In the present document it was made a brief description of the French, Spanish and Portuguese fishing fleet that exerts their activity within the Atlantic Area. This characterization was carried out at both National and NUTS II regions level in order to highlight the importance of the artisanal fishing sector in all territorial units of those countries. Since a consensus does not exist about the definition of artisanal fleet, in the present work it was considered as artisanal all the fishing vessels with an overall length lower or equal than 12m. Apart from a general description of the fishing fleet, several fact sheets by country are presented showing the relative importance of the various fleet segments in terms of number of vessels, gross tonnage and engine power. Higher detailed information was also produced by NUTS II regions. The analysis performed were based on the National Registers Fleet Databases as well as on own data.