This paper focuses on the specific operational interpretation of quality assurance in EU fisheries biological data collection however broader reviews of the topic are also available - see (STECF, 2017) for example. David Currie, Marine Institute (Ireland), david.currie@marine.ie Jose Rodriguez, IEO (Spain), jose.rodriguez@ieo.es Aim Quality assurance of fisheries data collection is an important topic however since some of the most important fisheries data (for example commercial fisheries data) is confidential it is often not possible to directly evaluate data quality at a European level. [Extracted from the article]