The FIP is a tool for spatial analysis of fisheries data for the Gulf of Mexico, using non-confidential data collected and curated by NOAA, where personally identifiable information has been removed. The FIP allows querying of datasets on fishing activity and economic performance for shrimp, reef fish and highly migratory species fisheries. The tool opens a broad range of applications including marine spatial planning for wind energy and aquaculture, rapid response analyses for oil spills or phosphate leaks, analysis of marine dead zones, high-resolution stock assessments and spatially-explicit socioeconomic analyses.

The FIP provides free, user-friendly access to interactive maps of non-confidential fisheries data in the Gulf of Mexico. Users can not only view data for different fisheries in the Gulf, but also extract quantitative values, create custom maps and produce reports with data summaries for an area of interest.