mex_vms

Vessel Tracking Data from Mexico’s Vessel Monitoring System (VMS)

Citation

If you use these data, please cite:

Villaseñor-Derbez, J. C., & Longnecker, A. (2026). mex-fisheries/mex_vms (v0.0.1). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17592443

@software{villasenor-derbez_2025_mex_vms,
  author       = {Villaseñor-Derbez, Juan Carlos and Longnecker, Aubriana},
  title        = {mex-fisheries/mex\_vms},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Zenodo},
  version      = {v0.0.2},
  doi          = {10.5281/zenodo.17592443},
  url          = {https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17592443}
}

About

The raw data come from Datos abiertos. These data are collected and curated by Mexico’s SISMEP (Sistema de Monitoreo Satelital de Embarcaciones Pesqueras). They reports the identity, coordinates, and timestamp of Mexican fishing vessels that comply with Mexico’s fisheries regulation on the matter. Simply put, vessels larger than 10.5m in length overall, with an on-board engine > 80hp, and with a roof must carry a transponder.

The data available require some wrangling to get them into a usable format. This repository attempts to do that. It then makes the data available for others to use.

Clean data vailability, with two different levels of processing

L1 data (not recommended)

Monthly .csv files are available in the data/clean/ folder here and in a Google Cloud Bucket at at: gs://mex_vms/MEX_VMS/*. Files follow a standard file naming pattern of MEX_VMS_yyyy_mm.csv, where yyyy indicate
the year and mm the month.

L1 columns:

src: Character. Source file - Name of the source file from which the data point was extracted.
name: Character. Vessel name - Name of the vessel, as reported in the VMS data.
vessel_rnpa: Character. Vessel RNPA - Unique 8-digit identifier for the vessel.
port: Character. Port - Port of registration of the vessel, as reported in the VMS data.
economic_unit: Character. Economic unit - Name of the economic unit (permisionario or concesionario) associated with the vessel, as reported in the VMS data.
datetime: Timestamp. Date and time - Timestamp of the data point.
lat: Numeric. Latitude - Latitude of the vessel at the time of the data point.
lon: Numeric. Longitude - Longitude of the vessel at the time of the data point.
speed: Numeric. Speed (knots) - Speed of the vessel as reported in the VMS data.
course: Numeric. Course (degrees) - Course of the vessel as reported in the VMS data.
year: Numeric. Year - Year of the data point.
month: Numeric. Month - Month of the data point.

L2 data (recommended)

On Google BigQuery at mex-fisheries.mex_vms.mex_vms_latest for the same data as in the Google Cloud Bucket, with some level of processing with added features (segmentation, spatial covariates) at mex-fisheries.mex_vms.mex_vms_latest. Both are partitioned by year.

Note that BigQuery data use a standard versioning system every time the tables undergo a major change, like fixing bugs, adding data, or modifying the underlying cleaning code. Past versions include:

mex-fisheries.mex_vms.mex_vms_processed_v_20260409 <– This is the current version, viewed by mex-fisheries.mex_vms.mex_vms_procssed_latest
mex-fisheries.mex_vms.mex_vms_processed_v_20250623
mex-fisheries.mex_vms.mex_vms_processed_v_20250613
mex-fisheries.mex_vms.mex_vms_processed_v_20250319
mex-fisheries.mex_vms.mex_vms_processed_v_20240615
mex-fisheries.mex_vms.mex_vms_processed_v_20240515

L2 columns (includes all L1 columns plus derived fields):

