Title: 'Digital fisheries data in the Internet age: Emerging tools for research and monitoring using online data in recreational fisheries'
Bio: Dr. Valerio Sbragaglia (ICM-CSIC) is a behavioural ecologist with a strong interdisciplinary interest in fisheries. Dr. Sbragaglia completed their Bachelor and Master Degrees at the University of Tuscia in Italy, then moved to Spain in 2010 where they completed a second Master degree at the University of Barcelona, and a PhD in marine sciences at the Institut de Ciències del Mar (ICM-CSIC). Dr. Sbragaglia was awarded a DAAD postdoctoral fellowship at Leibniz-Institute IGB in Berlin (Germany), and did a second postdoc at ISPRA (Italy) in the context of a EU Project. They moved back to the Department of Renewable Marine Resources at ICM-CSIC in 2020 after being awarded a Juan de la Cierva Incorporación and most recently a Ramón y Cajal.
Seminar Summary: Recreational fisheries management is challenged by monitoring gaps, stemming from difficulties engaging with participants, biased sampling, and insufficient resources to conduct biological or social surveys of fish and human populations. In the Internet age, online data have great potential to make a meaningful contribution to recreational fisheries research, monitoring, and management. Digital data by recreational fishing catches offer a double and overlooked advantage. From one side, they provide important ecological and social information about recreational fishing, and on the other side constitute a widespread spatio-temporal network of samples that can provide insights on macroecological patterns. I will show how a dynamic cultural system such as YouTube can be used to: (i) characterize harvesting patterns of recreational fishers; (ii) investigate macroecological patterns such as distributional range-shifts; (iii) explore social dimensions and sentiments towards invasive species. I will finalize my talk by highlighting the most important aspects to operationalize such emerging methodologies in recreational fisheries monitoring and management.
