Advancing Marine Ecosystem Conservation with the Global Fish Tracking System on the Destination Earth Service Platform

The Global Fish Tracking System (GFTS) project is dedicated to enhancing our understanding of wild fish essential habitats, particularly focusing on sea bass, a species of significant economic importance and addresses a recognized information gap highlighted by the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES). The lack of accurate data on these habitats poses challenges in formulating effective conservation policies. The project builds up on a large-scale tagging experiment on adult sea bass along the French coastlines, generating biologging data, and develops innovative software tools on the Destination Earth Service Platform (DESP), based on the Pangeo ecosystem and the pangeo-fish model, to geolocate fish and estimate their movement patterns based on various data sources.

The project will make use of Climate Change Adaptation data from the Climate Digital Twin (Routine and On-Demand for some higher resolution tracking), Sea Temperature observation (Model, Satellite, in-situ) from Copernicus Marine services (Sea temperature and associated value), Bathymetry (Gebco) and biologging in-situ data obtained from tagged-fish. Leveraging the Pangeo Infrastructure on the Destination Earth Service Platform (DESP), tools like pangeo-fish adhere to FAIR and TRUST principles to address challenges in estimating sea bass behaviour and movement by integrating modelling techniques and developing a Decision Support Tool (DST) for "what-if" scenario planning. The technical framework, including Xarray and Dask, facilitates scalable computations, while collaborative development on GitHub ensures an iterative, open-science approach. The model and approach developed are applicable across different scales, species, and regions, offering an adaptable platform for sustainable marine ecosystem conservation.

The impact of the project is twofold. In the short term, it introduces the GFTS and a Decision Support Tool into the DESP, leveraging advanced modelling and cloud computing to offer insights into the functioning of fish populations, aiding policy advisers in crafting effective conservation measures. The intuitive interface of the DST ensures accessible and informed decision-making. In the long term, the project establishes a foundation for sustainable marine ecosystem conservation by integrating advanced modelling, ensuring reproducibility and widespread accessibility, fostering future research, policymaking, and conservation endeavours. The project actively involves end-users, bridging the gap between complex modelling and practical decision-making, contributing to more effective fisheries management and marine conservation efforts.
In this presentation, the project will be presented as well as the current achievements and challenges.