Historical UK Fisheries Catch and Effort Charts, 1913-1981

1913 to 1981 (excluding World War periods) of annual and monthly fisheries statistics for British commercial fleets. The PDF charts, held by the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (Cefas), show landings, catch rates per species, and fishing effort at a fine spatial scale. Data is aggregated by 1° longitude by 30' latitude rectangles and larger ICES fishing areas.

Use Cases

• Modeling historical fish stock abundance based on catch rates per species.
• Analyzing spatial fishing effort patterns for the British commercial fleet.
• Studying long-term changes in marine ecosystems based on multi-decadal landings data.
• Mapping historical fishing activity based on ICES rectangle-level statistics.

Strengths

• Covers a long temporal range of nearly seven decades (1913-1981).
• Provides fine spatial resolution at the ICES rectangle level (1° longitude by 30' latitude).
• Includes multiple metrics: landings, catch rates per species, and fishing effort.

Limitations

• Data format is PDF, which may require extraction and digitization for computational analysis.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Provenance

Source

Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (Cefas), Lowestoft, UK.

Collection Method

Unpublished historical 'Statistical Charts' compiled by Cefas.

Time Range

1913-1981 (excluding both World Wars).

Freshness

Historical data; last update unknown.

Geography

UK waters, generally equivalent to ICES fishing areas.