Integrating individual trip planning in energy efficiency - Building decision tree models for Danish fisheries

Danish fishermen have provided information on dynamics in their fuel consumption, running costs, and fishing patterns through a web-based questionnaire. This detailed documentation of the fishing practices is used in spatial modelling tools to improve advice and research for fisheries. The tools integrate detailed information on vessel distribution, catch and fuel consumption for different fisheries with a detailed resource distribution of targeted stocks from research surveys to evaluate the optimum consumption and efficiency to reduce fuel costs and the costs of displacement of effort. The energy efficiency for the value of catch per unit of fuel consumed is analysed by merging the questionnaire, logbook and VMS (vessel monitoring system) information. Logic decision trees and conditional behaviour probabilities are established from the responses of fishermen regarding a range of sequential hypothetical conditions influencing their trip decisions, covering the duration of fishing time, choice of fishing ground(s), when to stop fishing and return to port, and the choice of the port for landing. Fleet-based energy and economy efficiency are linked to the decision (choice) dynamics. Larger fuel-intensive but efficient vessels conducting pelagic or industrial fishing are more inclined to base their decision on fish price only, while numerous smaller and less efficient vessels conducting demersal mixed or crustacean fishery usually consider other flexible factors, e.g., the potential for a large catch, weather, previous knowledge and experience, and the distance to/from port, which affect the number and duration of trips and the fuel consumption. Integration of the results into our recently developed spatially explicit individual-based fishing vessel model (IBM) incorporate the variability and predict the adaptations of individual fishermen to resource availability dynamics, increasing fuel prices, changes in regulations, and the consequences of socioeconomic external pressures on harvested stocks. A new methodology is described here to obtain quantitative information on the fishermen's micro-scale decisions initially required. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.