.

FIRMS then puts together a "comprehensive, one-stop source of information on world fisheries and fishery resources," FAO said. "It includes data on catches and stock levels, fishing fleet activities, fishing mortality and biomass trends, management practices and more."

The information is standardized and fact-checked and then posted to the partnership's website, "where anyone can access it," FAO said. "Already some 500 major resources from different world regions have been profiled with more to come."

The launch of FIRMS came at the opening of the Review Conference of the 1995 U.N. Fish Stocks Agreement at U.N. World Headquarters in New York.

The accord was designed to ensure responsible fishing of highly migratory fish stocks and other fishery resources which straddle the boundaries between national jurisdictions and the high seas.

"Recent years have seen a marked increase in high seas catches and concern is growing that more needs to be done to ensure that fishing there is conducted responsibly," the U.N. agency said.

An FAO paper prepared for this week's meeting said about 30 percent of highly migratory tuna and tuna-like species, over 50 percent of highly migratory oceanic sharks and nearly two-thirds of straddling stockers are overexploited or depleted.

However, the agency said participation by the international community in the 1995 agreement has been less than anticipated.

"It took six years just to get enough signatures for it to enter into force and while 57 countries have signed on, only four of the world's top 10 top fish-producing countries have done so," the agency said.

"The level of participation needs to grow in order to give the agreement greater and broader support and the quality of participation could stand to be improved as well," said David Doulman of FAO's Fisheries Department.

The agency also said there should be more done to make regional fishery bodies more effective. One way to increase participation, the FAO said, was to increase assistance to developing countries so they can more fully meet their obligations under the agreement.

Other FIRMS partners are the Inter-American tropical Tuna Commission, the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas, the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea, the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission, the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization, the Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Center and the Statistical Office of the European Communities.

The FAO said talks were underway for the possible participation in FIRMS with additional partners from Australia, Canada, Vietnam, France, Namibia and the United States.

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