FISMADIM: UK Fishing Effort Gridded Data from VMS and AIS, 2012-2021

Annual estimated fishing effort data from 2012 to 2021, interpolated to 20-minute intervals for vessels active in the UK Exclusive Economic Zone. The data product was generated by the Marine Environmental Data & Information Network, delineating effort for eight gear groups primarily from vessels over 12 meters in length. Grid cells with 3 or fewer vessels are suppressed to protect commercial sensitivity.

Use Cases

• Modeling fishing pressure on marine ecosystems based on gridded effort data.
• Assessing vessel displacement patterns based on VMS and AIS positional data.
• Analyzing gear-specific fishing effort trends within the UK EEZ.
• Identifying areas of high commercial fishing activity while respecting data suppression rules.

Strengths

• Covers a decade of data from 2012 to 2021.
• Data is interpolated to provide vessel positions for every 20 minutes.
• Separately generated for eight distinct fishing gear groups.
• Includes some data from the inshore fleet and international vessels where available.

Limitations

• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Data may reflect geographic or source bias inherent to VMS and AIS coverage.

Provenance

Source

Marine Environmental Data & Information Network

Collection Method

Generated from Vessel Monitoring System (VMS) and Automatic Identification System (AIS) data.

Time Range

2012 to 2021

Freshness

Last updated 2026-06-11 08:12:36.747798; freshness should be verified.

Geography

UK Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ)