Marine Futures Explored With New Choice Visualization Tool
Tags: ecopath, fish, interactive, marine, ocean, tool library, ubc, visualization
Photo courtesy of Lenfest Ocean Futures Project
How much fishing is too much, and what decisions can we make to secure the health of our marine ecosystems? The answer to these and other questions about managing our marine ecosystem have confounded policy makers for decades. A new interactive scenario exploration program being developed at the University of British Columbia just might be the tool they’re looking for.
Ocean Summits is an interactive decision making system that supports stakeholders of a specific marine ecosystem to play out scenarios that can help create consensus on key management issues. The system creates realistic-looking simulated marine ecosystems in which users must make environmental, social and economic choices about their marine environment. They can then compare the results of their new scenario with a baseline scenario to demonstrate the impact of their choices. The goal of the tool is support stakeholders and decision makers to come to an informed agreement on how to manage valuable marine ecosystems and economies.
This tool couldn’t come at a better time. Global fish catches are declining, our enormous capacity to find and catch fish is over exploiting marine resources, and our harvest methods are harming marine ecologies. Even though we know this, marine management is challenging because there are so many variables to consider like weather conditions (think El Nino), changing climate (ocean temperature rise), employment, market conditions and more. Bring stakeholders into the equation and now you’re dealing with conflicting interests, passionate values, and varying levels of knowledge and understanding.
Participants of Ocean Summits see an underwater view of a marine ecosystem. Schools of fish swim by at eye level, sometimes coming up right to the screen and seemingly swimming over you. Their numbers rise and fall according to their historical levels and projected levels. Sharks, rays and seals are also swimming around, while on the surface fishing boats bob overhead. The numbers of fishing boats also grow and shrink according to the level of fishing set by the scenario. It’s a dynamic underwater view that can visually describe the marine ecosystem from 1951 into the future that Ocean Summits users create.
Watch an example of the marine scenario visualization.
Ocean Summit’s interface is a fancy, simple to use version of Ecopath, a free ecological/ecosystem modeling software suite with over 7000 registered users in 124 countries. Basically, in the words of UBC MsC student Andres Ciscneros, Ecopath is a representation of the marine food web and its calculations rely on how much the ecosystem’s species eat (trophic interaction).
In a demonstration I recently attended, Ocean Summits was set up to explore tradeoffs between artisanal and industrial fisheries in Peru. Sherman Lai and Joe Buszowski gave the tour, explaining that Anchoveta is the catch that both dominates the Peruvian fishery and acts as a keystone species in the ecosystem. We tracked the numbers of Anchoveta in the ocean as we made changes to the kind of fishing, amount of fishing, and marine policies.
The tool offers a new level of understanding for complex decision-making because the impacts of one choice are easily measured on other important indicators. As we changed the way fish were caught (more large fishing), the overall number of fish in the ecosystem dramatically dropped because they rely on Anchoveta for their own food. As we implemented policies to limit the catch to 40% of the available stock, the ecosystem leveled out.
Ocean Summits hasn’t been implemented yet in a real world scenario, but here’s their vision: in advance of a fisheries summit, stakeholders communicate their key concerns and issues, which then drives the kind of data that builds the visualization model. Advance communication and meetings are also held to teach summit attendees how to use the software and review the model for legitimacy. At the fisheries summit, attendees each have a computer screen in front of them that allows them to explore the scenario. The moderator has a huge touch screen at the front of the room to make changes to the model according to participant conversations. In a backroom somewhere, a scientist is operating the backend of the model (Ecopath) to adjust any major aspects of the model according to the directions of the summit conversations.
Users are intended to be synchronous, but can be in multiple locations. Concepts are in development for individual scenario generation, simplified versions for kiosks, even an interactive visualization where you can take fish out by grabbing for it (Wii for marine conservation!).
Ocean Summits is still a year or two away from prime time, but keep your eye on this and the similar planning tools (like MetroQuest, which also came out of the University of British Columbia) – interactivity and real time scenarios will soon become essential tools for collaborative decision making.
