Research Document 2018/015

Analysis of the overlap between fishing effort and Significant Benthic Areas in Canada's Atlantic and Eastern Arctic marine waters

By Koen-Alonso, M., Favaro, C., Ollerhead, N., Benoît, H., Bourdages, H., Sainte-Marie, B., Treble, M., Hedges, K., Kenchington, E., Lirette, C., King, M., Coffen-Smout, S., and J. Murillo

Abstract

There are two basic pieces of information required for implementing Fisheries and Oceans Canada’s (DFO) Policy on Managing the Impacts of Fishing on Sensitive Benthic Areas:

1. The identification and delineation of Significant Benthic Areas, and
2. The overlap between these Significant Benthic Areas and fishing activities.

This analysis builds on the most recent Significant Benthic Area delineations for Canada’s Atlantic (Scotian Shelf –SS-, Gulf of St. Lawrence –GSL-, and Newfoundland-Labrador –NL-) and Eastern Arctic (EA) bioregions to address the overlap question. For this purpose, fisheries were grouped into 14 classes based on their general area of operation, target species, and gears used. Fishing effort was summarized for the 2005-2014 period on the basis of logbook and Vessel Monitoring System (VMS) data. Among all fishing effort recorded in logbooks, 23% of effort was georeferenced; however, most of the non-georeferenced effort was associated with the lobster fisheries class in inshore shallow areas, often in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The analysis of all fishing effort from logbooks, indicated that GSL and SS experienced average total fishing effort densities (in units of vessel days –VD-) of 0.849 and 0.311 VD km-2 yr-1 respectively, while NL and EA showed much lower values of 0.074 VD km-2 yr-1 and 0.001 VD km-2 yr-1 respectively. Georeferenced effort data was used to estimate footprints by fisheries classes, as well as for aggregates of fisheries classes (e.g. mobile gears, fixed gears, all fisheries). Overall, the spatial distributions indicated that, even though fishing footprints could be large, most of the effort was concentrated in relatively small fractions of the entire footprint. High fractions (~40-80%) of the Significant Benthic Areas, for all types present in SS, GSL, and NL bioregions, were exposed to fishing activities. In EA, the fraction of Significant Benthic Areas exposed to fishing activities was low (<10%). Significant Benthic Areas typically represented a small fraction (<10%) of the fisheries footprints in all bioregions. Although this analysis only describes the state of affairs in recent years, after the collapse of major groundfish fisheries in these bioregions, the estimated overlap between fishing effort and Significant Benthic Areas appears high enough to expect that they are likely being impacted by fishing activities. The extent and magnitude of these impacts will be a function of the indicator taxa involved, the level of perturbation, and the role of these Significant Benthic Areas in the overall ecosystem functioning.

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