207 – Ecology and Animal Movement
State Space Assessment on the Impact of Sea Surface Temperature on Fishing Effort in Continental US Exclusive Economic Zone
Mingzhao Hu
University of California at Santa Barbara
Recent changes in marine environments are expected to influence human fishing activities. In particular, the effect on fishing effort is essential to the public good. Fishing effort reflects the investment strategies and costs of the industry participants, therefore affects government environmental and fishery policies. Advances in satellite technology have enabled revolutionarily detailed worldwide fishing effort data. After integrating fishing effort with sea surface temperature averages, a dynamic spatio-temporal model in the state space framework is applied. Adopting a stochastic partial differential equation approach, parameter inference uses the integrated nested Laplace approximation. Since the focus is on fishing effort in the exclusive economic zone of continental United States, the model based on Pacific coast is compared against one based on the Atlantic coast. Furthermore, a forecast of fishing effort for one year is implemented using the proposed dynamic model.