---
id: "fao_fishing_area"
kind: "datatype"
status: "draft"
is_pii: false
categories: ["agriculture", "geo"]
langs: ["common"]
quality: 80
url: "https://registry.apicrafter.io/datatype/fao_fishing_area"
---

# FAO major fishing area code (`fao_fishing_area`)

> **Draft.** Draft records have not been reviewed yet and may be incomplete or wrong; do not treat them as authoritative for legal or compliance decisions.

Code of an FAO major fishing area for statistical purposes, defined by the Coordinating Working Party on Fishery Statistics, optionally followed by subarea, division and subdivision parts separated by dots, as in 27.4.a for the northern North Sea. The two-digit major area is one of 8 inland areas (01 to 08) and 19 marine areas (18, 21, 27 ... 88). ICES writes NAFO divisions in lower case, FAO in upper case; older EU texts use roman numerals (IVa), which the regexp does not accept.

- Personal data (PII): no
- Categories: Agriculture, livestock and food (agriculture), Geographic identifiers (geo)
- Countries: global
- Languages: Common to most languages (common)
- Classification: categorical

## Detection

Regular expression (Python `re`):

```
^(?:0[1-8]|18|2[17]|3[147]|4[178]|5[178]|6[17]|7[17]|8[178])(?:\.(?:\d{1,2}|[A-Za-z])){0,4}$
```

## Examples

- `27` — Atlantic, Northeast
- `27.4.a` — Northern North Sea
- `37.1.1` — Balearic
- `27.3.d.28.2` — East of Gotland, open sea
- `27.IV.a` (invalid example) — Roman-numeral ICES notation

## Translations

- ru: Код района промысла FAO: Код основного района промысла FAO для статистики рыболовства, с необязательными подрайонами и участками через точку, например 27.4.a.

## Sources

- doc: <https://www.fao.org/cwp-on-fishery-statistics/handbook/general-concepts/main-water-areas/en/>
- doc: <https://github.com/fdiwg/fdi-codelists/blob/main/global/cwp/cl_fao_areas.csv>

## Quality

Score 80/100. Missing: mapping (Wikidata, Schema.org, ...), detector coverage.

JSON: <https://registry.apicrafter.io/api/v1/datatypes/fao_fishing_area.json> · Edit: <https://github.com/apicrafter/metacrafter-registry/edit/main/data/datatypes/any/agriculture/fao_fishing_area.yaml>