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March 15, 2018 - Finalizing GRSF requirements

Meeting Notes
Topics: The group discussed the “Pending Issues” found in the GRSF Wiki at: https://support.d4science.org/projects/stocksandfisherieskb/wiki/GRSF_database_overview#Pending-Issues

CNR (Pasquale Pagano, Luca Frosini)
FAO (Giulia Gorelli, Anton Ellenbroek, Aureliano Gentile)
FishSource (Braddock Spear, Susana Segurado)
RAM (Michael Melnychuk)

Notes

  • Following the GRSF TWG meeting in Rome (Feb. 2018), GRSF requirements needs to be consolidated for the final implementation of the GRSF knowledge base algorithm. At the GRSF TWG meeting we discussed some pending aspects, a few slides were projected and debated: https://goo.gl/aP5v5b Objective of today's meeting is to provide final recommendations/decisions on such pending aspects.

Types of GRSF Fishery records

  • The GRSF type “Fishing activity” should be re-labelled as Fishing unit
  • The GRSF type “Fishing description” should be re-labelled as Other fishery

GRSF working definitions:

Fishing Unit (for traceability): “A fishing unit is a fishery targeting a single species (or group of species) conducted by a single flag state using a single fishing gear operating in a water area, which is possibly managed by a single empowered management authority or treaty under a unique set of management measures".
Note: in the latest case, the “water area” associated to the fishing unit equates the management unit area, which ideally can be connected with one single assessment unit.
Fishing Area: "Area in which a specific fishing unit is operating".
Note: the fishing area can coincide with the management unit area.

Management Unit: "The area where the fish was caught and which is targeted by a unique set of measures" (modified from LEGN, 2008).).
Note: The area field of the GRSF fishery semantic identifier is therefore labelled as "Fishing area/Management area".

The GRSF information domains

Discussion

The group approved the above proposal.
FishSource considered the possibility to connect a fishing unit to a "marine resource" (FS record type "unascertained") when no other information on stock status is available, but still that connection would have a value for traceability purpose. (See also discussion on UUIDs for "marine resources" and "other fishery" types)

Revision of area fields for Fisheries

The area concept can have different interpretations: 1)"Assessment/Distribution Area" (the stock geographic extent, which can be the area(s) of distribution of the stock or the conventional stock assessment/monitoring area); 2)"Fishing Area" (the area in which the fishery is operating); 3)"Jurisdiction Area" to describe the mandate area of a management authority. I.e. FishSource and FIRMS fisheries with fishing activity / management unit approaches contain such types of areas.

“Jurisdiction area” as it is currently defined does not add any information for the unique identification of fishery units, and this information can be inferred from its associated management authority. It was suggested to drop the jurisdiction area information from the semantic identifier and no longer consider it for the unique identification of fisheries in the GRSF. However this information is captured in the GRSF knowledge base and it is defined as follows:

Jurisdiction area: "The territory (water area) of a political authority where a management authority is empowered to exert its mandate for fishery management purposes".
Note: This area is the total area of a management authority; within this jurisdiction area, sub-areas might be defined for management purposes (for example, to define management units).

Discussion

The group approved the above proposal.
FishSource highlighted that Jurisdiction is mostly by species. It was clarified the difference between the overall Jurisdiction of a Management authority intended as area of competence, and the management area for a specific management unit.

Management Authorities

The coverage of the existing GRSF repository of Management Authorities (i.e. a registry of local/national/international organizations/institutions with mandate on fisheries monitoring/management) is limited and “GRSF owned”. National authorities change across time and it may require huge efforts to maintain the information.
Would it be enough to indicate “national management (iso3 country code)” (and under the EEZ jurisdiction)?

Considering also the above proposal for the removal of the jurisdiction area field, the Semantic Identifier for Fisheries would be therefore built as follows:

species + fishing area/management area + management authority + fishing gear + flag state

Examples:

> asfis:PIL + fao:34.1.11 + authority:NAT:MOR + isscfg:SEI + iso3:ESP

> asfis:COD + fao:21.3.M + authority:INT:NAFO + isscfg:OTB + iso3:LTU

Other types of org: High seas, SpecialAgreement

Note: The registry of national Management units (species, area, management authority, shape file) developed by FishSource (starting April 2018), will be integrated in the semantic identifier refining the fisheries identification with specific area classification systems and specific management authorities at national/sub-national level (e.g. "org:Sub-Nat:XXX").

Discussion

The group approved the proposal.
The semantic identifier field "fishing area/management area" can be populated with other area codes (under new standards) when the SFP project on "registry of national Management units" will produce new classification systems and new codes, in example for sub-national/species based management areas.

