Describing U.S. West Coast Commercial Fishing Communities by Targeted Fish Species and Commonly Used Fishing Gears

           The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (as amended thru 2007) requires various levels of social and cultural information regarding fishing communities. The first step taken by social scientists at the National Marine Fisheries Service was the completion of data collection and the development of short and long form profiles for fishing communities.  These profiles provide a snapshot of fishing communities by their geography.

            This research aims to build upon on the existing profiling efforts.  Additional layers of analysis expand our understanding of fishing communities.  For example, species specialization, the mix of species targeted, as well as gear utilization all contribute to more in-depth descriptions of commercial fishing activity in communities.  This also serves to provide information in a way which will be more useful to fisheries managers. Commercial fishing data is analyzed to 1) determine which fishing communities are important to a specific fisheries management plan (FMP), for example the Groundfish FMP, 2) to determine of those communities that are important to a specific FMP, what other fisheries are important to those communities, and 3) what are the gears utilized to both fish within the FMP fishery and between FMP fisheries. 

            The organization of data in this manner will allow fisheries managers to target specific information about communities relevant to fisheries of interest.  An overview of the analysis and examples of the results including GIS mapping will be discussed.