Developing the use of satellite fishing Vessel Monitoring System data in spatial management

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Fishing effort data, derived from Vessel Monitoring System (VMS) data and overflight observations, were used to quantify the relative intensity of demersal trawling on different seabed habitats in UK parts of the Irish Sea, based on 100% coverage vector maps of coastal and offshore marine landscapes. VMS data are used throughout European waters to track the location of fishing vessels >24m in length using GPS, and contribute to the monitoring, control and surveillance of fisheries. This paper describes the processing methods of VMS data used to identify the locations where fishing activity (rather than steaming) occurs, and to calculate fishing effort distributions using kernel density estimation in Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Complimentary data obtained from the observations of fishery protection aircraft were used to infer the distribution of the inshore fleets. Results suggest that vessel activity in the Irish Sea by >24m trawlers is most intense on extensive coarse sediment plains and in deep-water mud basins, and that some smaller features, particularly mud basins, sea mounds and gravel banks, are fished intensively by smaller vessels. The implications of these results for the selection and protection of habitats and species of nature conservation interest are discussed