Inland Fisheries Ireland (IFI) is encouraging sea anglers to become citizen scientists as part of a project to gather key data for the protection of fish species and habitats around Ireland.
As TechCentral reports, IFI is using ESRI Ireland’s ArcGIS digital mapping system for the Irish Marine Recreational Angling Survey (IMREC), which has been previously highlighted on Afloat.ie.
It’s hoped to harness some of Ireland’s 250,000 recreational sea anglers to report real-time data on the fish they catch and release, via the Survey123 smartphone app — much in the same way as skippers’ participation in the Tuna CHART survey.
William Roche, a senior research officer at IFI said: “ArcGIS will enable us to recruit anglers as citizen scientists and crowdsource the large volume of data that we require for EU and national reporting.
“With more anglers collecting data, we will be able to build up a better picture of the state of fish stocks off Ireland’s coast, particularly for anglers.”
TechCentral has more on the story HERE.
