Vessel Monitoring System (VMS) data is the data from the Community's satellite-based fishing vessel monitoring system, which provides data on the position, course and speed of vessels to fisheries authorities at regular intervals.

The International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES), is a global organization that develops science and advice to support the sustainable use of the oceans. ICES is a network of more than 5,000 scientists from over 690 marine institutes in 20 member countries and beyond. 1,500 scientists participate in our activities annually. ICES has a well-established Data Centre, which manages a number of large dataset collections related to the marine environment. The majority of data – covering the Northeast Atlantic, Baltic Sea, Greenland Sea, and Norwegian Sea – originate from national institutes that are part of the ICES network. The ICES Data Centre provides marine data services to ICES member countries, expert groups, world data centres, regional seas conventions (HELCOM and OSPAR), the European Environment Agency (EEA), Eurostat, and various other European projects and biodiversity portals. ICES aims to provide all data collections online and according to the ICES Data policy, which enables open access to all data that are do not fall under specific commercial or personal privacy concerns.

The national multidisciplinary RECOPESCA programme is a collaboration between volunteer fishermen and scientists for the automated collection of geolocated physical and fisheries environmental data from the coastal domain. The principle consists of installing sensors on gear to measure environmental parameters, from the surface to the bottom, and to record detailed data on fishing activity and effort. The data acquired feeds the operational coastal oceanography database (coastal component of Coriolis) and the fisheries database of the SIH (Harmonie). The programme thus responds to research issues (physical and fisheries), the implementation of the ecosystem approach to fisheries, support for public policies (DCSMM, DCF, CMEMS) and Ifremer's innovation in the coastal field.