The World Ocean Council (WOC) is calling for the improvement of ocean and atmospheric data collection by fishing vessels following its ‘Smart Fishing Vessels’ workshop.
The workshop, which was held in Newfoundland, Canada in September 2013, built on the WOC ‘Smart Ocean/Smart Industries’ global programme to expand data collection and sharing by ocean industries.
It provided an insight into the FishSmart Programme, currently under development by the Canadian Centre for Fisheries Innovation (CCFI).
It also looked at the perspectives of a panel of data users and data providers on the use of fishing vessels as platforms for environmental and atmospheric data collection.
Around 32 representatives from the fishing industry, national and international data collection organisations, government officials and spatial data experts attended the workshop.
Participants also took part in a series of breakout sessions designed to create specific and useful input into components of a ‘Smart Fishing Vessel’ programme such as stakeholder engagement, opportunities and constraints, logical pairings of industry data collectors, decision support tools, and quality assurance of data.
The WOC, CCFI and other partners say they will continue efforts to promote the use of fishing vessels to collect data, as part of the broader ‘Smart Ocean/Smart Industries’ programme.
Interested companies and other parties are encouraged to contact the WOC to get involved.
The report from the workshop is online here.
