The ocean is a deeply connected ecological system. Ocean communities and businesses are also tightly linked, with supply chains connecting boats far offshore to inland processing plants to buyers thousands of miles away. Just as fish and seafood products flow easily from place to place, so does the data about those fish–or at least it should.
One reason the Net Gains Alliance was created was out of frustration about how difficult it is to connect all the sources of information that combine to tell the story of what happens during and after a fishing trip. A single commercial fishing trip can generate a logbook of fishing activity, multiple landing receipts, satellite position locations, video monitoring, and an observer report. These data streams may be controlled and managed by different entities, including state and federal agencies and commercial software vendors, with a different mix of data flows for each fishery. Data need to be matched across data systems and government jurisdictions for scientists to answer questions about population dynamics, fishery economics, and to set management targets.
Consumer businesses prioritize interoperability, using persistent identifiers and common data standards to link records and support big data science. Unfortunately, this has not been the case for fisheries data (and many other environmental data systems). Managers and scientists can and do spend weeks searching for data, matching records, tracking down errors and outliers, and cleaning and preparing data for analysis. There are also impacts for the fishing industry and the public. For example, East Coast fishermen holding multiple federal permits may have to report separately to multiple NOAA Fisheries offices. Modeling the impacts of climate change, or estimating the costs of coastal disasters, is difficult and time-consuming when data are hard to access and use.
While all fisheries can benefit from investing in interoperability, the actual solutions will vary to meet each region’s circumstances and needs. For example, Alaska has been able to integrate state and federal data more easily than other regions since the state is its own federal region for fisheries management purposes. The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission is an interstate commission with regulatory authority and its own data network, which develops and enforces consistent data requirements for member states. In NOAA Fisheries’ Greater Atlantic Region, the Catch Accounting and Monitoring System now provides a single, comprehensive source of commercial landings and discards information across NOAA Fisheries’ two offices, which previously compiled information separately. Each of these regional approaches is helping lay the foundation toward smoother data integration.
Untangling the knot of interoperability takes an ongoing commitment to resources and the ability to plan for the long term. NOAA Fisheries headquarters can support data integration in all of these different scenarios by setting performance-based adoption targets, allocating staff and data management resources, and tracking and publicly reporting on progress. Improving data integration is essential to helping NOAA Fisheries meet its own mission and collaborate with other state and federal agencies on issues like climate adaptation, disaster preparedness, and energy development. NOAA Fisheries indicated it plans to spend $145m of its IRA funding on data modernization which we hope will help resolve some of these challenges. Investing in a better understanding of our environment benefits our economy, offers opportunities for innovation, and ultimately sustains us all.