Esri Ireland develops app to protect Irish marine ecosystems
Techies Go Green signatory, Esri Ireland has helped Inland Fisheries Ireland to conserve fish stocks and protect Irish marine ecosystems. Esri’s digital mapping system is enabling anglers to gather and share real-time information from any device about the fish they catch and release.
Esri’s ArcGIS system supports the Irish Marine Recreational Angling Survey (IMREC) which aims to estimate sea anglers’ catches along the 3,000km of Irish coastline. Survey123 is a web-based app where anglers can record their catches and angling successes with a personalised dashboard.
“Citizen science like this provides broad spatial coverage all around the coastline of Ireland, enabling Inland Fisheries Ireland to efficiently comply with requirements. ”
This tool was needed as Inland Fisheries must meet EU data collection requirements around species, locations, and volumes of fish caught annually in European waters. Thus, it needed a collaborative approach to collate its own data with self-reporting by recreational sea anglers.
The anonymised information that is filled in is automatically transferred to a shared repository, the ArcGIS Hub. There, it can be easily viewed by the anglers and monitored by Inland Fisheries Ireland to identify patterns in the species distribution, volumes and weight of fish caught, and estimated catch rates.
Angler Brian Cooke with William Roche, Senior Research Officer at Inland Fisheries Ireland, and Schalk Van Lill, Customer Success Manager at Esri Ireland
As a result of using Esri’s Survey123, Inland Fisheries Ireland has greater control over and confidence in the accuracy and consistency of the data collected. This all helps with working towards a more sustainable goal of safeguarding the country’s fish stocks, while also helping the agency meet European Union data requirements.
William Roche, a Senior Research Officer at Inland Fisheries Ireland: “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. ArcGIS will enable us to work with anglers as citizen scientists and crowdsource the large volume of data that we require for EU and national reporting. The personalised dashboards will help to make the recording of data a habitual activity for anglers, and we hope they will enjoy entering their catch data and take pride in their roles as stewards of the sea.”
Schalk Van Lill, Customer Success Manager, Esri Ireland: “We are delighted to work with Inland Fisheries Ireland on this project and enable the ongoing monitoring and safeguarding of fish populations. 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.”
Esri Ireland joined Techies Go Green in 2021. .
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