The Mid-Atlantic Ocean Data Portal has updated the “Fishing Footprints” dataset, provided by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Services (NOAA NMFS) to include a new five-year time period: 2020-2024.
The Portal previously included data from 2011-2015 and 2016-2020 in the Fishing theme. This update adds the most recent time period for which data are available from NOAA NMFS, and it replaces the older time periods with updated layers. Over 60 new layers from 2020-2024 were added across gear type and fisheries management plan landings and revenue.
The NOAA NMFS Fishing Footprints layers show commercial fishing activity organized by gear type and fishery management plan (FMP). Each gear type or FMP can be visualized as pounds of fish landed (landings) or the estimated value of those landings (revenue). With this update, users can now view data for three time periods: 2011-2015, 2016-2020, and 2020-2024.
Within the Fishing theme, users can click any of the FMP options (e.g. Atlantic Herring, Bluefish) under the “Fishery Specific” dropdown to view its collection of Fishing Footprints layers. Likewise, users can find all of the Fishing Footprints layers by gear type (e.g., Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission FMP, Dredge) by clicking on the “Multi-Fishery” dropdown. (Mobile app users: If new datasets don’t initially appear, click “Clear and Reload Map Layers” in Settings.) The data can be downloaded aggregated or by data product here.
The Mid-Atlantic Regional Council on the Ocean (MARCO) Northeast Regional Ocean Council (NROC) continue to work closely with the commercial fishing industry, fishery managers, and NOAA NMFS, incorporating their input on methods, visualization, and documentation as new data becomes available. MARCO and NROC encourage users of these data to read all related documentation and access the metadata for additional information on processing and use.