(1) stands for French Bottom Trawl deep-water species (intercatch ID, to be checked)
VMS data of all vessel entering Scottish waters were made available to Marine Scotland – Science. Marine Scotland is allowed to provide "data products" i.e. result of analysis but not the data. This is most probably appropriate to estimate fishing footprint and VMS based fishing effort.
[Please review any analyses of VMS data carried out for fleets fishing your stock.]
No previous analyses of VMS data was made. VMS data have no been available for scientific projects before 2009. A time series of VMS data from 2003 to 2008 has been made available and updates will be provided yearly. This is in line with the requirement from the Data collection regulation. Charts of the effort distribution of the French deep-water licensed fleet show that (i) the fleet operates on deep-water grounds to the west of Scotland, as expected, (2) a significant proportion of the effort of licensed vessels is spend on the shelf, namely in mixed trawl fisheries in the Celtic Sea and in saithe fishery in the Northern North Sea.
Figure 4.1.4.2a. Number of VMS observations of the French deep-water licensed fleet 2003-2007.
Figure 4.1.4.2b. Estimation of the spatial distribution of fishing effort from the French deep-water licensed fleet, estimated niumber of hours fishing by 10’ x 10’ rectangles multiplied by vessel power. Base dupon VMS data.
[How could the coverage, availability, quality and use of VMS data be improved?]
It is likely that increasing the frequency of recording to 15-30 minutes would improve VMS data. This however requires confirmation based upon analysis during the project and depend upon the interest for management of VMS data. VMS data allows to identify where fisheries operate and are efficient for control issues. Their usefulness for scientific and assessment issues in deep-water fisheries requires confirmation. The distribution of the French demersal deep water fleet effort based upon VMS is consistent with other data and may not provide significant additional knowledge and data for stock assessment. The usefulness of VMS data with regards to Vulnerable Marine Ecosystem (VMEs) is another question, which might addressed both in Deepfishman and CoralFISH.