The included fisheries represent a snapshot in time of current fisheries, some of which are expanding, declining, or limited due to social constraints. These boundaries roughly follow the fathom curves shown within the maps, and also take into account benthic factors such as substrate and depth.

These fisheries boundaries should be considered approximate and are limited by the extent of the nautical charts used in the survey of commercial fishermen to delineate the fisheries. They were delineated by drawing boundaries on printed nautical charts that roughly followed fathom and incorporated input from multiple contributing parties. They were then digitized by Marian Brady Design, a local graphic designer.

Methods of Data Collection for Mapping of Fisheries :
Each fishermen's association formed a committee of individuals (not necessarily members of any association) composed of various fishermen with both recent and historic fishing experiences. Each committee worked collectively to establish fishing areas by species, seasonality, gear type, and seafloor substrate represented by boundaries drawn onto printed transparent navigational charts, one for each individual fishery in the area of study. Committee members were responsible for inclusiveness and accuracy. Because north coast fishermen mutually share the entire fishing grounds from Point Arena to the Oregon Border, each committee submitted their data to the other association committees for fact-checking, peer review, and the inclusion of additional information. At no time did individuals or the committees at large engage in the “recycling” of information previously processed by past interviews, polls, reports or the incomplete data from the MPA process.

These data sets were then transferred to an electronic file format through the contracted work of a local graphics design company. Digitized data was then transferred to GHD a nationally based engineering firm tasked with developing these boundaries into a spatial dataset, collaborating with the project team to populate features with attribute information, producing a story map, and web application.

This mapping project dataset contains fisheries boundaries for all existing commercial fishing activities and potential developing or emerging fisheries. The individual fisheries boundaries do not contain “human based” closed or restricted regulatory areas as regulations and closures are subject to continual modification and do not affect fish or fish habitat.