Spatial Fishing Patterns Exhibited by Regional Shrimp Fishing Fleets in the Gulf of Mexico

At the beginning of the National Marine Fisheries Services’ (NMFS) Electronic Logbook (ELB) Program for measuring fishing effort in the Gulf of Mexico penaeid shrimp fishery, a group of industry and NMFS scientists determined that the fishing patterns could be characterized by dividing the fishery into nine regional fleets. ELB effort data from each fleet were summarized by percentage of total effort located in each of 12 spatial cells (4 regions by 3 depths) for each of three trimesters (January-April, May-August, September to December) for each year 2005-2010. The 36 time/space cells are the same as used by NMFS to determine total effort. Similarity analyses were used to evaluate differences in regional fishing patterns and consistency of the observed fishing patterns across years. With the exception of the Florida Panhandle fleet, and to a lesser extent Alabama, regional fleets were found to fish in very distinct and consistent patterns for the same seasons across years (percent similarities averaged 70-88%). In contrast, similarity across fleets was low, and tended to be lower the farther separated the two fleets were geographically.