DOI: 10.25349/d9m907
title: The CALFISH database: A century of California's non-confidential fisheries landings and participation data

description: California's commercial and recreational fisheries support vibrant
 coastal economies and communities. Maintaining healthy fishing communities
 into the future requires a detailed understanding of their past. The
 California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) has been monitoring
 statewide fisheries landings and participation since 1916 and releases
 confidential versions of this data through authorized data requests and
 non-confidential summaries of this data in its quasi-annual landings
 reports. The non-confidential data published in the landings reports
 provide a rich history of California's fisheries but are scattered
 across 1000s of tables in 100 s of documents, limiting their accessibility
 to researchers, fishers, and other interested stakeholders. We reviewed
 the 58 landings reports published from 1929 to 2020 and extracted and
 carefully curated 13 datasets with long time series and wide public
 interest. These datasets include: (1) annual landings in pounds and value
 by port and species from 1941 to 2019; (2) annual number of commercial
 fishing vessels by length class from 1934 to 2020; (3) annual number of
 licensed commercial fishers by area of residence from 1916 to 2020; and
 (4) annual number of party boat (CPFV) vessels, anglers, and their total
 catch by species from 1936 to 2020. Notably, we harmonized port names,
 species common names, and species scientific names across all years and
 datasets. We make these curated datasets, collectively called the CALFISH
 database, publicly available to any interested stakeholder in the
 supplementary materials of this paper, on an open-access data-repository,
 and in the wcfish R package. These datasets can be used
 (1) to understand the historical context of California's fisheries;
 (2) for original research requiring only summaries of historical landings
 and participation data; and (3) to anticipate the likely characteristics
 of confidential data requested from the state. We conclude the paper by
 identifying key principles for increasing the accessibility and utility of
 historical fisheries landings and participation data.
description: The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) has been
 monitoring statewide fisheries landings and participation since 1916 and
 releases confidential versions of this data through authorized data
 requests and non-confidential summaries of this data in its quasi-annual
 landings reports. The non-confidential data published in the landings
 reports provide a rich history of California’s fisheries but are scattered
 across 1000s of tables in 100s of documents, limiting their accessibility
 to researchers, fishers, and other interested stakeholders. We reviewed
 the 58 landing series reports published by CDFW from 1928 to 2020 and
 extracted and curated 13 datasets of long length (years) and wide public
 interest. In general, these datasets describe landings and participation
 in commercial fishing and the CPFV sector of recreational fishing (i.e.,
 recreational fishing from private boats and shore are not described in
 these reports). We rigorously quality controlled all of the extracted data
 and enhanced the datasets with additional attributes of interest where
 possible. Notably, these enhancements included harmonizing common names
 across years and datasets and linking common names with scientific
 names.
description: The landings datasets curated below describe
 landings in terms of both volume (pounds) and value (dollars). The values
 reflect nominal ex-vessel values and have not been adjusted for inflation.
 The volumes are reported “without regard to condition” and reflect the
 volumes reported on the original landings receipt (i.e., they have not
 been universally converted to round weights). Although most fish and
 shellfish are landed in round (whole) condition, some species may be
 eviscerated (gutted), dressed, or beheaded before being brought ashore,
 but this is not recorded in the data. This is especially common for
 barracuda, shark, salmon, sablefish, white seabass, and swordfish. A few
 market categories do include descriptions of condition (i.e., Pacific
 herring roe, Pacific herring roe on kelp, Chinook/coho salmon roe,
 spider/sheep crab claws, and crab claws) but there is no guidance on how
 to interpret these descriptions. We provide an attribute for condition
 with four options -- roe, roe on kelp, claws, and not specified -- but
 caution against using these attributions without further clarification
 from the state. The CDFW datasets
 report landings by market categories that are not always species specific.
 Furthermore, these market categories are described using common names
 rather than scientific names. Although a key for relating common and
 scientific names is provided at the beginning of each Fish Bulletin-hosted
 landings report, the conventions for common names and alignment with
 scientific names varies throughout the landings series. We rigorously
 harmonized common names across years and datasets and associated common
 names with updated scientific names with guidance from the Fish Bulletin
 species keys. To ease analysis, maintain transparency, and allow users to
 make different decisions regarding species identities, every dataset with
 species-specific information includes the original common name, the
 harmonized common name, and the updated scientific name. We also provide a
 key for appending additional taxonomic information (i.e., phylogenetic
 groups and/or commercial categories) to any of the curated datasets.
 Overall, the landings data include 397 market categories representing 12
 phyla, 25 classes, 68 orders, 130 families, and 200 genera.
 Finally, many of the datasets published in
 the landings series report statistics for individual fishing ports or for
 groups of fishing ports called “port complexes”. However, the naming
 conventions for ports and the delineation of port complexes varies
 throughout the landings series. To ease analysis, we harmonized port and
 port complex attributes across years and datasets. In most cases,
 harmonizing port names involved straightforward decisions (e.g., “Bay”,
 “Bay (Bodega)”, and “Bodega Bay” all refer to Bodega Bay). However, in
 some cases, nuanced decisions were required. Namely, we decided that
 references to “Tomales Bay (Marshall)”, “Princeton (Half Moon Bay)”, and
 “Point Reyes (Drakes Bay)” imply “Tomales Bay & Marshall”,
 “Princeton & Half Moon Bay”, and “Point Reyes & Drakes
 Bay”. This decision was based on the fact that, in some years, statistics
 are separated for these commonly paired ports. We used slashes to denote
 grouped ports (e.g., “Tomales Bay/Marshall” indicates both Tomales Bay and
 Marshall together) in the harmonized port names. We retained the original
 port name in the curated datasets to make our decisions transparent and to
 allow users to make different decisions. The geographical delineation of
 port complexes varied throughout the landings series (Figure S1) with: 13
 complexes defined by county lines in FB 15-44 (1926-1930), 8 complexes
 defined by natural landmarks in FB 44-49 (1931-1935), 7 complexes defined
 by county lines in FB 57-173 (1936-1986), and 9 complexes defined by
 county lines in FB 181 and the website-hosted reports (1987-2019). We used
 the recent 9-complex typology in the curated datasets but provide a key to
 summarize data based on the older typologies. This key also includes the
 coordinates (lat/long) of each port.