Victorian Commercial Fisheries Catch and Effort Summaries, 2003-2023

State Fisheries Victoria datasets contain aggregated summaries of commercial logbook data on catch and effort distribution in state marine and estuarine waters. The data was submitted to the Victorian Fisheries Authority and is aggregated by fishery and reporting block for areas with five or more boats, with data from fewer boats shown as confidential. Summaries are mapped using multi-year financial periods from 2003/04 to 2022/23.

Use Cases

• Analyzing spatial and temporal trends in commercial fishing effort based on aggregated logbook data.
• Modeling fish stock distribution and pressure based on reported catch summaries by fishery.
• Assessing the effectiveness of spatial management zones using confidential data masking for low-activity areas.
• Tracking changes in commercial fishing activity across defined financial year periods from 2003 to 2023.

Strengths

• Data covers a long temporal range, with summaries for periods spanning from 2003/04 to 2022/23.
• Includes a privacy-preserving aggregation method where data from areas with fewer than five boats is marked confidential.
• Summaries are mapped, indicating geospatial presentation of the data.

Limitations

• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• The primary file format listed is PNG, which suggests the data may be presented as static images rather than raw, machine-readable tables.

Provenance

Source

Victorian Fisheries Authority, via the Australian Ocean Data Network.

Collection Method

Aggregated from commercial fishing logbooks submitted by fishers.

Time Range

2003/04 to 2022/23, in defined financial year periods.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-07-13 20:26:15.177760; freshness should be verified.

Geography

State marine and estuarine waters of Victoria, Australia.