Openscapes

2021 FDD Openscapes Champions Cohort

Welcome to the 2021 FDD Openscapes Champions Cohort! This is a Cohort for Fisheries Dependent Data users (FDD). Learn more about Openscapes and the Champions Program: https://openscapes.org.

Cohort Agendas

We will meet as a Cohort via Zoom four times over two months for 1.5 hours, on alternating Fridays in September and October 2021. Additionally, we will schedule several GitHub Clinics before Call 2.

Agenda links below are only accessible to Cohort participants (coming soon!), as they are also an archive of our live google-docing. Please see https://openscapes.org/series for more detail and to view blank versions of the agendas.

Date Cohort Call Agendas Series Chapters Between Cohort Calls
09/17 1. Openscapes mindset mindset Seaside Chat (trailhead)
09/20, 09/22 > GitHub Clinic < publishing, project management Hands-on collaboration in the browser: editing, publishing, Issues
10/01 2. Team culture and data strategies for future us team culture, data strategies Seaside Chat (code of conduct); Co-working
10/15 3. Open communities and coding strategies for future us coding with communities, coding strategies Seaside Chat (pathways); Co-working
10/29 4. Pathways share

Participating teams

These are the teams participating: please add any edits directly (we’ll learn how in our GitHub Clinic!)

The Cadrin team at University of Massachusetts Dartmouth is a collaboration among academic, federal and state scientists as well as people in the groundfish fishing industry to develop standardized indices of groundfish stock abundance by managing and analyzing fishery monitoring data. There are several data streams and alternative modeling approaches that would benefit from the Openscapes program for efficiency, transparency and reproducibility to produce the best scientific information available to assess and manage fisheries. Web presence/GitHub Org:

The Humphries team at the University of Rhode Island uses a combination of field experiments, underwater surveys, and interviews to study fish and fisheries. Their goal is to link ecological interactions with social dynamics in order to evaluate and prioritize management solutions. Web presence/GitHub Org:

The Hyde team has multiple members from NEFSC, GARFO, academia and industry. Currently all work is being done by individuals, but they are hoping Openscapes will help them improve collaboration and make their work more transparent for the public. Web presence/GitHub Org:

The Mills team is leading novel research projects that strive to develop models to meet the complex challenges facing marine ecosystems, fisheries, and coastal communities. They are continually working to improve our quantitative capabilities by including more spatial and temporal data at finer resolutions, combining quantitative and qualitative information to make the best use of available data, and developing more sophisticated modeling frameworks that can accommodate complex data, such as fisheries dependent data. We hope that the skills we learn will advance our abilities such that our questions, and in turn the impact of our findings, are not constrained by technological limitations. Web presence/GitHub Org:

The Selden team is composed of members from diverse backgrounds, including graduate students, professors, and individuals who work at non-profits. They have research backgrounds in geography, ecology, and oceanography and have mastered how to talk across these disciplines, and are now analyzing how fishing communities have responded to past, and present distribution shifts of target species and creating an index of vulnerability to future climate change. Web presence/GitHub Org:

The Stoll team is interested in the human dimensions of fisheries and ocean systems and how policies and practices shape people’s interactions with the marine environment. This focus means that they tend to engage with FDD in unconventional ways that both present challenges and also create opportunities to further our knowledge about fisheries and the people who depend on them for food and livelihood. The goal of participating in the Champions cohort is to both improve our research skills and (long-term) to help institutionalize open data science. Web presence/GitHub Org:

The Fay team focuses on developing interdisciplinary modelling approaches to extend the scope of applications for fisheries and ecosystem assessment methods, and testing the performance of decision support tools for living marine resource management. They apply a range of statistical and modelling approaches for the assessment and management of fish, marine mammal, and marine reptile populations, and actively collaborate with academic and agency scientists in the Northeast US, US West Coast, Australia, and Europe. Web presence/GitHub Org:

The Jones/NEFSC team in part collects FDD in collaboration with the fishing industry, which can be underutilized, in part due to the complex nature and challenges creating reproducible research products. They are interested in strengthening open science approaches to increase the value of these data by opening the door to new users who have previously been unable to use the data sets due to their complex nature. Web presence/GitHub Org:

Openscapes team

Julie Lowndes, Openscapes Co-Director, NCEAS, UCSB, is leading

Anna Holder, environmental scientist at the California Water Boards, is assisting

Rachel Baum, librarian at the UMassD Claire T. Carney Library, is assisting

More about Openscapes and the Champions program:

More about FDD

Fishery Dependent Data (FDD) represent a complex mix of information collected to facilitate managing the region’s living marine resources. In the Northeast, data flow from individual businesses and/or scientific samplers to the region’s scientific and management organizations. This web of information can be difficult to access as much of the content is confidential in its raw form. Further, many of the codes and systems used to store these data are poorly documented, and even routine analyses are not commonly shared among data users. Currently, FDD are therefore difficult to integrate into scientific advice for ecosystem based fisheries management. Analysts tend to be unfamiliar with the data or hesitant to explore their potential, and data can be viewed with skepticism rather than leveraged in new and innovative ways. There is a need to begin to provide access, documentation, and cultivate a community of practice that focuses on using these data to their full potential.

Examples of FDD data: observer data, dealer data, study fleet data, electronic monitoring data, permit data, biosampling data, DMIS data, CAMS data, VRS data

This opportunity is funded through NOAA Fisheries Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC) and a grant from the Fisheries Information System Program through an award to UMass Dartmouth-SMAST through CINAR. It is coordinated by Gavin Fay (UMassD-SMAST), Andy Jones (NOAA NEFSC), and Rachel Baum (UMassD Claire T. Carney Library).