Where do shrimpers go in German Territorial Sea? Fishing Behavior Groups from Vessel Movement Data

Abstract:

The German brown shrimp (Crangon crangon) fleet in the North Sea is declining due to rising fuel costs and unpredictable shrimp prices. Furthermore, this fishery is adapting to new marine protection area(MPA) regulations.
EU Regulation was recently updated on March 8, 2023, which has significantly changed the spatial area and fisheries management in the German North Sea exclusive economic zone (EEZ).


Furthermore, in February 2023, the EU Commission released an "Action Plan to protect and restore marine ecosystems for sustainable and resilient fisheries". The Commission urges Member States to gradually stop bottom fishing in both current and future MPAs by 2030. As the shrimp fishery takes place mainly in the State National Parks it will be affected by the forthcoming regulations of the Action Plan.
We analyze thirteen years of Vessel Monitoring System (VMS) data spatially and temporally to investigate fisher behavior for this specific métier. We evaluated the potential effect of recently implemented and pessimistic future marine protected area (MPA) closures linked to the EU Action Plan 2023. The former have negligible overlap with areas exploited by shrimp fishers, but the latter cover grounds from which 40% of brown shrimp landings originated during 2009-2021 without effort relocation or behavioral adaptation.

In this talk, I will focus on my 2nd chapter with some preliminary results. For details of my 1st chapter, I attached my graphical abstract and you can read the submitted version from this preprint link. :)

As always, the seminar takes place in the F6 big seminar room. The online link to the seminar is the following: https://uni-bremen.zoom.us/j/93546917122?pwd=K2k3Zm4rZFd1Wit3SFFlV3pieHprdz09