AIS-derived monthly fishing effort and aggregated pressure indicators over eight years (2015–2022)

Trawling activities represent one of the dominant fisheries in the Adriatic Sea, and understanding their spatio-temporal dynamics is essential for assessing fishing pressure and supporting ecosystem-based management. This dataset provides an eight-year time series (2015–2022) of AIS-derived monthly fishing effort and related pressure indicators at high spatial resolution (0.01° × 0.01°), capturing both the spatial extent and temporal variability of trawling activities in the region. The dataset covers the FAO General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean (GFCM) Geographical Sub-Areas (GSAs) 17 and 18 and was reconstructed from 858 fishing vessels identified as performing trawling activities. It includes the three main trawling gear types operating in the Adriatic Sea: bottom otter trawl (OTB), beam trawl (TBB), and pelagic pair trawl (PTM). Fishing effort and vessel presence are expressed as fishing hours, fishing days, and vessel counts per grid cell. Additional information on GSA where fishing is deployed and departure/arrival GSAs is harmonised and disaggregated by country and trawling method. The dataset also includes fishing pressure indicators describing the average temporal interval between consecutive fishing events (in months), the spatial extent and aggregation of fishing activity (defined as the 90% core of trawling activities), enabling the identification of persistently impacted areas. Fishing activity was reconstructed from terrestrial AIS data and processed using the R4AIS workflow (v1.0.2). The dataset is distributed in six files: three monthly fishing effort datasets (OTB, TBB, and PTM) and three corresponding indicator datasets. This large-scale, gear-specific dataset supports fisheries monitoring, marine spatial planning, cumulative impact assessment, and the development of ecosystem-based management strategies in the Adriatic Sea.