Defining fishing grounds with vessel monitoring system data

Methods for defining fishing grounds to support marine spatial planning and management are developed, applied, and compared. The methods are broadly applicable and repeatable because they use vessel monitoring system (VMS) data that are archived and increasingly accessible. For several fleets at regional and national scales, an attempt is made to assess how the choice of criteria for defining grounds influences (i) size, shape, and location, (ii) overlap among grounds, and (iii) the extent to which annual and multi-annual patterns of fishing activity describe grounds used seasonally or by individual vessels. The results show that grounds defined by excluding infrequently fished margins (areas with <10% of total fishing activity) are typically 50% smaller than total fished area. However, landings weight or value (LWV) per unit activity can be higher at the margins, with 10% of activity usually accounting for 10-20% of LWV. The removal of fishing activity in the margins, as a consequence of regulation or fleet behaviour, would lead to disproportionately greater reductions in interactions with other fisheries, sectors, and the environment. Accessible high-resolution information on the anatomy of all fishing grounds would better inform debates on the allocation and the use of marine space and the integration of fisheries and environmental management.