Authors: Ratana Chuenpagdee, Delphine Rocklin, David Bishop, Matthew Hynes, Randal Greene, Miguel R. Lorenzi and Rodolphe Devillers
Marine Policy, Volume 101, March 2019, Pages 158-166
An important article describing the conception of the Information System on Small-scale Fisheries (ISSF) and its key features has recently been published by TBTI members. The paper presents some results extracted from the analysis of ISSF data, illustrating the importance of such a global database on small-scale fisheries (SSF)..
Information about SSF is often scarce and scattered. This is partly due to insufficient attention on this sector, whose contribution to society is often assumed to be negligible. It also results from SSF being highly diverse, with complex patterns of harvest and post-harvest activities taking place in a wide range of aquatic environments and often in remote areas. Existing fisheries information systems fail to fully capture the characteristics and essence of SSF, resulting in a lack of integrated and up-to-date data, which further marginalizes the sector in policymaking and governance..
To help rectify the situation, the Too Big To Ignore project developed the ISSF, a Web-based, open data portal to collect and disseminate knowledge on various aspects of SSF. ISSF is built on crowdsourced knowledge and is designed to be open, interactive, flexible, and comprehensive. ISSF enables local description, regional comparisons, and large-scale syntheses, which can be helpful for de-marginalization of SSF and improving governance..
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