The unvaluable value of making marine data available: an example constructing an IBM for the Galician Octopus

The ocean is crucial for our society due to its prime role in regulating climate and providing resources and ecosystem services. Ocean observation is key to understand processes and changes, but it is very expensive and this is the reason why we only have information of a small part of the ocean. Hence, all the available data should be made available to be discovered, explored and used as much as possible, giving a second or third life to data that were obtained for a different purpose.

 

In this presentation we will show the steps needed to build a Lagrangian-Individual Based Model for the Galician Octopus in North West Spain in order to explore the survival of the early life stages (eggs and larvae) of this species, which is very appreciated in the area. We will focus on the data needed to build the different model components, either if they are available or not. If the data are available, we will discuss both the research questions that these data were intended to answer at the time they were collected and the new scientific knowledge that they are helping to build in this particular octopus project. But we will also pay attention to the data that are needed, but are not available, or the approximations that have to be made due to the lack of observations, which contributes to increase the uncertainty of our scientific findings.

Finally, we will show some initiatives that are being carried out with the participation of our research group to make observations from the IEO observing system more visible and available through standard data services.