ScotMap: Inshore Fishing Activity and Economic Value for Scotland (2007-2011)

ScotMap is a Marine Scotland project providing spatial data on commercial fishing activity for Scottish vessels under 15 meters. The data were collected from 2007 to 2011 via face-to-face interviews with vessel owners and operators. It aggregates information on monetary value, relative economic importance, and vessel and crew usage in Scottish waters.

Use Cases

• Modeling spatial conflict between fisheries and other marine activities based on the mapped fishing zones.
• Analyzing the economic contribution of small-scale fishing fleets based on the monetary value and relative importance data.
• Planning marine protected areas or spatial management measures based on the distribution of fishing activity and crew employment.
• Conducting time-series analysis of inshore fishing patterns and economic reliance for the 2007-2011 period.

Strengths

• Data collection involved direct, face-to-face interviews with vessel owners and operators, which likely improves accuracy.
• Provides multiple aggregated metrics: monetary value, relative importance, and vessel/crew usage.
• Covers a defined five-year time range from 2007 to 2011.

Limitations

• Row count and file size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for large-scale analysis.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Last update date is unknown; data freshness beyond 2011 is unverified.

Provenance

Source

Marine Scotland, a directorate of the Scottish Government.

Collection Method

Collected during face-to-face interviews with individual vessel owners and operators.

Time Range

2007 to 2011

Freshness

Data reflects activity from 2007-2011; last update date is unknown.

Geography

Seas around Scotland