index of fishing catch from deep-sea impacting gears on the North Atlantic

Distribution of catch from deep-sea impacting fishing on the North Atlantic (18°N to 76°N and 36°E to 98°W), for the period 2010-2015. The average of yearly fishing catch for the period 2010-2015 is displayed as an index on the ATLAS grid of 25km * 25km resolution. Source data originated from the Global Fisheries Landings V4.0 database. The dataset was filtered to select only the fishing gears that have an impact on large areas of the seafloor (dredges, bottom trawls, and Danish seines). Within each cell, all remaining catch records were summed to get the total catch rate of the considered year. This dataset was built to feed a basin-wide spatial conservation planning exercise, targeting the deep sea of the North Atlantic. The goal of this approach was to identify conservation priority areas for Vulnerable Marine Ecosystems (VMEs) and deep fish species, based on the distribution of species and habitats, human activities and current spatial management.