Recreational Vessel Traffic Model for British Columbia

Description: Data on recreational boating are needed for marine spatial planning initiatives in British Columbia (BC). Vessel traffic data are typically obtained by analyzing automatic identification system (AIS) vessel tracking data, but recreational vessels are often omitted or underrepresented in AIS data because they are not required to carry AIS tracking devices. Transport Canada’s National Aerial Surveillance Program (NASP) conducted aerial surveys to collect information on recreational vessels along several sections of the BC coast between 2018 and 2022. Recreational vessel sightings were modeled against predictor variables (e.g., distance to shore, water depth, distance to, and density of marinas) to predict the number of recreational vessels along coastal waters of BC. The files included here are: --A Geodatabase (‘Recreational_Boating_Data_Model’), which includes: (1) recreational vessel sightings data collected by NASP in BC and used in the recreational vessel traffic model (‘Recreational_Vessels_PointData_BC’); (2) aerial survey effort (or number of aerial surveys) raster dataset (‘surveyeffort’); and (3) a vector grid dataset (2.5 km resolution) containing the…

Publisher

Fisheries and Oceans Canada

Resources

8

Catalogue metadata updated

2026-03-24