A model for fisheries patrol dispatch in the Canadian Atlantic offshore fishery

Fisheries patrol routing involves routing a patrol vessel over a network of fishing grounds to maximize the deterrent effect of the patrol subject to trip length or budget constraints. This paper develops a prescriptive model for routing a multi-unit surveillance fleet through a set of fish stocks in the Canadian Atlantic offshore groundfish fishery. The decision problem is formulated as a 0–1 integer-programming model which is related to the well-known selective traveling salesman problem. In the fisheries patrol problem, the fishing grounds represent the cities, and all or a subset of grounds is visited on a given trip. We offer an efficient formulation and solution approach to the problem. Computational results for a hypothetical but realistic problem setting are provided.