April 20, 2026 — The following was released by the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership:
Sustainable Fisheries Partnership (SFP) and the Hilborn Lab at the University of Washington have released the 8th version of the Fishery Improvement Projects Database (FIP-DB), marking another major step forward in providing structured data to help track the evolution, scale, and performance of fishery improvement projects (FIPs) worldwide.
The FIP-DB is a comprehensive, publicly available resource that compiles and standardizes data from leading platforms, including SFP’s Improvement Projects Tracker and FisheryProgress.org. With records spanning more than two decades, the database provides a unique historical and real-time view of how FIPs have grown and evolved across the globe.
This latest update highlights the continued expansion of the FIP landscape. Over time, FIPs have increased not only in number, but also in geographic reach, diversity of species covered, and range of fisheries engaged. This growth reflects the rising importance of collaborative management and market-driven approaches to improving fisheries sustainability worldwide.
“FIPs have emerged as one of the leading market-based approaches for delivering improvements in fisheries supplying global seafood markets, with more than 350 projects initiated to date,” said Indrani Lutchman, Program Director of FIP Evaluation and External Relations at SFP. “With each new version of the database, we are better able to capture the scale, diversity, and progress of these efforts, and provide the structured data needed for scientific and robust analyses of their impact.”
A key highlight of this year’s release is the continued evolution of the database itself. The FIP-DB has expanded significantly in both depth and amount of information over successive versions, and the 2026 update introduces two major additions:
- FIP stage indicators, enabling more detailed analysis of how projects are progressing in implementing workplans and delivering measurable improvements
- FAO Global Record of Stocks and Fisheries (GRSF) Universal Identifiers, allowing stronger alignment with global fisheries datasets and improving the ability to map FIPs to specific fisheries and stocks.
Together, these improvements will open new opportunities for researchers and analysts to better understand FIP performance and link it to effective changes in policy and governance and, ultimately, improvements in fisheries and ecosystems.
The FIP-DB has helped advance scientific research, providing a key reference for peer-reviewed studies, global assessments, and FIP landscape reports. Beyond the research community, the database serves a wide range of stakeholders, including:
- Nonprofit organizations, supporting conservation strategies and evaluation of FIP effectiveness
- Seafood industry actors, informing responsible sourcing decisions and supply chain risk assessments
- Government agencies, providing consistent, data-driven insights to guide fisheries management and policy.
“Research investigating the emergence and effect of sustainability-related actions requires knowledge of what has been done, where, how, by whom, and with what results,” said Dianty Ningrum, researcher in sustainability science at the Anthropocene Laboratory of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. “Such knowledge can facilitate learning across regions and between sectors, and allow for transfer of knowledge, expertise, and mimicking of strategies. Datasets like the FIP-DB are an important for building such knowledge. The experts developing this platform have been helpful in our work to conduct a cross-sectoral global assessment of actions for sustainability.”
Similar to previous editions, the new version includes an updated interactive Tableau dashboard, with selected visualizations of trends in FIP growth, geographic expansion, species coverage, and performance indicators. The dashboard enables users to explore how the FIP landscape has developed over time and to identify key patterns and trends.
For more information and access to the database and dashboard, visit:
https://sustainablefisheries-uw.org/databases/fishery-improvement-projects-database/