Survey data for parameterizing the habitat capacity model of the ecosystem model West Florida Shelf (WFS) Reef fish Ecospace

This dataset contains all of the survey data that are used to fit statistical habitat models whose predictions are employed to parameterize the habitat capacity model of the ecosystem model West Florida Shelf (WFS) Reef fish Ecospace. These survey data include processed fisheries-dependent and fisheries-independent data collected all over the Gulf of Mexico using a random sampling design between 2000 and 2016. Fisheries-dependent and fisheries-independent data were requested to different institutes in 2016. The present dataset provides encounter/non-encounter data for specific functional groups/species/life stages, as well as the geographic coordinates (longitude, latitude) of the sites at which these encounter/non-encounter data were collected, and the year and month during which these data were collected. Given that some of the fisheries-dependent data included in the present dataset are confidential, the identity of the surveys (i.e., their name) is not revealed here; instead, numbers (i.e., 1, 2, 3) are provided to indicate that the data for the functional group/species/life stage under consideration come from different surveys.