Data from: Monitoring temporal and spatial trends of illegal and legal fishing in Canada's marine conservation areas using vessel tracking datasets

Expansion of marine conservation areas (CA) necessitates resource-efficient and achievable strategies for monitoring and evaluation of ongoing fishing activity at national levels. To demonstrate and explore such a strategy, we conducted the first extensive analysis of fishing activity within Canada's static, geographically defined marine CAs with fishing regulations (n = 264 areas). We used eight years of Automatic Identification System data to estimate fishing effort across three oceans and conducted temporal and spatial comparisons specific to each CA's regulations and enactment date. We addressed questions on CA effectiveness, fishing displacement, fishing the line behavior, and relationships between fishing activity and spatial CA attributes. We estimated 22,000 hours of fishing activity within CAs after enactments, 22% of which was identified as illegal. CA effectiveness appeared to be lowest for Atlantic CAs based on illegal fishing effort density within CAs. Fishing displacement and fishing the line was generally not apparent as buffer areas around CAs tended to already have higher fishing effort prior to enactments. CA effectiveness and responses to CAs varied considerably, as was visualized using timeseries plots and maps developed for each CA. Our evaluation of a nation's full suite of CAs provides managers with a foundation and approach for continued monitoring and reporting.