The Fishing Effects Model estimates the impacts of fishing with bottom-tending gears on seabed habitats throughout the Northeast region in both state and federal waters within the U.S. EEZ. Habitat impacts vary in space and time according to fishing gear type, the magnitude of fishing effort in each grid cell, and the types of geological and biological habitat structures inferred to each grid cell. These habitat structures are inferred based on substrate type and natural energy at a particular location. The types of structures assumed to occur in each grid cell influence the estimated susceptibility of the habitat to fishing and the estimated recovery times following impact.
The Fishing Effects model is based on the Swept Area Seabed Impact (SASI) model (NEFMC 2011) and a model developed by the North Pacific Fishery Management Council (Fujioka 2006). The SASI vulnerability assessment was published in 2014 by Grabowski et al. Fishing Effects is also used in the North Pacific region (Smeltz et al. 2019), and Fishing Effects Northeast was developed in collaboration with the developers of Fishing Effects North Pacific. Fishing Effects Northeast was last updated in 2019, and another update is planned as part of the New England Council’s 2024 EFH Review. Map products from the 2019 update are available on the Northeast Ocean Data Portal by navigating in the Data Explorer to ‘Habitat, Fishing Effects’.
Fishing Effects maps on the Northeast Ocean Data Portal
190611 - Presentation: Fishing Effects Model Northeast
200522 - Fishing Effects Northeast Report
Appendix A - Area Swept Table Generation
Appendix B - Fishing Distribution Overlap and Recovery Parameters