Mapping change in bottom trawling activity in the Mediterranean Sea through AIS data

Abstract A growing concern about the depletion of marine resources due to fishing overexploitation and degradation of ecosystems has been demonstrated over the last decade. Monitoring the spatial and temporal distribution of fishing activities is an important tool for fisheries management which can also be used by other sectors such as fisheries science, public authorities, policy-makers and marine spatial planning. In this paper we introduce the first map of fishing activity at a Mediterranean scale of EU and non-EU fishing vessels, extracted using Automatic Identification System ship tracking data. Fishing activity maps were produced for three different years with a spatial resolution of 0.01° × 0.01°. As a main result, for the first time, changes of bottom trawl fishing activities between two consecutive years were map for the whole Mediterranean Sea. The results confirmed the suitability of this monitoring system to obtain reliable information on the extent of bottom trawl fishing activities.

[1]  Brian Sullivan,et al.  Ending hide and seek at sea , 2016, Science.

[2]  D. Hunter,et al.  mixtools: An R Package for Analyzing Mixture Models , 2009 .

[3]  Michele Vespe,et al.  Vessel Pattern Knowledge Discovery from AIS Data: A Framework for Anomaly Detection and Route Prediction , 2013, Entropy.

[4]  Charu C. Aggarwal,et al.  A Survey of Text Clustering Algorithms , 2012, Mining Text Data.

[5]  A. Charles,et al.  Improving fisheries co-management through ecosystem-based spatial management: The Galapagos Marine Reserve , 2013 .

[6]  Daniel Goodman,et al.  Ecosystem-based fisheries management: some practical suggestions , 2007 .

[7]  Erik Olsen,et al.  Place-based management at different spatial scales , 2011 .

[8]  Paul J. Somerfield,et al.  Global analysis of response and recovery of benthic biota to fishing , 2006 .

[9]  Fabrizio Natale,et al.  Mapping EU fishing activities using ship tracking data , 2016, ArXiv.

[10]  Stefano Cataudella,et al.  Spatial indicators of fishing pressure: Preliminary analyses and possible developments , 2013 .

[11]  Simon Jennings,et al.  Developing reliable, repeatable, and accessible methods to provide high-resolution estimates of fishing-effort distributions from vessel monitoring system (VMS) data , 2010 .

[12]  Carrie V. Kappel,et al.  A Global Map of Human Impact on Marine Ecosystems , 2008, Science.

[13]  Simon Jennings,et al.  A size-based model of the impacts of bottom trawling on benthic community structure , 2002 .

[14]  F. Douvere.  The importance of marine spatial planning in advancing ecosystem-based sea use management , 2008 .

[15]  Fabrizio Natale,et al.  Mapping Fishing Effort through AIS Data , 2015, PloS one.

[16]  Michel J. Kaiser,et al.  The effects of fishing on marine ecosystems , 1998 .

[17]  David R. Hunter,et al.  mixtools: An R Package for Analyzing Mixture Models , 2009 .

[18]  Armin Dammann,et al.  Global Maritime Surveillance by Airliner-Based AIS Detection: Preliminary Analysis , 2015 .

[19]  Dario Tarchi,et al.  A novel anomaly detection approach to identify intentional AIS on-off switching , 2017, Expert Syst. Appl..

[20]  Stan Matwin,et al.  Improving Fishing Pattern Detection from Satellite AIS Using Data Mining and Machine Learning , 2016, PloS one.

[21]  Jason S. Link,et al.  Marine ecosystem assessment in a fisheries management context , 2002 .

[22]  M. Lengaigne,et al.  Patterns in the spatial distribution of Peruvian anchovy (Engraulis ringens) revealed by spatially explicit fishing data , 2008 .

[23]  Michel J. Kaiser,et al.  Cumulative impacts of seabed trawl disturbance on benthic biomass, production, and species richness in different habitats , 2006 .

[24]  Isidora Katara,et al.  Mismatch between VMS data temporal resolution and fishing activity time scales , 2017 .

[25]  Terje Jørgensen,et al.  Accuracy of VMS data from Norwegian demersal stern trawlers for estimating trawled areas in the Barents Sea , 2011 .

[26]  Kilian M. Stehfest,et al.  Mapping fisheries for marine spatial planning: gear-specific vessel monitoring system (VMS), marine conservation and offshore renewable energy , 2014 .

[27]  Zhiwei Xu,et al.  Mapping Global Shipping Density from AIS Data , 2016, Journal of Navigation.

[28]  T. Pitcher,et al.  Towards sustainability in world fisheries , 2002, Nature.

[29]  Gudrun Høye,et al.  Space-based AIS for global maritime traffic monitoring , 2008 .

[30]  K. Sherman,et al.  Variability And Management Of Large Marine Ecosystems , 1986 .

[31]  K. Stergiou,et al.  Can we define target species in Mediterranean trawl fisheries , 2003 .

[32]  Oscar Iribarne,et al.  Effects of a large-scale and offshore marine protected area on the demersal fish assemblage in the Southwest Atlantic , 2013 .

[33]  Richard L. Shelmerdine,et al.  Teasing out the detail: How our understanding of marine AIS data can better inform industries, developments, and planning , 2015 .

[34]  H. Hartley.  Maximum Likelihood Estimation from Incomplete Data , 1958 .

[35]  J. B. Jones.  Environmental impact of trawling on the seabed: A review , 1992 .

[36]  D. Rubin,et al.  Maximum likelihood from incomplete data via the EM - algorithm plus discussions on the paper , 1977 .