Fishing

Climatology

Ecology

Biology

Fishery

Catch per unit effort

Geology

Oceanography

Paleontology

Geography

Stage (stratigraphy)

Pelagic zone

Environmental science

Full moon

Frontiers in Marine Science

To better develop and protect the pelagic fishery in the northwest Indian Ocean, China’s fishing enterprises have been producing pelagic fisheries in the said area for a long time. Based on the fishing log data of light falling gear in the northwest Indian Ocean from 2016 to 2020, this study analyzed the impact of different time scales on the catch rate and fishing ground center of gravity of light falling gear fishing grounds. We also explored the relationship between different time scales and catch per unit effort (CPUE) by using the fishing ground center of gravity, the Random Forest model (RF), and the generalized additive model (GAM). The results were shown as follows: (1) From 2016 to 2020, 76,576 t were captured, and 16,496 nets were operated; (2) The gravity center of fishing ground in the Northwest Indian Ocean moved to the northeast as a whole, and the monthly fishing ground gravity center changed first to the Southern and then to the northern; (3) RF model (R² = 0.709, RMSE = 0.2034, and prediction accuracy is 55.8%), which is better than the GAM model (R² = 0.632, RMSE = 0.2242, and prediction accuracy is 37.3%). In the RF model, the importance of time variables on CPUE was in the order of week, year, operation time, and lunar phase; in the GAM model, it was week, year, lunar phase, and operation time. On the whole, the importance of the long time scale (year, week) is greater than that of the short time scale (lunar phase and operation time). (4) The RF model and GAM model show that the most critical environmental variables were SST, DO, SSS, and Chla, and the least important were SSH, Δ50, and CV50. SST, Chla, and DO significantly impact pelagic fishing and CPUE and are critical reference indexes for predicting the Northwest Indian Ocean light falling gear fishing ground. (5) The 95% confidence interval showed that the suitable interval of time, space, and environmental variables in the RF model was much smaller than in the GAM model.

Environment variables affect CPUE and spatial distribution of fishing grounds on the light falling gear fishery in the northwest Indian Ocean at different time scales