Commercial Fishing Communities-at-Sea with Servicesheds and Climate Risk, 1996-2014

Lauren A. Rogers from Stanford University created a dataset describing communities-at-sea, which are peer-groups of commercial fishing vessels sharing a gear type and home port. It was derived from Vessel Trip Report (VTR) data for trips reported by vessel captains between 1996 and 2014. The dataset includes measurements for the size of servicesheds (customary fishing grounds) and climate change risk exposure scores for these communities.

Use Cases

• Modeling climate change vulnerability for fishing fleets based on community risk exposure scores.
• Analyzing the spatial footprint of fishing communities by mapping servicesheds derived from trip reports.
• Studying fleet segmentation and behavior by comparing communities defined by gear type and vessel size.
• Assessing the overlap between customary fishing grounds and areas of high environmental change.

Strengths

• Data spans a 19-year period from 1996 to 2014, providing a long-term view.
• Based on Vessel Trip Report data, a primary source reported directly by vessel captains.
• Communities are defined by concrete attributes like gear type, port, and vessel length (e.g., >/< 65 feet for trawlers).

Limitations

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

Provenance

Source

Vessel Trip Report (VTR) data for commercial fishing trips.

Collection Method

Data reported by vessel captains, processed to determine communities-at-sea, servicesheds, and risk scores.

Time Range

1996 to 2014

Geography

Likely focuses on U.S. waters, given the mention of New Bedford, MA, but specific geographic coverage is not detailed.