10.25349/D9M907
Free, Christopher M.
0000-0002-2557-8920
University of California, Santa Barbara
Vargas Poulsen, Camila
University of California, Santa Barbara
Bellquist, Lyall F.
0000-0003-1247-0483
The Nature Conservancy California*
Wassermann, Sophia N.
University of Washington
Oken, Kiva L.
Northwest Fisheries Science Center
The CALFISH database: A century of California's non-confidential
fisheries landings and participation data
Dryad
dataset
2021
FOS: Agriculture, forestry, and fisheries
marine fisheries
commercial fisheries
recreational fisheries
CPFV fisheries
party boats
catch
landings
fishing fleets
angler participation
fishing ports
The Nature Conservancy
https://ror.org/0563w1497
2021-04-16T00:00:00Z
2021-04-16T00:00:00Z
en
https://github.com/cfree14/wcfish/
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoinf.2022.101599
7194157 bytes
4
CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication
California's commercial and recreational fisheries support vibrant
coastal economies and communities. Maintaining healthy fishing communities
into the future requires a detailed understanding of their past. The
California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) has been monitoring
statewide fisheries landings and participation since 1916 and releases
confidential versions of this data through authorized data requests and
non-confidential summaries of this data in its quasi-annual landings
reports. The non-confidential data published in the landings reports
provide a rich history of California's fisheries but are scattered
across 1000s of tables in 100 s of documents, limiting their accessibility
to researchers, fishers, and other interested stakeholders. We reviewed
the 58 landings reports published from 1929 to 2020 and extracted and
carefully curated 13 datasets with long time series and wide public
interest. These datasets include: (1) annual landings in pounds and value
by port and species from 1941 to 2019; (2) annual number of commercial
fishing vessels by length class from 1934 to 2020; (3) annual number of
licensed commercial fishers by area of residence from 1916 to 2020; and
(4) annual number of party boat (CPFV) vessels, anglers, and their total
catch by species from 1936 to 2020. Notably, we harmonized port names,
species common names, and species scientific names across all years and
datasets. We make these curated datasets, collectively called the CALFISH
database, publicly available to any interested stakeholder in the
supplementary materials of this paper, on an open-access data-repository,
and in the wcfish R package. These datasets can be used (1) to understand
the historical context of California's fisheries; (2) for original
research requiring only summaries of historical landings and participation
data; and (3) to anticipate the likely characteristics of confidential
data requested from the state. We conclude the paper by identifying key
principles for increasing the accessibility and utility of historical
fisheries landings and participation data.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) has been monitoring
statewide fisheries landings and participation since 1916 and releases
confidential versions of this data through authorized data requests and
non-confidential summaries of this data in its quasi-annual landings
reports. The non-confidential data published in the landings reports
provide a rich history of California’s fisheries but are scattered across
1000s of tables in 100s of documents, limiting their accessibility to
researchers, fishers, and other interested stakeholders. We reviewed the
58 landing series reports published by CDFW from 1928 to 2020 and
extracted and curated 13 datasets of long length (years) and wide public
interest. In general, these datasets describe landings and participation
in commercial fishing and the CPFV sector of recreational fishing (i.e.,
recreational fishing from private boats and shore are not described in
these reports). We rigorously quality controlled all of the extracted data
and enhanced the datasets with additional attributes of interest where
possible. Notably, these enhancements included harmonizing common names
across years and datasets and linking common names with scientific names.
The landings datasets curated below describe landings in terms of both
volume (pounds) and value (dollars). The values reflect nominal ex-vessel
values and have not been adjusted for inflation. The volumes are reported
“without regard to condition” and reflect the volumes reported on the
original landings receipt (i.e., they have not been universally converted
to round weights). Although most fish and shellfish are landed in round
(whole) condition, some species may be eviscerated (gutted), dressed, or
beheaded before being brought ashore, but this is not recorded in the
data. This is especially common for barracuda, shark, salmon, sablefish,
white seabass, and swordfish. A few market categories do include
descriptions of condition (i.e., Pacific herring roe, Pacific herring roe
on kelp, Chinook/coho salmon roe, spider/sheep crab claws, and crab claws)
but there is no guidance on how to interpret these descriptions. We
provide an attribute for condition with four options -- roe, roe on kelp,
claws, and not specified -- but caution against using these attributions
without further clarification from the state. The CDFW datasets report
landings by market categories that are not always species specific.
Furthermore, these market categories are described using common names
rather than scientific names. Although a key for relating common and
scientific names is provided at the beginning of each Fish Bulletin-hosted
landings report, the conventions for common names and alignment with
scientific names varies throughout the landings series. We rigorously
harmonized common names across years and datasets and associated common
names with updated scientific names with guidance from the Fish Bulletin
species keys. To ease analysis, maintain transparency, and allow users to
make different decisions regarding species identities, every dataset with
species-specific information includes the original common name, the
harmonized common name, and the updated scientific name. We also provide a
key for appending additional taxonomic information (i.e., phylogenetic
groups and/or commercial categories) to any of the curated datasets.
Overall, the landings data include 397 market categories representing 12
phyla, 25 classes, 68 orders, 130 families, and 200 genera. Finally, many
of the datasets published in the landings series report statistics for
individual fishing ports or for groups of fishing ports called “port
complexes”. However, the naming conventions for ports and the delineation
of port complexes varies throughout the landings series. To ease analysis,
we harmonized port and port complex attributes across years and datasets.
In most cases, harmonizing port names involved straightforward decisions
(e.g., “Bay”, “Bay (Bodega)”, and “Bodega Bay” all refer to Bodega Bay).
However, in some cases, nuanced decisions were required. Namely, we
decided that references to “Tomales Bay (Marshall)”, “Princeton (Half Moon
Bay)”, and “Point Reyes (Drakes Bay)” imply “Tomales Bay &
Marshall”, “Princeton & Half Moon Bay”, and “Point Reyes &
Drakes Bay”. This decision was based on the fact that, in some years,
statistics are separated for these commonly paired ports. We used slashes
to denote grouped ports (e.g., “Tomales Bay/Marshall” indicates both
Tomales Bay and Marshall together) in the harmonized port names. We
retained the original port name in the curated datasets to make our
decisions transparent and to allow users to make different decisions. The
geographical delineation of port complexes varied throughout the landings
series (Figure S1) with: 13 complexes defined by county lines in FB 15-44
(1926-1930), 8 complexes defined by natural landmarks in FB 44-49
(1931-1935), 7 complexes defined by county lines in FB 57-173 (1936-1986),
and 9 complexes defined by county lines in FB 181 and the website-hosted
reports (1987-2019). We used the recent 9-complex typology in the curated
datasets but provide a key to summarize data based on the older
typologies. This key also includes the coordinates (lat/long) of each
port.