Crowdsourcing Qualitative Stakeholder Observations to Enhance Scientific Understanding of Fish Stocks:
“The practice of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people and especially from the online community rather than from traditional employees or suppliers.” - Merriam-Webster
Regional Fishery Management Councils encourage local- level knowledge in federal fisheries management. ▪ Stakeholders with on-the-water knowledge engaged in process Participation in the scientific aspects of resource management typically requires considerable involvement ▪ Cooperative research ▪ Citizen science Crowdsourcing observations from Council stakeholders provides an opportunity for many people to share their individual perspectives
Stock assessments can have data gaps or lack real-time data: Current on-the water knowledge from stakeholders can be used to: ▪ Ground-truth observed trends ▪ Explain anomalies ▪ Inform projections
Online tool used to collect species-specific observations prior to each assessment • Association(s) with the fishery • Observation Solicit • Location(s) of observation Feedback Comments analyzed for overall positive, neutral, or negative sentiment • Manual Analysis: Two individuals classify sentiment separately and resolve discrepancies • Automated Analysis: R statistical software package ‘ tidytext ’ using a revised ‘Bing’ lexicon Analyze library to classify sentiment • Stock Assessment Panel • Scientific and Statistical Committee / relevant Advisory Panel • Council Share • Respondents/Stakeholders
Response by Location Response by Sector 35 60 551 Commercial Federal For-hire Private n=646 n=878 586 people responded to the tool
Manual Analysis Automated Analysis 2 comments dropped (n=584) 181 comments dropped (n=405) Response Sentiment: Manual Response Sentiment: Automated 91 95 125 191 185 302 Positive Negative Neutral Positive Negative Neutral
Manual Analysis Automated Analysis Many comments indicated that the average size of fish encountered is smaller than it has been historically. Comments indicating a negative trend in abundance noted that the spring migration had either diminished or mover farther offshore. This was attributed to red tide, influx of fresh water, or removal of structure. Comments indicated that the population decline has been occurring since about 2010.
Species Assessment # of Respondents Red Grouper SEDAR 61 97 Gray Triggerfish SEDAR 62 132 Yellowtail Snapper SEDAR 64 364 King Mackerel Update Assessment 47 Vermilion Snapper SEDAR 67 63 Cobia Update Assessment 586 Scamp SEDAR 68 32 Greater Amberjack SEDAR 70 64 Next up: Red Snapper and Gag Grouper
Continue to complete a Something’s Fishy effort for each stock assessment Formalize SOPP’s and a Technical Guidance document Consider Paperwork Reduction Act ‘general approval’ for the overall effort and ‘expedited approval’ for individual efforts to allow for more specific questions
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