Victorian Commercial Fisheries Catch and Effort Summaries by Reporting Block, 2003-2023

Aggregated summaries of Victorian logbook data on catch and effort distribution for commercial fisheries in state marine and estuarine waters. The data was recorded and submitted to Victorian Fisheries Authority by commercial fishers and is mapped using 5-year financial year periods from 2003/04 to 2022/23. Data is aggregated to produce summaries of total catch and effort by fishery at reporting blocks where 5 boats or more operate, with areas of fewer boats shown as confidential.

Use Cases

• Analyzing spatial and temporal trends in commercial fishing catch based on aggregated reporting block data.
• Modeling fishing effort distribution to inform marine resource management and zoning.
• Assessing potential impacts of commercial fisheries on specific marine ecosystems over multi-year periods.

Strengths

• Data covers a substantial time range, using 5-year financial year periods from 2003/04 to 2022/23.
• Includes a confidentiality protocol for areas with low operator counts (less than 5 boats), which may protect fisher privacy.
• Aggregated from primary logbook data submitted directly by commercial fishers to the Victorian Fisheries Authority.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Data is aggregated and confidential for low-activity areas, limiting fine-grained spatial analysis.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for certain modeling tasks.

Provenance

Source

Victorian Fisheries Authority via the Australian Ocean Data Network.

Collection Method

Aggregated from commercial fisher logbook submissions.

Time Range

2003/04 to 2022/23, in 5-year financial year periods and a single year (2022/23).

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-28 13:09:36.938150; freshness should be verified.

Geography

State marine and estuarine waters of Victoria, Australia.