Maritimes Region Fishery Footprint Maps for Longline and Trap Gear, 2002-2018

2002–2017 data for bottom longline and trap gear and 2003–2018 data for pelagic longline gear show commercial fishery footprints in the Scotian Shelf, Bay of Fundy, and Georges Bank. The dataset, produced by Fisheries and Oceans Canada, aggregates logbook effort and vessel monitoring system data into 2-minute grid cells for mapping. It is intended for use in marine spatial planning and ecological risk assessment.

Use Cases

• Modeling spatial overlap of fisheries with sensitive habitats based on aggregated effort per grid cell.
• Assessing temporal fishing patterns based on quarterly and monthly composite data layers.
• Supporting marine spatial planning decisions based on long-term commercial fishery footprint maps.
• Evaluating risk to large pelagics based on pelagic longline vessel activity data.

Strengths

• Covers a 15-year period for bottom gear (2002-2017) and a 16-year period for pelagic gear (2003-2018).
• Includes data from multiple sources: commercial logbooks and vessel monitoring systems (VMS).
• Spatial data is aggregated into standardized 2-minute grid cells for analysis.
• Includes multi-year and temporal (quarterly/monthly) composite layers for different gear types.

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/temporal bias inherent to the source region and time period.

Provenance

Source

Fisheries and Oceans Canada

Collection Method

Aggregated from commercial fishery logbooks and speed-filtered vessel monitoring system (VMS) data.

Time Range

2002-2017 for bottom longline and trap gear; 2003-2018 for pelagic longline gear.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-24 08:40:52.180140; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Scotian Shelf, Bay of Fundy, Georges Bank in NAFO Divisions 4VWX and Canadian portions of 5Y and 5Z.