1. M. Taconet, A. Gentile, A. Ellenbroek FAO
Blue Assessment Global Record of Stocks and Fisheries – an overview and progress made
M. Taconet, A. Gentile, A. Ellenbroek FAO
BlueBRIDGE 1st TCom
25-28 January 2016
Rome, Italy

2. Outline What is the Global Record of Stocks and Fisheries
Sources of Information
Data sharing policies
Minimum data requirements
What’s in progress

3. What is the Global Record of Stocks and Fisheries
Overall objective: Provide scientists with an innovative environment supporting the production of a comprehensive and shared global reference set of stocks and fisheries records that will boost regional and global environmental status monitoring as well as responsible consumer practices.
Strategic Objectives
improve the production of global/regional summary indicators on the status of fishery resources;
facilitate traceability and certification of fishery products;
will rely on global unique identifiers (UIDs) which will be essential to mainstream the production of regional or global indicators of stock status
need to be launched with a critical mass of records assembled from distinct global databases
constitute an invite for national research institutes and market actors to contribute their knowledge and join the global reporting community
huge incentive to the fisheries sector to inform society of the provenance of aquatic products in the market chain

4. What is the Global Record of Stocks and Fisheries
Stock: A group of individuals in a species occupying a well defined spatial range independent of other stocks of the same species.
Stock: A group of individuals in a species occupying a well defined spatial range independent of other stocks of the same species. It can be affected by random dispersal movements and directed migrations due to seasonal or reproductive activity. Fishery: A Fishery is an activity leading to the harvesting of fish, within the boundaries of a defined area. The fishery concept fundamentally gathers indication of human fishing activity, including from economic, management, biological/ environmental and technological viewpoints.

5. What is the Global Record of Stocks and Fisheries
Fishery: A Fishery is an activity leading to the harvesting of fish, within the boundaries of a defined area.
The fishery concept fundamentally gathers indication of human fishing activity, including from economic, management, biological/ environmental and technological viewpoints
Stock: A group of individuals in a species occupying a well defined spatial range independent of other stocks of the same species. It can be affected by random dispersal movements and directed migrations due to seasonal or reproductive activity. Fishery: A Fishery is an activity leading to the harvesting of fish, within the boundaries of a defined area. The fishery concept fundamentally gathers indication of human fishing activity, including from economic, management, biological/ environmental and technological viewpoints.

6. Sources of Information
Fisheries and Resources Monitoring System (FIRMS)
RAM Legacy Stock Assessment Database
FishSource
FishBase
Global Record of Stocks and Fisheries

7. Sources of Information
Fisheries and Resources Monitoring System (FIRMS)
14 intergovernmental organizations / 17 RFBs
published inventory of stocks and 322 fisheries.
Status reports exist for about stocks and 200 fisheries

8. Sources of Information
RAM Legacy Database
database for stock assessment results for commercially harvested fish stocks
from 21 national and international management agencies
331 stocks, including nine of the world’s ten largest fisheries
provides data (e.g. catch time series) and assessment results for data-rich stocks that are assessed regularly
Map showing the amount of the total catch in a country or ocean covered in the RAM legacy data base. The size of the circle is proportional to the total catch from the country, the green area represents how much of the catch is from stocks in the RAM Legacy database.
RAM Legacy Database
database for stock assessment results for commercially harvested fish stocks
from 21 national and international management agencies
331 stocks, including nine of the world’s ten largest fisheries
provides data (e.g. catch time series) and assessment results (including biomass, recruits and fishing mortality time series, life history information as well as biological reference points) for data-rich stocks that are assessed regularly

9. Sources of Information
FishSource (from SFP)
contains some 600 stocks, and about 1200 fisheries
collaborations between FishSource and FishBase, SeaLifeBase, and the RAM II Legacy Stock Recruitment Database
develop approaches towards indicators of management performance
FishSource.com – Our industry-facing site, specific to SFP. Our vision for FishSource remains the same: to provide major seafood buyers with up-to-date, impartial, actionable information on the status of fisheries and improvements needed to become sustainable. By assembling the essential data and making it freely available, FishSource lowers the key barrier to entry for companies to engage in sustainable sourcing. Companies thus save time and resources by accessing FishSource for sustainability information and fisheries status.

