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

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Nature's Beauty Pageants Mean Life or Death When It Comes to Conservation

Posted on November 30, 2018 - 10:31am, by abrown

By Jessica Knoth

Tigers, elephants, gorillas, dolphins, sharks…you can picture each one, right? That’s because they are charismatic megafauna, or, in other words, species that are compelling because they are viewed as beautiful, impressive, or cute. Ironically, many of these species also happen to be endangered. A 2001 study by Anna Gunnthorsdottir found that there are stronger efforts to conserve some endangered species over others, simply because the animal is perceived to be physically attractive. The increased funding, habitat protection, and policy support for these species due to their perception by the general public can lead to more conservation successes.

Read the full blog HERE

Blogs

Educator Resources for Ocean Frontiers Film Series

Posted on October 10, 2018 - 12:19pm, by raye

The Exploring Ocean Frontiers Educator Resources are based on the award-winning Ocean Frontiers film series by Green Fire Productions, portraying how unlikely allies — government, industry, science and conservation — are working together to find solutions that benefit ocean ecosystems and economies. The resources include secondary lessons and post-secondary discussion guides to engage students on an inquiry-based educational journey in ocean stewardship and facilitate discussions on collaborative ocean planning and the future of our oceans.

Students can learn about this new wave of ocean stewardship through engaging lessons that build on real-world science, featuring inspiring film clips, research data, local knowledge, place-based stories, role-playing, background information and more — providing educators NGSS-linked tools to incorporate ocean management and conservation perspectives into a variety of classroom settings. Themes include: collaborative science, ocean planning, stakeholder engagement, ocean data portals, marine biodiversity and ocean stewardship. 

Free DVDs available through November 30th. Starting in December 2018, only electronic videos will be available.

Blogs

PrimeFish starts its programme of webinars on the project outcomes

From September until December 2018 the project will organise periodic webinars to disseminate the project tools and outcomes among the international fisheries and aquaculture sector.

Objectives

The webinars will dive deep on the methods utilised by PrimeFish partners, data and possible applications of these results. Participants will be able to test PrimeFish tools, interact directly with the main authors of the research and access main project documentation on the topic.

Course requirements

Designed for professionals of the seafood sector (companies, NGOs, associations, advisory bodies, media or research centers) and students.

Webinar topics

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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