Fishery statistics for the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) area have been published under the title Bulletin Statistique des Pêches Maritimes since 1903. In 1990 the title was changed to ICES Fisheries Statistics and the last publication was in 1992 with 1988 data. For the period 1999-2004 the data was published on a CD-ROM. Since 2004, Eurostat and ICES have worked together on the processing and publishing of these data.
IMPORTANT NOTE: The data for 1950–2005 results from a verification exercise conducted on the data for 1973-2005 and an extension of the database to cover the period 1950-1972 by the ICES Secretariat on the national submissions of catch data published by ICES in the annual volumes of the Bulletin Statistique and more recently in FishStat Plus format on the ICES website. The results of this exercise with proposals for changes to the original published data were sent to the national authorities in May 2009 for their advice and comments. Responses from the national authorities have been incorporated in this database.