Spring Herring Importance Areas in the Magdalen Islands from Fisher Interviews (1996-2021)

Fisheries and Oceans Canada and the Magdalen Islands ZIP Committee produced this dataset by interviewing experienced fishermen between January and April 2024. The resulting 16 vector layers map four types of herring observations across four distinct time periods, from before 1996 to 2021. Polygons are classified by the number of fishermen reporting each location, indicating the relative importance of areas over time.

Use Cases

• Identify critical spawning grounds for herring based on fishermen's ecological knowledge of spawning areas.
• Analyze changes in good fishing sites over four defined time periods from before 1996 to 2021.
• Assess spatial overlap and consensus among fishermen for areas of high herring concentration.
• Support marine refuge characterization by mapping areas of importance for a key species.

Strengths

• Data is temporally contextualized across four distinct periods, enabling change-over-time analysis.
• Polygons are classified by the number of reporting fishermen, providing a measure of consensus or relative importance.
• Produced through a documented methodology involving direct mapping by experienced fishermen.

Limitations

• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.

Provenance

Source

Fisheries and Oceans Canada | Pêches et Océans Canada

Collection Method

Interviews with experienced fishermen, who identified locations on digital maps.

Time Range

Observations cover periods from before 1996 to 2021; interviews conducted in 2024.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-15 17:00:58.786161; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Magdalen Islands archipelago, Quebec, Canada.