Global fisheries sustainability performance data collected from pre-assessments against the Marine Stewardship Council’s fisheries standard

The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) is an international non-profit organization that sets a Fisheries Standard [1] for environmentally sustainable fishing, based on the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations' Code of Conduct for Responsible Fishing [2]. Fisheries can undergo a pre-assessment-a quicker, less detailed evaluation than full certification-to identify gaps before pursuing MSC certification. Pre-assessments are often used by fisheries planning Fishery Improvement Projects (FIPs). This dataset [3] includes information from 276 pre-assessments conducted between 2003 and 2023, covering 70 flag countries, 257 species, and 53 fishing gear types. It contains fishery names, areas, report dates, client and assessor details, links to Fishery Progress FIP unique identifiers (where present), MSC certification links, and MSC scores at the performance indicator level. Only publicly available reports are included, covering both MSC-certified and non-certified fisheries. These are generally representative of the types of gears, target species, and habitat types of fisheries in the full set of reports including confidential reports. The accuracy of extracted data was validated against the original reports using a sampling approach. This dataset provides a basis for comparing the sustainability performance of fisheries from around the world under a common scoring system, as well as tracking progress over time in instances where fisheries conduct multiple pre-assessments. Fields were included to link to other available global databases, including MSC full assessments, FIP databases, and global wild-capture production data assembled by FAO, facilitating wider application to global fisheries analyses.