Nutrient Extraction - Distribution Matrices

This zipped (7z) folder contains the distribution matrices generated for estimating nutrient extractions in the manuscript titled: <i>Fisheries disrupt marine nutrient cycles through biomass extraction</i> by González Ortiz et al. 2025. The Sea Around Us database (https://www.seaaroundus.org/) contains total catches (tonnes year^-1) for each species and taxonomic group caught in an EEZ or high seas region between 1960 and 2018 resulting in a catch database of over 6.7 million entries. For each entry’s species/taxonomic group, we randomly sampled 100 composition values for each nutrient (carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus) from a normal distribution characterized by each species/taxonomic group’s mean nutrient compositions and standard deviations. These 100 random composition values were then multiplied by the total landed amount, as reported by the Sea Around Us, to generate 100 estimates of nutrient extraction for each entry in the catch database. These 100 estimates for each nutrient are contained within the three large CSV files in the zipped folder.From these 100 estimates of nutrient extractions, we took the mean as the estimated carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus extraction values for each of the 6.7 million entries in the database.