Fisheries management needs covered four general areas – habitat usage, fish distribution and fishing effects, social and economic applications, and inventory of human activities. Fisheries are inherently spatially oriented. Fisheries managers use geospatial information (data that includes locations) and GIS for analysis, communication and management. The Fisheries Management Councils, for example, are charged with preventing overfishing and ensuring that stocks are built or sustained for optimum yield. Councils are required to identify essential fish habitat (EFH), minimize effects to the habitat to the extent practicable, and conserve and encourage enhancement of the habitat. Meeting the requirements of the essential fish habitat inherently depends on the availability and quality of spatial data for habitats, the species that live there as well as how species and habitats interact, and how they are affected by human use. Currently, the required base data layers such as high-resolution bathymetry (depth) do not exist for most areas, and the importance of ocean mapping (collecting the data) was repeatedly stressed during the conference. Effective use of GIS-based analysis for fisheries management will depend on the data that is collected, the tools available to work with it, and the processes developed to analyze it.