Data for: Marine fish movement: home range sizes for commercially relevant species

Estimates of home range sizes for marine fishes are essential for
designing and assessing the effects of spatial wildlife conservation
policies and management interventions. However, in situ studies of marine
species movement are challenging and often expensive, resulting in a
paucity of data on the home range size of the vast majority of marine
fishes. Here, we develop a set of new datasets, which we have collectively
named Marine Fish Movement, that synthesises published empirically
evaluated home ranges reported for adult marine fishes that interact with
fisheries and leverage these data to estimate home range sizes for
unstudied species. The empirical data contain estimated home range sizes
(km2) for 193 species across 63 family groups from 179 studies published
between 1971 and 2022. We use a Random Forest regression model to estimate
home range sizes (km2) for 664 fished marine species currently lacking
home range estimates. Marine Fish Movement can inform spatial
interventions including the design and management of marine protected
areas and dynamic fisheries management to meet sustainability goals.