Space-Based Fisheries Management
Unfortunately, space-based fisheries management is the most poorly represented
area in the GIS literature. This is principally due to the “in-house”
use of this approach by management agencies and, in many instances, the
applications are not suitable for publication in the peer-reviewed literature.
It is these systems that have the largest potential as management
tools within the public sector, including management and government agencies,
as they can incorporate real-time spatially referenced data capture
(Hinds 1992). Because the enforcement of fishing effort is a direct way to
mitigate fishing impacts on the marine ecosystem as well as fish resources,
fisheries managers have been giving some priority to monitoring the locations
of fishing vessels. With this in mind, GIS software, which allows for
global positioning system (GPS) integration to an onboard computer has
been developed and was demonstrated during the Fishery GIS Symposium
in 1999 (Simpson and Anderson 1999). Some GPS capability is used by
fishermen for relocation to good fishing grounds by analyzing historical
data using GIS (Simpson and Anderson 1999).
Data sources include vessel monitoring systems, catch-reporting/logging
(Meaden and Kemp 1996, Kemp and Meaden 1998, Long et al. 1994a),
and remote-sensed imagery of fishing areas (Kiyofuji et al. 2000, Peña et al.
2000). Foucher et al. (1998) described a prototype GIS that uses simple
overlaying tools to quantify areas of conflict between competing fisheries
for the octopus (Octobrachiata) and groundfish stocks off Senegal. Unfortunately
the data used by many of these systems is often entered from
handwritten or hard copy catch return reports. This implies a lag from
event to the time at which it could be used as information. There is a definite
move toward collecting the data in a digital format and transmitting it
from vessels still at sea, increasing the adaptability of the GIS (Meaden
1993, Pollitt 1994, Meaden and Kemp 1996).