DOI: 10.5061/dryad.70rxwdc3d
title: Data from: Monitoring temporal and spatial trends of illegal and legal fishing in Canada's marine conservation areas using vessel tracking datasets

description: Expansion of marine conservation areas (CA) necessitates
 resource-efficient and achievable strategies for monitoring and evaluation
 of ongoing fishing activity at national levels. To demonstrate and explore
 such a strategy, we conducted the first extensive analysis of fishing
 activity within Canada’s static, geographically defined marine CAs with
 fishing regulations (n = 264 areas). We used eight years of Automatic
 Identification System data to estimate fishing effort across three oceans
 and conducted temporal and spatial comparisons specific to each CA’s
 regulations and enactment date. We addressed questions on CA
 effectiveness, fishing displacement, fishing the line behavior, and
 relationships between fishing activity and spatial CA attributes. We
 estimated 22,000 hours of fishing activity within CAs after enactments,
 22% of which was identified as illegal. CA effectiveness appeared to be
 lowest for Atlantic CAs based on illegal fishing effort density within
 CAs. Fishing displacement and fishing the line was generally not apparent
 as buffer areas around CAs tended to already have higher fishing effort
 prior to enactments. CA effectiveness and responses to CAs varied
 considerably, as was visualized using timeseries plots and maps developed
 for each CA. Our evaluation of a nation’s full suite of CAs provides
 managers with a foundation and approach for continued monitoring and
 reporting.
description: See Iacarella, J.
 C., Burke,
 L., Clyde,
 G., Wicks,
 A., Clavelle,
 T., Dunham,
 A., Rubidge,
 E., & Woods,
 P. (2023). Application of AIS- and flyover-based
 methods to monitor illegal and legal fishing in Canada's Pacific
 marine conservation areas. <em>Conservation Science and
 Practice</em>, 5(6), e12926 and Iacarella, J. C., Burke, L., Clyde, G., Wicks, A., Clavelle, T., Dunham, A., Rubidge, E., & Woods, P. (2023). Monitoring temporal and spatial trends
 of illegal and legal fishing in marine conservation areas across
 Canada's three oceans. <em>Conservation Science
 and Practice</em>, 5(6), e12919.
description: Data provided are specific to the analyses conducted on AIS-based
 fishing vessel activity conducted within and surrounding Canada’s static,
 geographically defined marine CAs. There are three
 datasets: Marine CAs and the buffer extents
 that include, the perimeter at 100 m inside and outside the CA, a 1 km
 buffer extending outside the CA, and a 5 km buffer area extending 1-5 km
 from the CA. There are shapefiles for the CAs’ and associated buffers for
 the final time interval when a new CA was enacted during the timeframe of
 the AIS dataset (2019-08-21). AIS-based fishing
 effort hours per month from 2012-2019 for each fishing activity category
 (i.e., illegal, legal, and remainder) specific to the CAs’ extents, the
 perimeter at 100 m inside and outside the CA, a 1 km buffer extending
 outside the CA, and a 5 km buffer area extending 1-5 km from the CA. There
 are four csv files of fishing effort hours per month, one for the
 CAs' extents and the others for each associated buffer.
 AIS-based fishing effort hours per year from 2012-2019 for each
 fishing gear class. There is a raster layer for each fishing gear class
 identified from 2012-2019.