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. 2016 Nov 17;11(11):e0166640.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0166640. eCollection 2016.

Distribution of Bottom Trawling Effort in the Yellow Sea and East China Sea

Shengmao Zhang  1   2 , Shaofei Jin  3 , Heng Zhang  1 , Wei Fan  1 , Fenghua Tang  1 , Shenglong Yang  1
Affiliations
Free PMC article

Distribution of Bottom Trawling Effort in the Yellow Sea and East China Sea

Shengmao Zhang et al. PLoS One. .
Free PMC article

Abstract

Bottom trawling is one of the most efficient fishing activities, but serious and persistent ecological issues have been observed by fishers, scientists and fishery managers. Although China has applied the Beidou fishing vessel position monitoring system (VMS) to manage trawlers since 2006, little is known regarding the impacts of trawling on the sea bottom environments. In this study, continuous VMS data of the 1403 single-rig otter trawlers registered in the Xiangshan Port, 3.9% of the total trawlers in China, were used to map the trawling effort in 2013. We used the accumulated distance (AD), accumulated power distance (APD), and trawling intensity as indexes to express the trawling efforts in the Yellow Sea (YS) and East China Sea (ECS). Our results show that all three indexes had similar patterns in the YS and ECS, and indicated a higher fishing effort of fishing grounds that were near the port. On average, the seabed was trawled 0.73 times in 2013 over the entire fishing region, and 51.38% of the total fishing grounds were with no fishing activities. Because of VMS data from only a small proportion of Chinese trawlers was calculated fishing intensity, more VMS data is required to illustrate the overall trawling effort in China seas. Our results enable fishery managers to identify the distribution of bottom trawling activities in the YS and ECS, and hence to make effective fishery policy.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. Frequency of the engine power of the otter bottom trawlers in the Xiangshan Port.
Fig 2
Fig 2. Frequency of towing speed threshold (minimum speed [Vmin] and maximum speed [Vmax] of towing) for the otter bottom trawlers in the Xiangshan Port.
Fig 3
Fig 3. Distribution of fishing grounds in the Yellow Sea and East China Sea.
Red polygons represent different fishing grounds.
Fig 4
Fig 4
Distribution of (A) accumulated distance (AD, in km) and (B) accumulated power distance (APD, in km kW) of trawl vessels, and distribution of (C) the mean engine power (in kW) in the Yellow Sea and East China Sea in 2013.
Fig 5
Fig 5. Distribution of trawling intensity (y-1) in the East Sea and Yellow Sea
Fig 6
Fig 6. Trawled area ratio and cumulative trawled area ratio in total fishing grounds and each fishing ground.
The bars represent the trawled area ration at different intensity categories. The lines represent the cumulative trawled area ratio.
Fig 7
Fig 7
Monthly distribution of accumulated distance (A) and accumulated power distance (B) in the Yellow Sea and East China Sea in 2013.
Fig 8
Fig 8. Trends of annual marine fishery production in China Seas between 1986 and 2013.
The solid line is the production of 11 million tons.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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Grants and funding

This study was financially supported by the Yangtze River Delta joint research project from the Shanghai Science and Technology Committee (15595811000), the Open Research Funding Program of KLGIS (KLGIS2015A06), and Key Projects in the National Science and Technology Pillar Program during the Thirteen Five-year Plan Period (2013BAD13B01). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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