Esri Ireland's digital mapping system is now being used by Inland Fisheries Ireland, the state agency for managing and conserving inland fisheries and sea angling resources, and the wider sea angling community to safeguard fish populations and protect marine ecosystems.
The geographic informations systems leader's ArcGIS system supports the Irish Marine Recreational Angling Survey (IMREC), which aims to estimate sea anglers' catches in Ireland, with up to 250,000 recreational sea anglers active along 3,000km of Irish coastline.
Inland Fisheries Ireland is required to meet EU data collection thresholds around species, locations, and volumes of fish caught annually in European waters and saw a need to collaborate in order to collate its own data and self-reported data from sea anglers.
Anglers were able gather and upload real-time information about the fish they caught and released using Esri's Survey123 app, which would then be automatically transferred to a shared repository called ArcGIS Hub, where it could be viewed.
Inland Fisheries Ireland monitored the data to identify patterns in the species distribution, volumes and weight of fish caught, and estimated catch rates. Anglers could also access a personalised dashboard to track their own contributions and angling successes.
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As a result, Inland Fisheries Ireland has greater control over and confidence in the accuracy and consistency of the data collected, and the system encourages anglers to play an active role in helping to conserve Ireland’s fish stocks.
Data is aggregated for reporting and the scalable system minimises manual data entry. The EU is particularly interested in data on cod, pollock, sharks, rays, sea bass and highly migratory species such as tuna, but the solution can be configured to capture data on other species too.
The state agency had success recently using Esri’s ArcGIS system to enable accurate reporting for a catch, tag and release programme for the critically endangered Atlantic bluefin tuna.
William Roche, senior research officer at Inland Fisheries Ireland, said: “ArcGIS will enable us to recruit anglers as citizen scientists and crowdsource the large volume of data that we require for EU and national reporting.
"With more anglers collecting data, we will be able to build up a better picture of the state of fish stocks off Ireland’s coast, particularly for anglers.
“The personalised dashboards will help to make the recording of data a habitual activity for anglers. We hope they will enjoy entering their catch data and take pride in their role as observers and stewards of Ireland’s fish stocks.”
Schalk Van Lill, customer success manager at Esri Ireland, added: “We are delighted to work with Inland Fisheries Ireland on this project and enable the ongoing monitoring and safeguarding of fish populations.
"Our GIS solution has provided Inland Fisheries Ireland with a feasible and affordable way to capture additional data to complement the other data collected for the EU.
“Citizen science like this provides broad spatial coverage all around the coastline of Ireland, enabling Inland Fisheries Ireland to efficiently comply with requirements. The solution can be easily scaled up to accept data uploads from more and more participants, allowing Inland Fisheries Ireland to expand the scheme over time.”
Photo: (l-r) Schalk Van Lill and William Roche.
