Catch by Division: FAO Data of the Regional Fishery Bodies — load_fao

This function returns the capture production by division (parts of an FAO major fishing area) that FAO publishes for four regions, in the format of load_fao_data() with three more columns: Division (code, e.g. "37.1.1"), Division..Name. (code and name, e.g. "37.1.1 Balearic") and Region. It can be given to pelagic_demersal() and mean_temperature_catch() with by = "division", or to any other analysis as catch data.

GFCM: General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean: area 37 (Mediterranean and Black Sea), divisions such as 37.1.1 Balearic, 37.2.1 Adriatic, 37.4.2 Black Sea.
CECAF: Fishery Committee for the Eastern Central Atlantic: area 34.
SEATL: Southeast Atlantic: area 47.
RECOFI: Regional Commission for Fisheries: part of area 51 (the Gulf, the Sea of Oman and the southwestern Arabian Sea).

In release 2026.1.0, GFCM and CECAF start in 1970, SEATL in 1975 and RECOFI in 1986. Some codes are not places: "Tunas" (e.g. 34.0.0, tunas reported for the whole area) and "Not known" (e.g. 37.9.0, or 34.1.9 for a subarea whose division is not known).

Usage

load_fao_divisions(
  region = NULL,
  version = "latest",
  data_dir = fao_data_dir()
)

Arguments

region: The regions: any of "GFCM", "CECAF", "SEATL" and "RECOFI". Default is NULL, all.
version: The release, e.g. "2026.1.0". Default is "latest".
data_dir: The directory where the data is saved. Default is fao_data_dir().

Value

A data frame with the columns of load_fao_data() and Division, Division..Name. and Region, with the attributes fao_version and source_url.

Details

The divisions of GFCM, CECAF and SEATL cover the whole FAO area: summed over the divisions, the catch of a country, species and year equals that of the area in load_fao_data() for nearly all records found in both (99.7 to 100% within 1% in release 2026.1.0), and the records found in one dataset only hold less than 2.2% of the catch. RECOFI covers only the Gulf, the Sea of Oman and the southwestern Arabian Sea, a part of area 51.

The data come from the file FI_Regional of the FAO data index (https://www.fao.org/fishery/static/Data/). When the computer is online, the newest release is used, downloaded and converted the first time (about 5 MB) and saved in data_dir; offline, or with fao_settings(online = FALSE), the newest saved release is used.

References

FAO. Fishery and Aquaculture Statistics: capture production by regional fishery bodies (FI_Regional). https://www.fao.org/fishery/statistics-query/en

Examples

if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{
med <- load_fao_divisions("GFCM")
pelagic_demersal(med, by = "division")
mean_temperature_catch(med, by = "division")
} # }