Trends in the Alaskan bottom-trawl fishery from 1993-2015: a GIS-based spatiotemporal analysis ...

The Bering Sea, Aleutian Islands, and Gulf of Alaska yield one of the largest sustainable fishing industries in the world. To ensure continued sustainable practices, the effects of fishing activity on the health of the ecosystem should be actively studied. Bottom-trawl gear is a sustainability conce...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Steves, Carrie Elizabeth author
Format: Thesis
Language:English
Published: University of Southern California Digital Library (USC.DL) 2017
Subjects:
Online Access:https://dx.doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c40-389333
https://digitallibrary.usc.edu/asset-management/2A3BF1O8VIJO3
Description
Summary:The Bering Sea, Aleutian Islands, and Gulf of Alaska yield one of the largest sustainable fishing industries in the world. To ensure continued sustainable practices, the effects of fishing activity on the health of the ecosystem should be actively studied. Bottom-trawl gear is a sustainability concern due to its direct interaction with the benthic layer. Impact from bottom-trawl fisheries is difficult to assess, particularly over the long-term. Using fishery-dependent observer data from National Marine Fisheries (NMFS) provides insight on the location and the intensity of fishing effort, which can identify areas most exposed to fishing pressure. ? In this study, the spatial and temporal extent of Alaskan bottom-trawl fishing effort in the Bering Sea, Aleutian Islands, and Gulf of Alaska was explored in a space-time cube in ArcGIS Pro v1.4.1 using NMFS data collected between 1993 and 2015. Various statistical techniques were used to examine spatiotemporal autocorrelation and clustering in this data. Results ...