MSA Experts Play Vital Role in the International Year of The Salmon Seminar Series
Over the past few months members of the MSA - Principal Investigator Colin Bull and Data Specialist Graeme Diack - have joined other invited experts to participate in two of the International Year of the Salmon (IYS) seminar series. They have provided presentations on the Likely Suspects Framework and contributed to panel discussions.
The International Year of the Salmon seminar series covers a range of topics related to the past and future IYS high seas expeditions, as the IYS team and scientists from across the North Pacific prepare for the IYS 2022 pan-Pacific winter expedition that will take place in a matter of days.
The two seminars involving MSA experts were: “Open Ocean to Open Source: The Power of Data in a Rapidly Changing World”, on December 8th and “Connecting High Seas Research to Management Actions: A Collaboration across the Salmosphere” on January 18th .
Image: Chris Conroy
“Open Ocean to Open Source: The Power of Data in a Rapidly Changing World”
Data science is critical for supporting effective salmon research and management. This seminar explores the world of data mobilization in the context of the IYS High seas expeditions, and involves the perspectives of an international panel of data analysts, including MSA member Graeme Diack, Data Specialist. The Hakai Institute is helping lead ocean data mobilization efforts in Canada and in this seminar they discuss the power of open-source data, their efforts in mobilizing IYS salmon ocean ecology data, and the benefits of data mobilization and how to overcome impediments.
Ocean data reside in disaggregated data sets that range from spreadsheets on an individual’s computer to corporate mainframe databases. Clues and answers to large questions lie in composite or connected data. This is one of the greatest impediments to ocean research. Data mobilization efforts are needed to effectively discover and synthesize data and to connect people studying similar topics around the world.
In an increasingly unpredictable world, rapid access to data for salmon and their associated ecosystems remains one of the most critical barriers to science and management. The solution to breaking these barriers lies in the application of international data standards, the use of trusted data repositories, and the availability of innovative tools to find and synthesize data for scientific studies and management decisions. The International Year of the Salmon is working with partners in government, academia, and the NGO community to define and apply best practices and new technologies, such as graph databases, to make salmon data discoverable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable.
Graeme Diack, Data Specialist, said “We seem to be on the tip of a global wave of data mobilization. I aim to put across the idea that it can be done iteratively, it doesn’t all have to happen in one go. That’s really shaped the Missing Salmon Alliance project that I’m working on, in that I’ve focussed on building the essential tools to bring these iterative approaches to people.”
“Connecting High Seas Research to Management Actions: A Collaboration across the Salmosphere”
This seminar explores a project involving a collaboration between Atlantic and Pacific Salmon scientists that is helping to connect the high seas research coming from the IYS High seas expeditions to management decisions.
As salmon face numerous threats across their complex life cycle, it is increasingly important that we understand the main drivers affecting salmon mortality across all ecosystems, and their cumulative effects, so that we can better understand where and how human intervention can help these fish. The Likely Suspects Framework (LSF) concept was developed in 2017 by a group of salmon researchers from the Atlantic and the Pacific basins and is envisioned to be a guiding process to help answer big questions behind the decline in wild salmon and provide practical advice to managers and decision-makers. In the Atlantic basin, the Missing Salmon Alliance is working with NGO partners in the UK to test the LSF approach in several river systems. In the Pacific basin, the North Pacific Anadromous Fish Commission and partners, developed and hosted the Salmonscape Workshop Series to scope how the LSF could be applied in the Northeast Pacific. The workshop series brought together over 100 participants representing a diverse range of roles and expertise, from federal and provincial/state agencies, Indigenous governments and communities, NGOs, and academic institutes. We will hear from both the Atlantic and Pacific partners that are working on this project about progress that has been made and the next steps moving forward.
Dr Colin Bull, Principal Investigator with the Missing Salmon Alliance took part as a panellist and gave a presentation outlining why we feel we need a new approach for managing our salmon populations, and explained what the Likely Suspects Framework, funded by the MSA, means.
He explained, “For Atlantic Salmon, The Missing Salmon Alliance’s vision for the Likely Suspects Framework process is to develop a new, full life-cycle organisational approach, which tries to identify where changes in survival are occurring, provide a better forward look for stock prospects and a framework which can guide salmon management decisions into the future. Specifically, there are four areas which we are working on. One is establishing a salmon data library to mobilise knowledge. The second is to develop a salmon mortality (ie suspects) framework – a modelling initiative. Thirdly, providing some decision support tools - trying to make that knowledge a bit more accessible for managers. And finally, catalysing strategic research – trying to find out some of the answers ourselves, and using that to feed into the processes of developing a salmon mortality framework and getting that out to managers.”
More information on the seminar series, and links to full recordings of the seminars are available here: https://yearofthesalmon.org/seminar/
As an Alliance of five organisations, we will build on the existing work of our partners and maximise our impact by taking a coordinated approach and vital action in order to halt and reverse the decline of wild Atlantic salmon.
The goal of the Missing Salmon Alliance is to build an evidence-base to influence national and international decision-makers to regulate activities that adversely impact wild Atlantic salmon.
The Missing Salmon Alliance
The MSA is comprised of the following members:
Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust, Atlantic Salmon Trust, the Angling Trust with Fish Legal, The Rivers Trust and Fisheries Management Scotland.
https://www.missingsalmonalliance.org