AGRIS INTERNATIONAL FOR MORE FISHERIES & AQUACULTURE INFORMATION Peter Brueggeman Scripps Institution of Oceanography Library The ASFA (Aquatic Sciences and Fisheries Abstracts) database is an obvious and valuable resource when searching for information on fisheries and aquaculture. ASFA is produced by Cambridge Scientific Abstracts with input from FAO centers. FAO's own AGRIS INTERNATIONAL database has fisheries and aquaculture references that do not appear in ASFA. Though FAO is involved with ASFA which covers fisheries and aquaculture, a sizable and unique body of references to fisheries and aquaculture literature appears in the AGRIS INTERNATIONAL database. For purposes of illustration, a search on title words "fisheries" and "aquacultur*" [*=truncation] was executed on both databases simultaneously; the search was then narrowed to those with the word "Pacific" and with publication year from 1988 to 1992. Duplicate references were removed with the Dialog databank's duplicate detection feature. Duplicate detection is not 100% perfect but its capability appears to be high and sufficient for comparing database overlap and uniqueness. After duplicate references were removed from the list with preference for keeping duplicates given to ASFA, 46 of the total of 257 references from both databases were "unique" to AGRIS INTERNATIONAL. Remember that some of these 46 "unique" AGRIS INTERNATIONAL references will actually be in ASFA due to failure of Dialog to detect all duplicates. A quick recheck of ten of the 46 "unique" AGRIS INTERNATIONAL references found two that were actually in ASFA. The remaining eight of the test group of ten references were indeed unique to AGRIS INTERNATIONAL and not found in ASFA. Extrapolation indicates that 36 of the 46 AGRIS references can be expected to be unique to the AGRIS INTERNATIONAL database and not found in ASFA. This corresponds to 14% of the total number of retrieved references being unique to AGRIS INTERNATIONAL. This high yield indicates that the AGRIS INTERNATIONAL database has sufficient unique material to warrant searching it when attempting comprehensive retrieval of fisheries and aquaculture information. As further indication of the utility of AGRIS INTERNATIONAL for fisheries and aquaculture information, the following titles are eight references found to be unique to AGRIS INTERNATIONAL: * The Pacific oyster, Crassostrea gigas, as a biological filter for a marine fish aquaculture pond * A survey of aquaculture in the Indo-Pacific coastal region * Women in fisheries. Why women count: prospects for self-reliant fisheries development in the South Pacific compared to the Indian Ocean Development and social change in the Pacific Islands * Report. Network of Aquaculture Centres in Asia and the Pacific. Governing Council Meeting. 1 * Review of research and recent developments in South Pacific albacore fisheries with emphasis on large-scale pelagic driftnet fishing Report. Expert Consultation on Large-Scale Pelagic Driftnet Fishing * Data needs and availability for South Pacific albacore fisheries Report. Expert Consultation on Large-Scale Pelagic Driftnet Fishing * Growth, mortality and maximum sustainable yield of the Indo-Pacific mackerel (Rastrelliger brachysoma) off the southwest coast of Thailand...... * The exercise of coastal state jurisdiction over EEZ fisheries resources: the South Pacific practice Exclusive Economic Zone