Fisheries Sensitivity Mapping and Displacement Modelling (FiSMaDiM) - Fisheries Sensitivity Index 2 - data product - average for 2012 to 2021

This data product comprises a Fisheries Sensitivity Index 2 (weighted) separately generated for eight gear groups which can be used to measure the economic importance of the fishing location to the industry including aspects of irreplaceability of the catch, economic dependency of the fishing activity on access to the site but also potential economic impact on the industry by removing access but also accounts for the fact that importance of a fishing location might vary over the years.

The index was applied to a dataset combining VMS (Vessel Monitoring System) and AIS (Automatic Identification System) data for UK fishing vessels for the years 2012-2021 in the UK EEZ (Exclusive Economic Zone), hence predominantly including information of vessels with length above 12m, combined with catch reports provided by MMO fisheries data using VMStools (Hintzen et al. 2012) and aggregated into a C-square grid (0.05 x 0.05 degree). An average of the index for all years (2012-2021), the most recent 5 years (2017-2021) and the most recent 3 years (2019-2021) are provided.

MMO (Marine Management Organisation) fisheries data was last updated November 2023.

Grid cells in which 3 or less vessels are fishing are denoted by -999 and actual value suppressed to acknowledge commercial sensitivity of the information.

In collaboration with a project advisory group, sensitivity indicators were developed seeking to capture the importance of the fishing location for the industry in terms of economic dependency, irreplaceability, etc. The individual indicators were summarized as sensitivity index 2 weighted by the fraction of years the area scored positive in the respective indicator for each gear group. For a detailed description of the method see Muench, A., Gibson, T.I., Mendo, T., Swift, R., James, M., Wright, K., Simmons, E. (2024): Mapping the sensitivity of fishing activities in the UK EEZ, Report produced for The Crown Estate, OWEC funded project: FiSMaDiM, 81 pages. Doi: https://doi.org/10.14465/2024.OWEC.002 & Muench, A., Mendo, T.; Ransijn, J.; Durbach, I. Gibson, T.; Swift, R., James, M: Fisheries Sensitivity Mapping and Displacement Modelling (FiSMaDiM) – Final Project Report. Report produced for The Crown Estate, OWEC funded project: FiSMaDiM, 35 pages. Doi: https://doi.org/10.14465/2024.OWEC.004.