vessel_rnpa: Character. Vessel RNPA - Unique 8-digit identifier for the vessel.
name: Character. Vessel name - Name of the vessel, as reported in the VMS data.
port: Character. Port - Port of registration of the vessel, as reported in the VMS data.
economic_unit: Character. Economic unit RNPA - Unique 8-digit identifier for the economic unit associated with the vessel, as per the latest available vessel registry.
src: Character. Source file - Name of the source file from which the data point was extracted.
seg_id: Integer. Segment ID - Identifier for the segment to which the data point belongs, based on speed and time thresholds.
point_in_seg: Integer. Point in segment - Position of the data point within its segment.
datetime: Timestamp. Date and time - Timestamp of the data point, in UTC.
lat: Numeric. Latitude - Latitude of the vessel at the time of the data point.
lon: Numeric. Longitude - Longitude of the vessel at the time of the data point.
sea: Character. Sea - Name of the sea where the vessel was located at the time of the data point.
eez: Character. Exclusive Economic Zone - Name of the EEZ where the vessel was located at the time of the data point.
mpa: Character. Marine Protected Area - Name of the MPA where the vessel was located at the time of the data point, if applicable.
fishing_region: Character. Fishing region - Name of the fishing region where the vessel was located at the time of the data point.
distance_from_port_m: Numeric. Distance from port (meters) - Distance of the vessel from the nearest port at the time of the data point.
distance_from_shore_m: Numeric. Distance from shore (meters) - Distance of the vessel from the nearest shore at the time of the data point.
depth_m: Numeric. Depth (meters) - Depth of the water at the vessel’s location at the time of the data point.
reported_speed: Numeric. Reported speed (knots) - Speed of the vessel as reported in the VMS data.
course: Numeric. Course (degrees) - Course of the vessel as reported in the VMS data.
year: Numeric. Year - Year of the data point.
month: Numeric. Month - Month of the data point.
distance_to_last_m: Numeric. Distance to last point (meters) - Distance from the previous data point in the segment.
hours: Numeric. Hours - Time difference from the previous data point in the segment, in hours.
implied_speed_knots: Numeric. Implied speed (knots) - Speed calculated based on the distance to the last point and the time difference.

Accessing the data via R

You should be able to access the entire date set using BigQuery (SQL) or R. The following code snippet shows how you might connect to the database:

# Load packages ----------------------------------------------------------------
pacman::p_load(
  bigrquery,
  DBI,
  tidyverse
)

bq_auth("juancarlos.villader@gmail.com") # You'll need to authenticate using your own email

# Establish a connection -------------------------------------------------------
con <- dbConnect(bigquery(),
                 project = "mex-fisheries", # This is the name of the project, leave it as-is
                 dataset = "mex_vms",       # This is the name of the dataset, leave it as-is
                 billing = "mex-fisheries", # This indicates the billing project. You'll need to use your own
                 use_legacy_sql = FALSE, 
                 allowLargeResults = TRUE)

mex_vms <- tbl(con, "mex_vms_processed_latest") # This object now contains a tbl that points at mex_vms_processed_v_20250319

# That's it, you can now use dplyr verbs to work with the data.
# For example, get latitude, longitude, and vessel id for the first 1000 rows in the data
mex_vms |> 
  select(vessel_rnpa, lat, lon) |> 
  head(1000) |> 
  collect()

Known issues

Raw data issues

Multiple files (01-10-FEB-2018.xlsx, 11-20-FEB-2018.xlsx, and all August - Dec, 2022) are provided as excel files, instead of csv files.
Additionally, file 12. DICIEMBRE/12 - 01 -15 DIC 2022.xlsx is corrupt. (still corrupt as of March 19, 2025)
Three files (21-31-AGO-2014.csv, 11-20-ENE-2018.csv, 16-31 OCT 2020.csv) have either corrupted or incorrect datetime values in the Fecha field.
February of 2023 is missing
December of 2025 is not yet available

Clean data issues

For data from 21-31-AGO-2014.csv, 11-20-ENE-2018.csv, 16-31 OCT 2020.csv, there is no datetime available. There is, however, year and month data available, extracted from the file names (included as an src variable).
Vessel names have not been normalized yet. But, the vessel names in the vessel registry are already normalized, and matching on vessel_rnpa is recommended instead.

Other resources

Regulation governing the use of VMS on boats: Norma Oficial Mexicana NOM-062-PESC-2007, Para la utilización del sistema de localización y monitoreo satelital de embarcaciones pesqueras, SECRETARIA DE AGRICULTURA, GANADERIA, DESARROLLO RURAL, PESCA Y ALIMENTACION, Estados Unidos Mexicanos; DOF, 24 de abril 2008, [citado el 21-04-2021]; Disponible en versión HTML en internet: http://sidof.segob.gob.mx/notas/5033406

License and attribution

This repository is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).

The raw data are provided by Mexico’s CONAPESCA through their Datos Abiertos portal, licensed under CC BY 4.0. The data have been modified: column names were standardized, coordinates and dates were parsed into consistent formats, and points falling on land were removed.

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