Global Fishing Effort by Vessel and Gear from 1950 to 2017

Global estimates of fishing effort derived from country-level fleet capacity data spanning 68 years from 1950 to 2017. The dataset, hosted by the Australian Ocean Data Network, includes metrics like vessel count, engine power, and gross tonnage, aggregated at EEZ, LME, and FAO levels. It was developed using a method published by Rousseau et al. (2019) to inform marine ecosystem models and study the socio-ecological evolution of fishing.

Use Cases

• Modeling historical fishing pressure on marine ecosystems based on annual effort estimates.
• Analyzing the evolution of fishing gear and fleet capacity over time.
• Assessing the socio-ecological implications of global fisheries based on functional group targeting.

Strengths

• Covers a 68-year time range from 1950 to 2017.
• Provides global coverage with estimates at multiple spatial aggregation levels (EEZ, LME, FAO).
• Derived from a published scientific method (Rousseau et al., 2019).

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data may reflect geographic or reporting bias inherent to the source country-level data.

Provenance

Source

Australian Ocean Data Network

Collection Method

Estimates derived from publicly available country-level fishing fleet capacity data, following Rousseau et al. (2019).

Time Range

1950-2017

Freshness

Last updated 2026-07-10 00:35:42.392534; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Global, aggregated at Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), Large Marine Ecosystem (LME), and Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) levels.