Description: Fishery: Squid/Mackerel/Butterfish (SMB)<br/>
Time Period: 2015-2019<br/>
Filtered for Confidentiality: 2.05%<br/>
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This dataset broadly characterizes the density of commercial fishing vessel activity from January 2015 through December 2019 for vessels in the northeastern U.S. that are required by NOAA Fisheries to carry a Vessel Monitoring Systems (VMS) and have declared into the Squid/Mackerel/Butterfish fishery. The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) describes VMS as a satellite surveillance system primarily used to monitor the location and movement of commercial fishing vessels in the U.S. This dataset does not distinguish between areas of fishing activity versus transit. Therefore, ports show up as high-density regions, despite little to no fishing activity at those locations. Raw VMS data from NMFS were processed into geospatial point products and analyzed to create density grids for select fisheries. The point data were filtered to remove vessel positions which did not meet the "Rule of Three" criteria required by NMFS due to data confidentiality. A total of 2.05% of these VMS records were filtered for confidentiality. More information on the Rule of Three is available within the metadata. Data values are standardized and are best interpreted qualitatively. An absence of data does not indicate an absence of fishing activity.
Definition Expression: N/A
Copyright Text: National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) Vessel Monitoring Systems (VMS), RPS