Abstract
As offshore wind development continues across the globe, accurate spatial data are required to characterize fishing activity, inform wind farm siting decisions, and estimate economic exposure. We assess the influence of fishing behavior and fleet definition within a multispecies fishery on coarse (logbook-based) footprint biases using a precise (GPS-based) approach. We constructed precise footprints for 838 trips that caught summer flounder (Paralichthys dentatus) trips and 1439 trips that caught any species in the Summer Flounder, Scup (Stenotomus chrysops), and Black Sea Bass (Centropristis striata) Fishery Management Plan from 2016 to 2021. Using the precise footprints as a ground truth, we compared the intersections and estimated economic exposure between coarse footprints (restricted to the 90th, 75th, 50th, and 25th percentiles) for 37 wind farms in the northeast USA. Unrestricted coarse footprints (90th percentile) consistently identified all “true” intersections with wind farms while also overestimating economic exposure. For the multispecies fisheries, restricting footprints between 25th and 50th percentile yielded the most accurate estimates of economic exposure. This contrasts previous work that found the 25th percentile was most accurate for the targeted longfin squid (Doryteuthis pealeii) fishery, highlighting the importance of fleet definition in this process. Replicating this approach for other fisheries will allow development of a tool to accurately estimate economic exposure by restricting coarse footprints in the absence of fine-scale data.