Marine Resources identification

FishSource highlighted that the rule implemented to automatically distinguish “Marine resources” from “assessment units” does not work in every case. In fact, there are stocks units that are assessment units but, for a number of reasons, have no stock status information attached to it. A different criterion need to be identified for the automatic assignment of the GRSF type "assessment unit".
Finally, stocks identified in the Knowledge base as marine resources would have to be validated by human expert, in order to spot cases where an assessment unit was wrongly classified as a marine resource.

Discussion

i) Although the GRSF Admin VRE provides a way to change type of the GRSF records (i.e. from marine resource to assessment unit), the amount of manual changes would require a considerable expenditure of time. The following rules have been refined for automatic implementation:

  • RAM: all records are assessment units
  • FIRMS: all records with stock status descriptors (including narrative text) is an assessment unit
  • FishSource: FS type "stock" or "assessment unit" corresponds to a GRSF "assessment unit"; FS type "unascertained" corresponds to a "marine resource".

ii) The current FIRMS>FishSource>RAM priority rule should be changed for all stocks in which RAM is involved. In all of those cases (i.e. all merged records) should be by default tagged as "Assessment Unit".

Assigning UUIDs to Marine resources and Fishery descriptions

For the sake of “uniqueness” of Marine Resource and Fishery UUIDs, it was suggested:

  • UUIDs are not made available to end-users for GRSF records with type "Marine Resource" and "Other fishery" (formerly "fishing description")
  • However connection(s) can be made between a marine resource and fishing unit(s) (from the management panel, but not in both directions: only from a marine resource and not from the fishing unit records)
  • Semantic identifiers are produced and displayed as per default GRSF rules

Discussion

The group confirmed the issue and rephrased the above proposal.
i) CNR clarified that UUIDs cannot be avoided as technical mean to connect records and for their management. Nonetheless, UUIDs for specific GRSF types (e.g. marine resource, other fishery) can be assigned to specific policies and hidden to end-users.
ii) FishSource is expected to confirm the need and to complete the description of such policies.

Assessment areas

RAM highlighted that the assessment area portrayed in the GRSF in some cases does not reflect the resolution submitted (example FU6 is smaller than 27.4.b). Considered that mapping is based on "same as" relationship, cases like "FU6" should not be mapped to standard GRSF area codes if not fully matching the area definition. Since there is no GRSF standard to properly represent ICES area FU6, it can be entered in the GRSF but under the "unknown" classification system.

Discussion

The group confirmed the issue, however to facilitate the validation process it was suggested to leave that mapping and one by one confirm or reject the merge proposals.
i) RAM confimed that FU codes are already in their database.
ii) Medium term solution: the ICES classification system of FUs and other areas will be added as part of the GRSF standard classifications systems. In such case, FIRMS, RAM and FishSource data should be updated or mapped accordingly.

FIRMS definitions

  • 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.
  • Management unit: Is a Fishery unit considered by an Authority for a purpose of management, usually within a jurisdiction and/or with established legal rights. Jurisdiction is interpreted here as the limits or territory within which some authority may be exercised.
  • Management authority: The legal entity which has been assigned by a State or States with a mandate to perform certain specified management functions in relation to a fishery, or an area (e.g. a coastal zone). Generally used to refer to a state authority, the term may also refer to an international management organization. Examples of a Management authority ara a regional body, a state, provincial government, or local fishing community.
  • Fishery Area: is a container for information about the areas in which a fishery operates.
  • Area of Competence: the area on which a management body or authority exerts its competence/mandatory role.
  • Fishing Unit (statistical purposes - ArtFish): A statistical fishing unit is a particular type of fishing activity, conducted by a single flag country using a vessel and its major fishing gear.

Stock status descriptors

A GRSF Stock status descriptors Wiki page has been drafted to keep track of the amount of indicators and their origins disseminated in the GRSF.

Discussion

The group revised the Wiki page:

i) RAM suggested that BdivBmgtpref and UdivUmgtpref should be dropped since MSY indicator are more relevant and when not available are already filled with "mgt"
ii) FishSource confirm the list of their indicators but a further check is needed, possibly with some more indications where this information is encountered in the API

Follow-up actions

  • FishSource on "UUIDs for marine resource and other fishery", to confirm the need and to complete the description of such policies.
  • CNR to implement a specific policy for UUIDs behaviour for Marine Resource and other Fisheries upon confirmation by FishSource/FAO.
  • FORTH to implement the recommendations made by the group and tracked in these minutes.
  • GRSF stock status descriptors
  • FishSource/FORTH to confirm the list of FishSource indicators submitted to the GRSF knowledge base and to provide indications where this information is encountered in the API.
  • FORTH to implement the removal of BdivBmgtpref and UdivUmgtpref as suggested by RAM.

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