10. Supporting applications
Other Sources
Chimaera (Portal to South West Indian Ocean Fisheries data)
Fisheries Linked Open Data (FLOD)
iMarine Top Level Ontology (TLO) Warehouse
Geospatial data (EEZ, FAO major fishing areas, etc.)
iMarine species data from providers (FAO-ASFIS, GBIF, ITIS, OBIS, WoRMS,etc.)
Supporting applications
GRADE (FLOD maintenance)
COTRIX (Code lists management)
COMET (mapping services)
iMarine data mining and annotations capacities

11. Supporting data sharing policies
The iMarine Data Access and Sharing Policies support the data sharing among contributors Business Metadata accompany the in-and-out flow of data to acknowledge and to preserve provenance and to provide instructions for derivative works
Global Record of Stocks and Fisheries
Business Metadata
Data

12. Minimum data requirements
From the heterogeneity of data collected in the FIRMS/RAM/FishSource… databases, which information will be extracted to populate the core repository?
Which rules for inclusion? …
Example for Stock
Species name
Area reference
MSY, SSB, F
Reporting Year
Source of Information
Link to fisheries
Example for Fishery
Area reference
Target/Associated/Bycatch species
Flag state
Management Body/Authority(ies)
Reporting Year
Source of Information

13. Comparison of FishSource and FIRMS databases
Although the architecture of the databases is different, both use Excel templates for updating, and collect similar raw data.
However, they differ in the target audience and objectives, thus providing different post-processing routines and outputs. While FishSource, applies algorithms for generating quantitative stock sustainability scores, FIRMS is more focus in providing qualitative data for dissemination to a wide range of public, allowing for more flexibility (free text fields) in both, inputs and outputs.
According to the objectives, to the minimum data requirements and underlying priorities, it is needed to:
identify and standardize common fields (i.e. using same units), ensure that definitions agree (i.e. for biological reference points and fishing terms) and develop unique identifiers for standard concepts (i.e. fishery research institutions, stock ID, marine resource assessment methods, etc.);
identify concepts and related Code Lists required for the core repository. And their harmonization/mapping in case code lists of similar concept exist in the two databases (e.g. list of species, list of geographical areas).

14. Comparison of FishSource and FIRMS databases
FISHSOURCE TEMPLATE (compatible with RAM Database)
FIRMS TEMPLATE

15. Comparison of FishSource and FIRMS databases

16. What’s in progress In RED what is relevant to developers Objectives
See the GRSF Wiki pages at
Preliminary meetings were held to investigate the three data sources:
1 Dec FishSource
23 Nov RAM Legacy Stock Assessment Data Base
23 Oct FIRMS
Competency questions have been drafted by FORTH and FIRMS Secretariat
FORTH built an ontology with such sources and competency questions
A shared session (Tue, 1 March 2016) between FIRMS TWG team and the BB TWG team will discuss about the implementation of the GRSF, in particular:
Objectives
Global aggregator (enabler) for the comprehensive inventory of existing stock and fishery records
Comprehensive State of stocks
Comprehensive Status and trends of fisheries (with focus on fishery management performance indicators)
Summaries on status and trends
Dissemination of comprehensive knowledge base on stocks and fisheries status and trends
Implementation
Minimum data requirements (core GRSF repository structure)
Definition of unique records
From unique reports, through unique reporting unit, their life-cycle, to records families (i.e. clusters of records by facts of partial overlapping of descriptors)
Assignment of “proxy/relational properties”
Adoption of Unique Identifiers
Data management workflow
Harvesting tool
Master Data Management tool
Identifying information objects (stocks, fisheries, and status reports)
Registering Reference data
Managing mapping among information objects
Content Management System
Publishing workflow management, including validation of Unique Identifier
Data curation in respect of the minimum data requirements
Editing the relational properties
Data mining and indexing of source documents
Rules for indexing - Ontology validation - Roles of data sources holders
In RED what is relevant to developers

17. Thank You!