The Marine Management Organisation has concluded its quality assessment into 2024 landing data for under-10m vessels.
The Marine Management Organisation (MMO) has today 9 October 2025 published the outcome of its quality assessment into the landing data for under-10m vessels from Catch Recording for 2024. This fulfils a commitment made last year when MMO voluntarily suspended its accredited official statistics designation of the Sea Fisheries Statistics publications.
Catch Recording is a service for skippers of U10m fishing vessels registered in England, Wales and Isle of Man to record their catch and submit their records directly to their respective fisheries authority. It offers several routes to report data: through a dedicated mobile app, web browser or by phone. Data collected via the Catch Recording service was introduced into the MMO official statistics in place of data captured via Sales Notes from the beginning of 2024. It is intended to provide a more accurate representation of catches from this sector.
The investigation by MMO into the statistical quality of the data received from Catch Recording showed evidence of missing data. This appears to be related to unexpected technical issues with the mobile app throughout 2024 where users informed MMO that some of their data was not transferring to the systems, rather than an issue with the wider service. As a result the headline landing figures for under-10m vessels, including weight and value of fish landed, are not accurately represented in the published statistics for 2024 onwards.
MMO remains committed to working to the highest standards to support industry. In the short term, the organisation will return to using information from Sales
