Marine fisheries in African waters contribute substantially to food security and local economies in African coastal nations. Recently, there are growing concerns about the sustainability of living marine resources in these countries’ exclusive economic zones (EEZs) due to increased risks from climate change, pollution and potential over-exploitation of fisheries resources by non-African (foreign) countries. To effectively manage fishing activities and sustain marine resources in African waters, we need useful tools for characterizing the fishing activities in African waters. Here, we assess the utility of the Automatic Identification System (AIS) derived data for describing the spatial characteristics of African and foreign industrial fishing activities within the EEZs of African coastal nations. The results show that the AIS-derived spatial pattern of industrial fishing activities in African waters is consistent with that of industrial catches derived from the Sea Around Us database. Across African EEZs, the spatial correlations between primary productivity and fishing effort highly vary by gear types, which emphasizes the importance of investigating specific fishing strategies when studying the effects of bottom-up drivers on fishing effort. We find an EEZ-specific spatial pattern for fishing efforts across African waters and identify some socioeconomic, political and geographic factors that likely affect the decision of fleets to fish in specific African EEZs. We conclude that AIS-derived fishing data can be a useful complementary tool for characterizing the spatial pattern of industrial fishing efforts in African waters.

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从太空追踪非洲水域的工业捕鱼活动

非洲水域的海洋渔业为非洲沿海国家的粮食安全和当地经济做出了重大贡献。最近，由于气候变化、污染和非非洲（外国）国家潜在过度开发渔业资源的风险增加，人们越来越担心这些国家专属经济区（EEZ）的海洋生物资源的可持续性。为了有效管理非洲水域的渔业活动和维持海洋资源，我们需要有用的工具来表征非洲水域的渔业活动。在这里，我们评估了自动识别系统 (AIS) 派生数据的效用，用于描述非洲沿海国家专属经济区内非洲和外国工业捕鱼活动的空间特征。结果表明，AIS 得出的非洲水域工业捕鱼活动的空间格局与来自我们周围海域数据库的工业捕捞量的空间格局一致。在整个非洲专属经济区，初级生产力和捕捞努力量之间的空间相关性因渔具类型而异，这强调了在研究自下而上的驱动因素对捕捞努力量的影响时调查特定捕捞策略的重要性。我们为整个非洲水域的捕捞活动找到了特定于专属经济区的空间模式，并确定了一些可能影响船队在特定非洲专属经济区捕鱼的决定的社会经济、政治和地理因素。我们得出结论，AIS 衍生的捕捞数据可以成为描述非洲水域工业捕捞活动空间格局的有用补充工具。