Fisheries Sensitivity Mapping and Displacement Modelling (FISMADIM) - Fisheries Context Providing Information (average 2012-2021)

These data product layers provide context for the Fisheries Sensitivity Mapping and Displacement Modelling data products. The gridded layers cover gear concentration, inter-annual variability and seasonal variability for UK vessels fishing the UK Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). 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 either summarized as fisheries sensitivity index or classified as context providing layers.

Context providing layers describe:

(1) Average concentration (Herfindahl-Hirschman Index) of gear groups harvesting the grid cells.

(2) Interannual variability of fishing activity measured as average number of years the grid cell was harvested within the years 2012-2021 by the gear group.

(3) Interannual variability of fishing activity measured as standard deviation of annual landing values for the years 2012-21 by gear group.

(4) Seasonal behaviour indicated as average number of months the grid cells was harvested within the years 2012-2021 by vessels in the gear group.

(5) Seasonal behaviour measured as standard deviation of monthly landing values for the years 2021-2021 by gear group.

Context providing layers were generated based on a dataset combining VMS and AIS data for UK fishing vessels for the years 2012-2021 in the UK EEZ, 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 (0.05x0.05degree). 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. 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/0.14465/2024.OWEC.002.

MMO 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.