NAFO is mandated by its Contracting Parties to provide scientific advice and implement management measures for the NAFO Regulatory Area in the Northwest Atlantic (defined by the NAFO Convention). NAFO contribute to FIRMS information on stocks for which management advice is provided by NAFO Scientific Council to the NAFO Fisheries Commission.

See the current collection coverage   

The NAFO Scientific Council Reports and the NAFO Conservation and Enforcement Measures which serve as background documentation for information published on FIRMS are published on the NAFO website.

The information contributed conforms to NAFO policy guidelines for confidentiality and information release and to the Information Management Policy established by the FIRMS/FIGIS Steering Committee.

Sources and Traceability
Bibliographical sources for the NAFO reports are listed in the stock summary sheets and in the Scientific Council Summary Documents. Most of the bibliographical source documents are stored on the NAFO website for a limited duration after which time they are available upon request from the NAFO Secretariat. From the FIGIS fact sheets, links point to the relevant NAFO source documents.

Transparency and Peer-Review
Details of the NAFO data collection and compilation are provided in the various Scientific Council reports, studies, and documents accessible on the NAFO web pages.

Transparency of the information and results on status and trends of stocks and resources presented by NAFO are documented in the course of the scientific peer-review process followed to obtain the results, and the various meetings of the NAFO at which the results, and various options for management and resource conservation, are presented and discussed. Details on these meetings and processes are available at the NAFO website.

Consistency and accuracy


Information Security
All contributions provided by NAFO are on the public domain.
The information contributed to FIRMS resides under the full ownership (hence responsibility) of NAFO. Methods used in authentication and verification of this information lie on the FIRMS security mechanisms, including a role for a NAFO editor and a NAFO approver.

Timeliness

Inquiries can be addressed to the Database Manager of the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization (NAFO).

This is an extract of the NAFO fisheries advice presenting the fish stock information. The full NAFO advice is available on http://www.nafo.int and accounts for fisheries constraints in addition to the stock considerations.