Development of Modern Fisheries

One measure of the progress in fisheries development is the increase in production. Reliable catch statistics on a worldwide scale became available in 1947 when the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) started to publish regularly the Yearbook of Fishery Statistics. Data for the year 1938 were included in this series. Many improvements in the collection and presentation of statistics have been made since the first volume and some of the apparent increases in landings may in fact be a result of better statistics.