Interactive view of data on catch, fleet and fishing grounds

The collection of information through interviews to fishermen at the landings generally produces a set of data related to several aspects: active boats, used gears, fishing areas, fishing timing, landed species and relative weight, fishing effort, etc. If this information is periodically collected, the amount of data rapidly increases. Normally, such data is analysed with tools which do not consider the geographical position of each single datum and hence the produced statistical or synthetic information is not geographically correlated. The developed system described here is based on a geographical information system (GIS) which can manage and analyse these kind of data (integrated with ancillary data as coastline, bathymetry and toponyms) by referring them to the respective geographical positions, thus producing efficient summaries, both in tabular and graphic form (histograms, charts, thematic maps, tables, ...). The system makes available a set of functions with which users can operate dynamically on the set of data, by selecting from the various parameters that characterise the data (time period, fishing gear, species, ...). The results obtained furnish temporal and spatial information on various aspects of a fishery: a better understanding of fishing strategies, composition and structural characteristics of the active fleet, distribution patterns of the abundance of main exploited stocks constitute a solid starting point for more detailed studies focusing the management and the development of the fishing activities. The system is based on ArcView GIS 3.1 software by ESRI and Access DBMS by Microsoft. The current version makes use of data related to a specific fishing area for a specific time period but it can be generalised to historical data sets relating to any geographical context.