Antoine's Blog

Open Fisheries is a platform that compiles global fishery data, offering records of global fish capture landings from 1950 onwards. I have converted the great work from the rfisheries R package to Python to facilitate data analysis.

You can use the API to gather the total fish capture landings for a specific country. For example, the following chart shows the total landings for Canada:

The API can also be used to gather the total fish capture landings for different species. In this example, we look at the total landings for three species: Dentex dentex (DEC), Dentex congoensis (DNC), and Dentex macrophtalmus (DEL):

As an illustrative example, I focused on species that are assessed globally and present in France, which can be accessed here.

To better understand the conservation status of these species, I grouped them according to their IUCN status. The IUCN Red List categorizes species based on their risk of extinction, helping to guide conservation efforts. The statuses range from Least Concern to Critically Endangered, providing a critical framework for assessing biodiversity.

The IUCN red list status are:

Calling the Open Fisheries API, I was able to retrieve catch trends of species based on their conservation status, highlighting the need for targeted management and conservation strategies.

Here is a visual representation of the catch data by IUCN status:

To continue this work, I am looking for data on global fishing intensities, which would enable the calculation of Maximum Sustainable Yield (MSY) and other key statistics for more effective fisheries management. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find this data (maybe I should look to Ray Hilborn's global fisheries database). Its availability would significantly bolster my analysis.

My Python code for this project is available on my GitHub repository. Feel free to check it out here.