More than 129 million child labourers in the world work in the agriculture sector, which includes fisheries, aquaculture, forestry and livestock. These girls and boys, between the ages of 5 and 17, are performing work that interferes with their education or damages their health or personal development.

An FAO Press tour took place in the Issyk-Kul province of Kyrgyzstan last month aimed at increasing awareness about the existing challenges within the fisheries and aquaculture sector as well as demonstrating the positive impacts and results of the FAO project “Support to Fishery and Aquaculture Management in the Kyrgyz Republic.”

The National Aquaculture Sector Overview (NASO) map collection aims to assist FAO Members to inventory and monitor aquaculture, using Google Earth and Google Maps technology. The collection has the potential to be used for a number of purposes, such as monitoring the status of and trends in aquaculture development and addressing site selection and zoning issues. This user manual, available as a bilingual document in English/French, is meant to facilitate the completion of the Microsoft Excel form needed to create the NASO maps. The manual is intended for all FAO Members that report aquaculture statistics to FAO and to inventory and monitor aquaculture in their respective countries and territories.

The NASO map collection is being developed by the Aquaculture Branch in collaboration with the Fisheries and Aquaculture Statistics and Information Branch of the FAO Fisheries and Aquaculture Department.

With the expected increase in human population and resulting competition for access to land and clean water, there is a growing need to transfer land-based and coastal aquaculture production systems farther offshore to increase the availability of fish and fishery products for human consumption. Mariculture, in particular offshore, offers significant opportunities for sustainable food production and development of many coastal communities, especially in regions where the availability of land, near-shore space and freshwater are limited. A new FAO Fisheries and Aquaculture Technical Paper, "A global assessment of potential for offshore mariculture development from a spatial perspective", provides, for the first time, measures of the status and potential for offshore mariculture development from a spatial perspective that are comprehensive of all maritime countries and comparable among them. It also identifies countries that do not yet practise mariculture but have a high offshore potential.

The underlying purpose of this document is to stimulate interest in detailed assessments of offshore mariculture potential at the national level. An annex examines remote sensing for the sustainable development of offshore mariculture.

The essential guide to understanding the role of spatial analysis in the sustainable development and management of fisheries and aquaculture is now available in an easy-to-understand publication that emphasizes the fundamental skills and processes associated with geographic information systems (GIS) and remote sensing. The FAO Fisheries and Aquaculture Technical Paper, "Advances in geographic information systems and remote sensing for fisheries and aquaculture", outlines the required spatial data and computer hardware and software as well as considerations necessary to implementing a GIS. It describes current issues, status and applications of GIS and remote sensing to aquaculture, inland fisheries and marine fisheries to illustrate the capabilities of these technologies. It addresses emerging thematic issues with a spatial context in fisheries and aquaculture in the near future and ways to overcome challenges in GIS work.

This publication is organized in two parts: the first is a summary version for administrators and managers, while the second contains the entire document intended for professionals in technical fields and academics. The full document is available on the CD–ROM that accompanies the summary version of the publication.