Workshop on Geo-Spatial Data for Small-Scale Fisheries (WKSSFGEO)

Several case studies using this kind of data, obtained from national data collection programmes or research projects were presented during the workshop. There was a large variety of approaches to estimate fishing effort using high resolution data being implemented by the different countries, most still under development, which led to important and fruitful discussions to start building a common framework. During the workshop, it became clear that a common terminology was essential and should be established, and therefore the group built a terminology table based on definitions found in legislation and reports. The main steps needed to estimate fishing effort were summarised, and for each step, the different approaches were listed, namely for: (1) data sources; (2) data pre-processing; (3) identifying fishing trips; (4) methods to infer fishing activity; (5) model validation and procedures and (6) fishing effort indicators. Both methods using statistical procedures and machine learning have been addressed. Finally, r scripts to do the procedures were assembled and stored in a GitHub repository. It was concluded that in the case of SSF and static gears, higher resolution tracking data (seconds-minutes) is required to properly estimate fishing effort, and that more work is needed to further develop and explore the methods to classify these type of data into fishing activities for different types of gears. The current workshop should be seen as a starting point. One of the objectives of the WKSSFGEO was to provide information, show the gaps and highlight the important aspects for the EU-legislation on the collection of this type of data (SSF tracking) which is currently being developed, which was fully addressed.