Cumulative Fishing Effort in Atlantic and Eastern Arctic Canada Waters 2005-2023

Fisheries and Oceans Canada provides cumulative commercial fishing effort data for Canada's Atlantic and Eastern Arctic waters from 2005 to 2023. The data, derived from logbook and vessel monitoring system records, is standardized into percentiles where the top 20th percentile indicates cells of most intense fishing activity.

Use Cases

• Analyze spatial overlap between fishing effort percentiles and Significant Benthic Areas (SiBAs) for conservation planning.
• Identify cells with fishing intensity values ≥20 to map areas of highest cumulative commercial fishing pressure.
• Track changes in standardized fishing effort percentiles over the 2005-2023 period to assess policy impacts.
• Model potential conservation concerns by correlating geospatial fishing effort layers with benthic habitat data.

Strengths

• Covers a 19-year time range from 2005 to 2023, providing a long-term view of fishing activity.
• Data is standardized into percentiles, with a defined threshold (top 20th percentile, values ≥20) for identifying high-intensity fishing cells.
• Based on authoritative commercial data sources including logbooks and vessel monitoring systems (VMS).
• Supports a specific policy implementation process for managing fishing impacts on sensitive benthic areas.

Limitations

• The underlying scientific methodology (from Research Document 2018/15) has not been updated since its 2018 publication.
• The dataset's structure, including specific column names and row counts, is not detailed in the available metadata.
• Data availability is dependent on new logbook and VMS data becoming available for updates.

Provenance

Source

Fisheries and Oceans Canada

Collection Method

Derived from commercial fishing logbook and vessel monitoring system (VMS) data, processed using a standardized percentile methodology.

Time Range

2005 to 2023

Freshness

Last updated on March 24, 2026.

Geography

Canada's Atlantic and Eastern Arctic waters