Mechanisms of change in human behaviour

The scope of this report is to present the science developed within the VECTORS project to improve the understanding of the key processes driving the behaviour of human agents utilising a variety of EU maritime domains. While particular attention has been paid to the spatial interactions between fishing activities and other human uses (e.g., maritime traffic, offshore wind parks, aggregate extractions), the behaviour of non-fishing sectors of activity has also been considered. Various quantitative and semi-qualitative approaches have been pursued to gain better insight into behavioural drivers based on past data, and also forecast how human agents would react if access was constrained by either management (e.g. Marine Protected Areas – MPA), or the installation of a new operator. This report covers the North Sea and Eastern Channel, and also one area of the Baltic Sea: the Gdansk Bay. Fine-scale catch and effort data by fishing vessel, fishing trip, gear used and ICES rectangle visited have been made available for the French, Dutch, English and German fleets. The VECTORS WP2.3 team has also collected data from the non-fishing sectors of activity, in particular, aggregate extractions and maritime traffic. The objective of collecting data for non-fishing sectors is to produce a Spatial Overlap Metric measuring the constraint exerted by other sectors of activity on fishing. Comprehensive aggregate extraction and shipping intensity metrics could then be derived dynamically at a fine spatial and temporal resolution. For the other sectors potentially competing for space with fishing (e.g., wind farms, oil/gas extractions, aquaculture), and also for protected areas, a static overlap metric has been set to the surface occupied by the plant or area protected...