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This chapter describes a new multivariate, multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary rapid appraisal technique that can be used to classify world fisheries and diagnose their problems. For ecological, technological, economic and social categories, we chose 15–25 attributes that (a) are easily and objectively scored on a ranked scale using readily available data, (b) are likely to discriminate among fisheries, and (c) may be easily related to sustainability. A multivariate ordination using multidimensional scaling (MDS) is performed within each disciplinary set of attributes. The ordination scores are then brought together into an overall interdisciplinary analysis, also using MDS. Reference points for evaluating the relative status of fisheries are provided by constructing hypothetical fisheries that are assigned ‘good’, ‘bad’ or ‘random’ scores, defined in terms of sustain-ability for each discipline, or that have a random assignment of attribute values.