Jordi Ribera-Altimir
My educational background is in informatics engineering with a Master's in project management and a second one in oceanography and marine environment management. My main aim is to apply my knowledge of information systems to the marine data management workflows (data collection, processing, dissemination and visualization), providing open access to marine data, easing the scientific knowledge transfer and enabling data capitalisation.
Since 2018, I have been leading the information systems of a service to monitor the Catalan fisheries and give scientific assessments to the administrations, fishing sector and society (ICATMAR). I am responsible for the whole information systems life cycle (requirements definition, design, analysis, development and quality assurance). Since 2023, I have also been involved in the data collection of oceanographic measures to monitor climate change at sea, conduct maritime activities efficiently and manage the maritime environment.
Sessions
Fisheries' sustainability should be achieved by considering biological, social and economic aspects. To this end, different strategies should be followed, including co-management, which encourages scientists, governments, fishers and civil society to jointly manage the ocean resources. Since 2014, several co-management strategies have been implemented in Catalonia, a region with about 580 km of coast in the NW Mediterranean Sea. With the aim to transfer scientific knowledge to better manage the ecosystem, we present here the end-to-end (E2E) system from ICATMAR, the Catalan Institute of Research for the Governance of the Seas. The E2E system includes data collection, processing, analysis, publication and web visualization of bottom trawling and purse seine fisheries sampling data along the Catalan coast. In 2023, all these fisheries represented 85% of the total catch and 77% of the total fisheries revenue of the region.
During 5 years of data collection (2019-2023), the sampling program created a dataset of over 1,500 onboard samplings and 1 million sampled specimens of more than 470 different species. As the combination of environmental data with fisheries monitoring brings new approaches to assess the status of the ecosystem, the collected fisheries data, jointly with the daily fishing landings and Vessel Monitoring System (VMS), are all visualized in combination with georeferenced sea habitats (EMODnet), and climate and sea conditions (CMEMS) on the web browser. An open website (www.icatmar.cat) offers the following data visualizations: geolocalized fisheries samplings together with the mentioned data sources, biomass distribution per port or season, and length-frequency charts per species (https://icatmar.github.io/VISAP). To better implement fisheries management strategies, these E2E information systems may be used as a tool to access high-quality open data, facilitate their comprehension and ease the dialogue between science, fisheries, policymakers and civil society.