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Fisheries

Marine Scotland manages quota for fish stocks and all inshore fisheries within the 12 nautical mile territorial water limit. It is also responsible for controlling the activities of fishing vessels and fishing effort (days spent at sea) in the North Sea, west of Scotland and Faroese waters.
In this section, citable data and reports relevant to fishing activities will be added.

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UK Open Government Licence (OGL)

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2009 - 2013 amalgamated VMS intensity layers

VMS data for all UK registered commercial fishing vessels (=15m length) for the period 2009-2013 in ICES areas VIa, VIb, IVa, IVb, IVc, IIa, VIId, and VIIa have been combined with landings information to develop GIS layers describing the spatial patterns of landings of the Scottish offshore fleet from within the Scottish zone of the UK Fishing limits (200 NM). This project covers Nephrops (mobile and static), Demersal (mobile and static), Pelagic (Mackerel and Herring), Crab, Lobster, scallop and squid fisheries.

doi: 
10.7489/1706-1
Citation: 
Kafas, A., Jones, G., Watret, R., Davies, I., Scott, B., 2013.2009 - 2013 amalgamated VMS intensity layers, GIS Data. Marine Scotland, Scottish Government. doi: 10.7489/1706-1
FieldValue
Publisher
Modified
2020-01-07
Release Date
2016-03-23
Identifier
9e01b862-6487-47fa-a519-6b0a7259600c
Spatial / Geographical Coverage Location
Scottish Waters
Temporal Coverage
2009-01-01 to 2013-12-31
License
UK Open Government Licence (OGL)
Data Dictionary

VMS data for all UK-registered commercial fishing vessels (≥15m length) for the period 2009 - 2013 in ICES areas VIa, VIb, IVa, IVb, IVc, IIa, VIId, and VIIa have been combined with landings information to develop GIS layers describing the spatial patterns of landings of the Scottish offshore fleet from within the Scottish zone of the UK Fishing limits (200nm). Initially, VMS pings were filtered by speed (0< speed <5 knots) to distinguish fishing from steaming. Then, fishing pings were merged with landings data (i.e. logbooks). To avoid landings mis-allocation, fishing pings were assigned to overlapping ICES rectangles. Reported landings data were broken down by reported day and the daily landings in each ICES rectangle were equally distributed for those assigned pings in that day. All pings within a 2.5 km2 radius of major fishing ports were removed since the speed threshold applied during filtering, included periods of relatively low speed as vessels approached port areas. Total trip landings associated with removed pings were re-allocated to all remaining pings of each trip. Non-parametric density analysis was selected over the commonly used quadrate count to develop GIS layers describing annual distribution of fisheries. A Gaussian kernel density estimation with a data-driven bandwidth selection approach (smoothed cross-validation) had been used resulting in high quality contour maps which form a better estimate of the spatial extent of fishing activity and intensity. Several years’ data have been amalgamated and effectively showed spatial patterns in high-resolution for both intense and infrequently fished areas throughout that period. Only the amalgamated layers of the last five years data is provided.

Contact Name
Marine Scotland
Contact Email
Public Access Level
Public