The United Nations food agency unveiled here Tuesday an online storehouse of data gathered by a collective system monitoring world fish resources, aimed at better managing stocks and protecting endangered species.
The system, Fishery Resources Monitoring System (FIRMS) and launched in 2004, centralizes data on fish stocks gathered by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and other international agencies.
It contains figures on catches, stock levels, fishing fleet activities, the mortality rate of certain species and global trends.
The Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that about 25 percent of the stocks it monitors are overexploited, depleted or recovering from depletion.
The site, at http://firms.fao.org, was announced on the second day of a four-day conference at UN headquarters in New York to review ways of tightening international law to better protect the world's fish stocks, which are being depleted by overfishing.
The meeting brings together delegates from governments, the fishing industry and environmental groups to review a 1995 agreement for the conservation and management of highly migratory fish stocks.
