Factor analysis of the fishing capacity of otter trawl in Middle Fujian Region

Otter trawl is one of the most important fishing gears in the Middle Fujian Region. A good many factors could affect the utilization of fishing gears in the process of fishing operation in varying degrees, bringing much trouble in both estimating the fishing capacity and the management of fishing effort. In order to understand the effect degrees produced by different factors on the fishing capacity of otter trawl, we employed 12 factors in factor analysis. According to the analysis result, all the 12 variables could merge into 4 kinds of common factors, namely, the net structure, the vessel fishing capacity, the vessel age and the fishing skills of fisherman. Their contribution rates to the fishing capacity of otter trawl were 52.87 %, 24.46 %, 7.05 % and 4.73 %, successively. In addition, this paper also calculated the factor scores for each sample vessel. According to the individual factor scores and the synthetic scores, we evaluated synthetically the fishing capacity for each vessel, thus providing reference for fishery production and management.