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Distant-Water Profile of a Country

Source: R/distant_water_profile.R
distant_water_profile.Rd

This function follows the marine catch of one country over time in the FAO major fishing areas it borders (adjacent areas) and in the areas it does not border (distant-water areas), and counts the FAO areas in which it fishes each year, as a measure of the spatial expansion of its fisheries. It also lists, for each distant-water area, the first and last year with catch, the peak and the recent catch.

Usage

distant_water_profile(
  country_name,
  top_n = 8,
  min_catch = 0,
  plot = TRUE,
  table = TRUE,
  lang = NULL,
  pptx = getOption("faofishingreport.pptx", FALSE),
  plot_show = fao_setting("plot_show"),
  label = NULL,
  data_version = "latest"
)

Arguments

country_name

The country, as named in the FAO data (e.g. "China", "Spain").

top_n

The number of distant-water areas shown separately; the others are combined. Default is 8.

min_catch

An area counts as fished in a year when the country's catch there is above this many tonnes. Default is 0 (any reported catch).

plot

A logical value. If TRUE (default), charts are saved in figures/png/summary/.

table

A logical value. If TRUE (default), tables are saved in tables/.

lang

The language of the chart text and names: "en" (English), "zh" (Chinese) or "both" (Chinese and English). Default is NULL, which uses the language set with fao_settings() ("en" unless changed).

pptx

A logical value. If TRUE, charts are also saved as editable PowerPoint files in figures/pptx/summary/. Default is FALSE, which can be changed for all functions with fao_settings(pptx = TRUE).

plot_show

A logical value. If TRUE, each chart is also drawn in the plot window (e.g. the Plots pane of RStudio) as it is saved, to look at it at once. Default is FALSE, which can be changed for all functions with fao_settings(plot_show = TRUE). The charts are saved as files (plot = TRUE) either way.

label

The name used in the output file names. Default is the fishing area (or the country) of the data.

data_version

The FAO data release to use; see load_fao_data().

Value

Invisibly, a list with yearly (catch in adjacent and distant-water areas, distant-water share and number of areas fished, by year), areas (one row per FAO area fished) and distant (yearly catch by distant-water area).

Details

Distant-water catch is defined as by FAO: the catch of a country in the FAO major fishing areas it does not border; fishing outside its own waters but in an area it borders does not count (Grainger and Garcia 1996, section 2.6; Garibaldi and Limongelli 2003, section 2.1). An area is adjacent to a country as in coastal_distant(): the country's land, including overseas territories, lies within 20 km of the FAO area boundary (a rule of this package). FAO records catch by the flag of the vessel and by FAO major area, not by exclusive economic zone (EEZ), so the split shows in which FAO areas a country's fleet fished, not whether the catch came from its own waters, the waters of other countries or the high seas. Swartz et al. (2010) mapped the spatial expansion of world fisheries with Sea Around Us catch maps; this function uses FAO statistics only, at the resolution of FAO major areas.

For China, FAO notes that in 2022 China reported 2.3 million tonnes of distant-water catch but gave species and areas only for the catch landed in China (area 61); FAO filled other areas with data from regional fisheries management organizations and entered 1.3 million tonnes as "Marine fishes nei" in area 61 (FAO 2024). Recent distant-water catch of China is therefore partly counted in its adjacent area 61.

References

FAO (2024). The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2024. Blue Transformation in action. Rome, FAO. doi:10.4060/cd0683en

Garibaldi, L. and Limongelli, L. (2003). Trends in oceanic captures and clustering of large marine ecosystems: two studies based on the FAO capture database. FAO Fisheries Technical Paper 435. Rome, FAO. https://www.fao.org/4/y4449e/y4449e00.htm

Grainger, R.J.R. and Garcia, S.M. (1996). Chronicles of marine fishery landings (1950-1994): trend analysis and fisheries potential. FAO Fisheries Technical Paper 359. Rome, FAO. https://www.fao.org/4/w3244e/w3244e00.htm

Swartz, W., Sala, E., Tracey, S., Watson, R. and Pauly, D. (2010). The spatial expansion and ecological footprint of fisheries (1950 to present). PLoS ONE 5: e15143. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0015143

Examples

if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{
distant_water_profile("Spain", lang = "zh")
distant_water_profile("Korea, Republic of", min_catch = 100)
} # }