24 September 2021 - FIRMS eTWG7 on GRSF - Preparatory Meeting with RAM-FAO¶
- Table of contents
- 24 September 2021 - FIRMS eTWG7 on GRSF - Preparatory Meeting with RAM-FAO
Meeting Notes¶
Participants:
FAO (Marc Taconet, Bracken van Niekerk, Aureliano Gentile)
UW-RAM (Michael Melnychuk)
Meeting Notes¶
Background¶
Regarding the GRSF, the TWG and the FSC12 meetings are cornerstone events involving FAO internal staff and FIRMS partners. The main idea of the TWG is to showcase the progress done so far on the GRSF, highlight challenges and draft recommendations for the upcoming FSC12 to be held on the 18-21 October 2021. This includes the work done, and to be done, on traceability units and area standards.
This preparatory meeting is to identify where contributions can be made by RAM colleagues (in the form of statements, slides, examples and/or testimonies).
DAY 1¶
Agenda item 4 - Pilot validation of UUIDs and release of GRSF VRE - experimented validation & publication method¶
- Slide 10 - Pilot validation of UUIDs and release of GRSF VRE:
Regarding validation, each database (RAM and FishSource) go through their own validation process, therefore the records entered into the GRSF are in a sense “pre-validated”. The role of the GRSF is to map records, comparing and merging records across a common set of standards. - RAM colleagues made some QA, QC and error checking in the GRSF list of stocks and replied to requests of merge/archive/approve.
ACTIONS:
- FIRMS Secretariat to elaborate the slide on the above notes
Agenda item 5 - Report on testing of UUIDs (FIRMS Secretariat, ICES, SFP, UW)¶
- Slide 16 - Report on testing of UUIDs:
UW unable to comment on the use of the console, API’s and competency queries, as their colleague, Charmaine, who was using these is no longer working for UW. - UW commented on the usefulness of a bulk download of the data across the different stocks, especially for research purposes. Mr Gentile explained the current scope of the competency queries, which do provide such bulk downloads of the data in Excel format (and have been used previously for the validation and merging of records).
- Slide 19 - The integration of UUIDs in partners DBs:
UUIDs are already integrated into the RAM database. UW do not send the UUIDs to their regional data providers, to avoid mismatches etc. Internally UW will be dealing with the RAM stocks IDs, but in terms of integrating with other global databases, e.g. with the ICES database, UW will provide the GRSF UUID as well as the RAM stock ID.
ACTIONS:
- FIRMS Secretariat to elaborate the slide on the above notes.
Agenda item 6 & 7 – Report on the GRSF database¶
- Slide 20 - Validated content vs Draft content – what remains to be done:
UW noted that the linking up of spatial information (shape files), will enable many progress and should be a top priority.
- There are obvious opportunities for traceability question. MSC have their own stocks definition and fishery definition and already an MSC framework, it would have value to look at it more broadly.
- Aureliano highlighted the upcoming FAO consultancy, which aims to validate approx. 300 records (including RAM stocks) by matching records using their bounding boxes where the area codes are non-standard. RAMs contributions would be to validate and ingest these rectified area codes within their database once complete.
- Slide 24: Time dependent data: UW noted the slight redundancy in the list of indicators, e.g. Biomass and CPUEs (at least for RAM). Technically there are State and Trend descriptors for each indicator, so not sure if this is a unique piece of info within FIRMS. Consider grouping catches and landings, biomass and abundance, and fishing pressure and mortality. In RAM, they have the reference points and the indicators coming out of the assessment only. Biomass / Abundance; fishing pressure / mortality; Catches, and for each we have the reference points.
- Aureliano confirmed that the State and Trend indicator in FIRMS is narrative text.
- Slide 26 - Required improvements on standards - geographic resolution of records:
Chris Free is in touch with Brad for his project on improving geo-references for spatial management units. We have gone through rounds of providing bounding boxes. There are issues with the date line.
- In principle, UW are happy to contribute, with limited capacities. We do not actually have any compilation of information. Regarding areas like New Zealand, we have different management units, which are species specific (to the area) and therefore a shapefile associated with each of those is required.
ACTIONS:
- FIRMS Secretariat to present the GRSF stocks indicators in a simplified way, showing on same row those of similar nature.
- UW to confirm this reference: Chris Free's RAM Stock Boundary Database. The shapefile data are accessible here: https://marine.rutgers.edu/~cfree/ram-legacy-stock-boundary-database/
DAY 2¶
Agenda item 8 - Data use and Partners’ perspectives on the GRSF¶
- These are mainly stand-alone presentations and open discussions among participants.
- UW were surprised initially when they started to see that the other databases were very complementary. The gaps are being filled within the GRSF and the main value was to be able to achieve a (greater) global coverage.
- With improved geospatial information, how GRSF can be linked to other potential databases would be good for helping people to respond to research questions. E.g., there might be some potential to show how the FAO landings database, as well as the Ex-Vessel price database by species and region, could be linked to the GRSF stock UUIDs (although with some ambiguity). Once this turns down to polygon definitions, you can start to open to Climate databases, MPAs and other geospatial DBs. There’s value to this polygon approach.
- Slide 34 - Data use and Partners’ perspectives on the GRSF:
UW has nothing really to add here, but commented on user access, and whether or not it would be a paid service. It would be hard for UW to sign on as a paid service as RAM is open access and RAM partners contribute with the understanding that this is free data.
- FAO responded that it is not a paid service, and the user policy is for content access. There are 3 players, general public, partners, and FAO staff. The idea is to restrict access to the general public and partners who will have access with rules (e.g. some restricted information in the SDG questionnaire data, GRSF time series).
- UW: Some perspectives on the RAM database itself, Ray Hilborn is still the PI and we do have a full time DB manager, Daniel Hively. We’re pretty limited in growing capacity, however. Michael’s role is barebone supervising as he has moved to MSC. UW do keep QA/QC checks, and still have funding in place to have Daniel supported, so the database will be kept updated. There is another database update planned for next month, and we will keep you informed. In principle we are happy to contribute, with limited capacities. Potentially interested by the joint venture to cover better and in complementarity ways with other DB resources.
ACTIONS:
- FIRMS Secretariat to produce a slide or two based on Mike's above inputs.
- FAO to look for Michael’s comment on the Global fishery indicator regarding access restriction.
