New System Maps and Charts West Coast Fisheries Data to Inform Decisions on Ocean Uses

A new system combines decades of fisheries data and statistics to visualize West Coast fisheries and how they have changed over time.

The Pacific Fishing Effort Mapping Project was led by researchers at NOAA, state wildlife departments, and the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission. It consolidates location and catch data from fishing vessels with landings and economic figures into revealing maps and charts of major West Coast fisheries. It then shows how they may be affected by other ocean uses. For instance, the new system turns data on the catch value of groundfish into a landscape of colors depicting the West Coast, where the highest value catch areas stand out boldly.

"By combining all this data into one place to visualize it all together, we can begin to see patterns, tradeoffs and comparisons that we might not notice otherwise," said Lisa Pfeiffer, a research economist at the Northwest Fisheries Science Center who helped lead development of the system. Funded by NOAA and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, it is designed to inform marine planning and compare different uses of the ocean and their implications for fisheries.

The system can help inform progress on NOAA Fisheries' National Seafood Strategy and in support of the Executive Order on Restoring American Seafood Competitiveness .

The displays now available to the public have already helped inform international dialogue, said Aaron Berger, a research mathematical statistician at the Science Center. His team used an early version of the displays to help U.S. and Canadian managers and industry understand a in the distribution of Pacific hake, also known as whiting. The shift coincided with several years of lower catches in Canada that fell short of what managers had expected under the treaty that governs the international fishery.

"The tool has been helpful to view, understand, and communicate fleet-specific spatial fishing patterns and how they change over time," Berger said.

The system creates convenient dashboards for each fishery. It displays the geographic concentrations of fishing for the species across the West Coast, the volume landed, and its economic value-all charted by year. Users can also focus on particular areas of the ocean, such as those proposed for wind energy or other types of development.

The approach consolidates data from fishing observers, logbooks, landings, electronic and vessel monitoring, and surveys of the fishery into the dashboard displays. At its heart is a geographic grid covering waters off the West Coast. It can display fisheries revenue, volume, or other values down to a resolution of about 1 nautical mile, or lower resolution if confidential data is involved.

The new displays will support the California Department and Fish and Wildlife's Statewide Offshore Renewable Energy Project in reviewing proposals for effects on fisheries. "The California Department of Fish and Wildlife is looking forward to using the data products from the project to inform future offshore wind projects and our permitting responsibilities," said Jay Staton, acting supervisor of the project.

It can also display connections between coastal communities and fisheries by displaying where vessels land catches from different fisheries, for instance, creating demand for processing facilities.

The new system draws the locations of fishing vessels from automated beacons they carry, but protects the confidentiality of their preferred fishing areas. The system displays locations only if they are occupied by three or more vessels, and advises users what proportion of data is missing for confidentiality reasons.

Compiling the data in the system ensures that planning for ocean uses from sea floor exploration to energy transmission considers key areas for important West Coast fisheries, Pfeiffer said.

"We now have an efficient way to bring together data from different sources and make it more useful to managers and decisionmakers," she said. "The goal is to provide a foundation for choices that we have between different ocean uses and how they may interact."