News

Marine Biodiversity Data Mobilization Workshop 2024

From April 22 - 24, 2024, a group of experts in marine data science standards and data management hosted the third edition of the Marine Biodiversity Data Mobilization workshop. The virtual 12-hour workshop was held over three days, to help scientists and data managers educate themselves on how to leverage data standards to rapidly mobilize their data to OBIS and GBIF. The organizers and facilitators represented several organizations and OBIS nodes (Hakai Institute, Ocean Biodiversity Information System nodes: Caribbean, USA, Eastern South Pacific and Ocean Tracking Network, U.S. Integrated Ocean Observing System, Canadian Integrated Ocean Observing System, Marine Biodiversity Observation Network, and Ocean Biodiversity Information System Secretariat), with collectively over 100 years of experience implementing the relevant standards and practices.

A total of 415 people applied to the workshop, an increase of 260% compared to last year. In an effort to keep the workshop hands-on and interactive, a smaller selection of applicants was invited to register. 88 individuals registered, with attendance peaking around 60 on Day 1. Attendees represented 5 continents and 18 countries, highlighting the value of the workshop being held virtually (see map below). Approximately 20% of attendees were returning participants.

See map here: https://facilmap.org/FPOuVNKnYXE21f#4/53.90/-70.49/Lima/m264015

Similar to previous years, the structure of the workshop is somewhat unconventional because the majority of workshop time was used for breakout room discussions and individual work. Workshop contents are openly available at: 10.5281/zenodo.7896606. After being shown short videos (available publicly here) describing some facet of the workflow, discussions were held in breakout rooms, being learner-led, with ample time and virtual space provided for the attendees to dedicate themselves to working on their datasets. This year we included dedicated Spanish-speaking breakout rooms with instructors from Chile and the Caribbean to be more inclusive and accommodate global participation. Furthermore, a specific focus this year was on mobilizing animal telemetry data. Overall, the workshop discussed the challenges around the standardization of at least 60 datasets of marine biodiversity data collected using a range of sampling methods, such as eDNA, animal tracking, net tows and microscopy data. Recently, one dataset was successfully mobilized and shared to OBIS and GBIF as a result of this workshop.

Participants were asked to share their data via GitHub to document their blockers and their data translation process, increase the openness of their data, and facilitate post-workshop engagement. A post-workshop survey showed that the workshop structure worked well for attendees, with all of them stating that the workshop helped them move past the blockers they had identified. The breadth of expertise and helpfulness of the instructors was highlighted multiple times as strengths of this workshop.

Figure 1: Chart indicating whether the workshop helped attendees move past their identified blockers, ranging from 1 (not at all) to 5 (workshop helped me move past all identified blockers).

Overall, we aimed to both increase the interoperability of marine biodiversity data and expand the community of practice. We feel this workshop met those goals well. Attendees have been invited to join our growing community of biodiversity standard enthusiasts by joining our Slack channel and continuing engagement through GitHub. Eight participants indicated that they would be willing to join the workshop in the future as a facilitator, which would further ensure the longevity of this workshop.