In addition to advising on important fisheries issues, AFS also partners with other fisheries-related entities to share science across political and geographic boundaries. Some of the AFS partnerships include:

• The World Council of Fisheries Societies
• International Council of the Global Environment Facility
• Global Conference on Inland Fisheries

World Council of Fisheries Societies

The World Council of Fisheries Societies is a nonprofit, nongovernmental membership organization open to scientific or professional fisheries societies and affiliated organizations. Other fisheries organizations may become affiliates of the Council by a vote of the Council’s Executive Board. The Council’s headquarters and Secretariat are presently located in Bethesda, Maryland, USA, at the AFS headquarters.

The main aim of the Council is to promote international cooperation in fisheries science, conservation and management. This includes encouraging sustainable management practices, encouraging excellence in fisheries research, and promoting the wise use of fishery resources.

Every four years, the Council organizes the World Fisheries Congress. The next World Fisheries Congress will be in Adelaide, Australia, in October 2020.

GFEMN—International Council of the Global Environment Facility

The project is called Global: Promoting Ecosystems-based Approaches to Fisheries Conservation and LMEs. The goal of the project is to support capacity building in developing countries, and countries with economies in transition through the transfer of advanced methods, practices and tools for ecosystem-based fisheries management.

Global Conference on Inland Fisheries

The Global Conference on Inland Fisheries is a partnership between Michigan State University and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). A major international conference was held at FAO headquarters in Rome in January 2015 to develop a set of recommendations for inland fisheries sustainability. Those recommendations were discussed at the FAO Committee on Fisheries (COFI) meeting in Rome in June 2016. Communications, registration, and publications for this effort are coordinated through AFS.