The Global Record of Stocks and Fisheries (GRSF) is an inventory of global stocks and fisheries records from multiple data providers. It assigns unique identifiers to standardized stock and fishery identifications. The GRSF knowledge base collates data and assigns identifiers. It has achieved the development of two virtual research environments and uptake is being considered by the Fisheries Resources Monitoring System partnership. The outcome could include using unique identifiers for product labeling and supporting international goals. The exploitation plan is to gradually populate the GRSF and present it at the FAO Committee on Fisheries in 2018.

1. BlueBRIDGE receives funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020
research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 675680 www.bluebridge-vres.eu
Supporting Blue Growth with
innovative applications based on
EU e-infrastructures
14-15 February 2018, Brussels
Global Record of Stocks and Fisheries (GRFS)
Aureliano Gentile
FAO of the UN
Aureliano.Gentile@FAO.org

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Outline
What is the GRSF?
Achievements of the GRSF development
Uptake
Outcome
Exploitation plan

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The GRSF is an inventory of global stocks and fisheries records across multiple data providers
What is the GRSF?
Boost stocks and fisheries status and trend monitoring

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Data providers and part of the GRSF development
Fisheries and Resource Monitoring System (FIRMS) (partnership of international
organizations, regional fishery bodies)
the RAM Legacy Stock Assessment Database (Univ. of Washington)
FishSource (program of the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership)
Fisheries and Resources Monitoring System (FIRMS)
RAM Legacy Stock Assessment Database
FishSource
Global Record of Stocks and Fisheries
What is the GRSF?

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Global Record of Stocks
and Fisheries (GRSF)
Fisheries and Resources
Monitoring System
(FIRMS)
RAM Legacy Stock
Assessment Database
FishSource
The
Database
Sources
The GRSF
Knowledge
Base
The GRSF
user interface
& Competency
Queries
What is the GRSF?
Collated data from either national or regional
sources
Information stored according to data
standards and protocols; to allow
comparability between records
Assignment of Unique Identifiers for single
stock and fishery standard identifications

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What is the GRSF?
Assignment of Unique Identifiers for standardized identifications of stocks and fisheries
Standard coding system for:
- Stocks <Species> + <Assessment Area(s)>
- Fisheries <Species> + <Fishing Area(s)> + <Management Entity(ies)> +Jurisdiction area(s)> + <Geartype> + <Flag State>
Example of semantic identifier, and of its full label
asfis:COD + fao:21.3.M + grsf-org:INT:NAFO + rfb_comp:NAFO + isscfg:OTB + iso3:LTU
Gadus morhua - Atlantic, Northwest/21.3.M - Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization (NAFO) - NAFO area of competence - Bottom otter trawls - Lithuania
Universally Unique Identifier
- to respond to whatever global IT standard
Example
http://data.d4science.org/uri-resolver/catalogue/GRSF/product/f21113e9-0794-37aa-b7fe-
bf49101361f3
Semantic Identifier – product labelling, records identification & validation, etc.

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Data coverage
GRSF Knowledge Base
GRSF Stocks - 2856
 Assessment Units - 2063
 Marine Resources - 793
Fisheries - 9564
 Fishing Units - 6503
 Fishing Descriptions - 3061
The quality control and information cleaning work is in progress (e.g. identifying/connecting duplicates),
and about 2,000 records for unique stocks and 6,000 for fisheries are expected at the end of that process.
What is the GRSF?
GRSF
Stock
Assessment
Unit
Marine
Resource
Fishery
Fishing Unit
Fishing
Description

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Achievements
The GRSF interface
Part of iMarine Data Catalogue, open
source CKAN software
2 VREs (Virtual Research
Environment)
the “GRSF” VRE for the public
users with approved records
the “GRSF Admin” VRE for
authorized users to manage and
validate the GRSF records
The GRSF Knowledge Base is built
with MatWare (FORTH semantic web
technology using ontologies)

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Achievements
The GRSF VRE collaborative environment
allows contributions in a data validation workflow
facilitates updates
add transparency through source and ownership metadata, proper
citations and credits

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Uptake
FIRMS Steering Committee (June 2017, FSC10) decided to consider to take ownership
of the GRSF
FIRMS, the Fisheries Resources Monitoring System is a Partnership between Regional
Fisheries Bodies with the goal to “facilitate the monitoring of the status and trends
of all fishery resources.”
- The BlueBRIDGE & FIRMS Technical Working Group joint meeting (Feb. 2018) made
recommendations for a FIRMS ownership of the GRSF with a governance model and
an integrated Knowledge base.

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Unique identifiers for Stocks and Fisheries
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Outcome
Potential use of unique identifiers for product labelling

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The infrastructure provides services that make the GRSF a unique system to:
Access a comprehensive global information repository on fish stocks and fisheries
Harmonize with standards and collate data from independent repositories
Generate Unique identifiers for stocks and fisheries records
Provide a web-based collaborative environment for multiple contributions in a
data validation workflow
Disseminate transparent information with source and ownership metadata,
proper citations and credits, and respect of ownerships
Facilitate Users to access a huge amount of quality data collected in a cost-
effective way with distributed effort among authoritative sources
Contribute to international initiatives such as the U.N. Sustainable Development
Goals (14, 17, …), the State of the World Fisheries and Aquaculture (SOFIA), ...
Outcome

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Potential audiences
RFBs and their member states
Seafood industry (from suppliers to retailers)
National agencies of governments dealing with stocks and fisheries reporting
Researchers and Officers working on global analyses on state of fishery
resources
NGOs promoting sustainable fisheries
General public
Outcome

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Potential benefits
A global standard for Unique Identifiers of stocks and fisheries: i) a
Universally Unique Identifier, machine readable code to respond to whatever
global IT standard, and ii) a Semantic Identifier, human readable code with
standard codes and labels;
Support to dissemination and monitoring of the Sustainable Development
Goal Indicator 14.4.1 “Proportion of fish stocks within biologically sustainable
levels”;
Support to traceability needs including catch documentation schemes,
ecolabelling schemes, food safety, sustainable fisheries;
Expected to boost stocks and fisheries status and trend monitoring and
promises to stimulate responsible consumer practices.
Outcome

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The GRSF community
Under the UN initiative on the Sustainable Development Goals, a FIRMS expanded
partnership steering the Global Record of Stocks and Fisheries will
increase the global coverage of stock status monitoring,
while providing for traceability, transparency, consistency and comparability of
stocks status information, which will
aid countries to disseminate information on national monitored stocks thus
promoting their efforts to render their fisheries sustainable
and deliver information services to countries, RFBs, FAO and various public
and private partners/users
Outcome

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Exploitation plan
The GRSF VRE will be gradually populated with data validated by experts under
specific criteria. A pilot content will be released by April 2018
Present GRSF at side event of FAO Committee on Fisheries (COFI, July 2018)
Finalize the governance and sustainability model proposal for final decision by
the FIRMS Steering Committee (FSC11, early 2019)
Compile requirements and implement GRSF Services for target business needs
Launch of GRSF to the public upon FSC11 clearance
Exploitation plan

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‫شكرا‬
謝謝
Merci
Thank You
Благодарю
¡Muchas Gracias!