The Fisheries and Biological Data Preparation Workshop for the Shrimp and Groundfish Fisheries of the North Brazil Shelf Large Marine Ecosystem (NBSLME) was held in Bridgetown, Barbados 23-25 October, 2018. The meeting brought together 14 participants including fisheries officers, government organizations and FAO. The main objective of the workshop was to provide training on data preparation for stock assessment purposes and fisheries status/trends monitoring, enhance capacities in fisheries data and statistics collection at the national and sub-regional levels, and review status of data collection for the shrimp and groundfish fisheries of the NBSLME.

The current state of the Fisheries and Resource Monitoring System (FIRMS) stocks and fisheries inventories for the NBSLME was reviewed and updated with inputs from participants. Ongoing work on the Data Repository and Decision Support System (DSS) for the Caribbean and North Brazil Shelf Large Marine Ecosystems (CLME+) Project and its application in the NBSLME was presented and discussed. A template for recording fisheries and biological data of key species in the NBSLME for stock assessment purposes was reviewed by participants. Furthermore, for each country and fishery, participants reviewed availability of data including, inter alia, time series of landings and fishing effort, length frequencies and socio-economic information. Additionally, a review was made of the biological parameters (e.g. length-weight relationship, growth, maturity) available for key shrimp and groundfish species in the NBSLME and data gaps identified. Information on genetic studies on shrimp and groundfish species in the NBSLME region served as background for discussion on the stock structure