Blogs

OpenChannels has a team of dedicated bloggers addressing targeted aspects of ocean planning and management, including communication, technology, ocean uses, and more. Our bloggers are experts in the field, drawing from their own knowledge and experience.

The OpenChannels community can also benefit from your knowledge and experience. We appreciate the diversity of perspectives in this field and welcome the use of OpenChannels for sharing these views. Do you have a perspective on ocean planning you would like to share? We'll help you do that right now: just click the button above and follow the prompts. If you are interested in blogging but have questions, please email Raye Evrard at raye [at] octogroup.org. We look forward to your contribution!

The OpenChannels Team

Blogs

Using a variety of satellite technologies to monitor IUU fishing in Tristan da Cunha

Posted on September 19, 2018 - 2:44pm, by oceanmind

By Tia Jordan, Fisheries Analyst at OceanMind

Situated in the South Atlantic Ocean, Tristan da Cunha is the most remote inhabited archipelago in the world. Part of the UK Overseas Territories, Tristan da Cunha’s 750,000-km2 Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) is closed to commercial fishing, with exception to those granted a licence issued under the provision of the Fishery Limits Order. 

The remote nature of the islands and the large EEZ make protecting against Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing a real challenge. It is only through the use of satellite technology that detailed monitoring and surveillance of vessel traffic can take place.

Blogs

Blockchain technology – Could this be the supply chain’s weakest link?

Posted on August 20, 2018 - 9:24am, by oceanmind

The work to eradicate Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing from the world’s oceans has been painstakingly undertaken by organisations and governments for many, many years now. Like agricultural livestock farming in previous years, the world has come to realise that it is important to know where their seafood comes from, how it was caught, if it is legally compliant and safe to eat. 

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Bayesian statistics: Common sense formalized

Posted on July 26, 2018 - 8:55am, by mike_hay

In the last posts (first, second), I outlined a number of common errors in the usage and interpretation of P-values. Due to the base-rate fallacy or the multiple comparisons problem, the significance level alpha of a null-hypothesis significance test can easily be an order of magnitude lower than the true false positive rate. For example, under p>0.05, we could easily have a 50% error rate. These issues are one of the primary causes of the replication crises currently shaking psychology and medical science, where replication studies have found that the majority of significant results examined are insignificant upon replication. Fisheries and marine policy have many of the same risk factors driving the unreliability of scientific findings in those other fields, but no one has actually attempted to do any replication studies yet.

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P-values part II: How a p<0.05 result can have more than a 50% chance of being wrong

Posted on June 28, 2018 - 5:09pm, by mike_hay

In the last post, I described some common misconceptions and problems with the use of null-hypothesis significance tests and P-values. In this post, I'll show more common ways that P-values are often misapplied, including how a significant result under alpha = 0.05 can have more than a 50% chance of being wrong.

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P-values do not tell you what you probably think they do

Posted on June 19, 2018 - 2:58pm, by mike_hay

Calling everything with p < 0.05 "significant" is just plain wrong

The practice of statistics in the sciences often takes the form of drawing scientific conclusions from cargo-cult application of inappropriate or outdated statistical methods, often to the exclusion of prior evidence or plausibility. This has serious consequences for reproducibility and reliability of scientific results. Perhaps the number one issue is the over-reliance and lack of understanding of null-hypothesis significance testing, and blind faith in the reliability of the P-values these tests provide.

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Clearing the War for Salmon: the Difficult Path to Removing Dams in the Klamath Basin

Posted on June 6, 2018 - 1:28pm, by abrown

By Spencer Showalter

Mark your calendars for 2020—it could be the beginning of the largest dam removal project in American history. While dams in California have been used for generations to stabilize long-term water availability to settlers, their inherent role of restricting flow affects humans and ecosystems downstream. Because of these impacts, four dams in the Klamath River Basin are slated to be removed in a $450 million project that would re-open 500 miles of spawning grounds to coho and Chinook salmon. The gains from the removal could be huge. Reopening spawning grounds would help rebuild depleted salmon fisheries, and higher flow would mean cleaner water with fewer viral infections and toxic algae blooms. Because the future costs of upkeep of the dams represent a net loss to their owner, PacifiCorp, removal would be economically positive in a corporate sense. Additionally, the water and salmon fisheries were historically used by native tribes of the Klamath Basin, including the Yurok and Karuk Tribes, who stand to regain clean water and increased harvests if the dams are removed.

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Simply Science, Part V: How the Ocean Gives us Every Other Breath

Posted on June 6, 2018 - 1:27pm, by abrown

By Samantha Farquhar

Take a breath….and thank the trees.

Now take another breath…..but this time thank the ocean.

Yes, the ocean. It has been estimated that 50% of the global oxygen supply comes from the ocean.

How does the ocean do this? By providing a home to plant-like organisms called phytoplankton.

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