Mexican Pacific fisheries: A proposal for common names and key codes for an information system

The statistical information on catch per species in Mexican fisheries is based on registers made by fishers at the Federal Fisheries Offices located in key ports or cities of the Mexican States. The species names are those given by fishers according to their geographical distribution and experience, and the official system assigns a key code to each species, but given the high diversity of fisheries species and names the actual system does not effectively cope with the problem.  This has to deal with the idea of having a uniform use of common names and avoiding confusion in scientific names. To assist in improving data collection we analyzed the problem in marine fisheries on the Mexican Pacific. Based on a literature review we developed a list of 841 species identified for its fisheries commercial relevance. For each one we included the scientific name and the several common names it may be known for in different regions. We illustrate how the list was integrated and how the new proposal of key codes offers analytical help for handling catch data per species or group of species.