West Coast Expeditions Go Public

Photos can be posted online almost instantly these days, even from a research vessel. Think of the benefits to science - crowd-sourcing species identifications, plugging into experts from around the world, stimulating research, engaging the public, feeding the media frenzy. It all sounds good, right?

Or does it? Photos and videos are data. They show species, abundance, geology, proximity, etc. Data acquisition is the primary objective of a science career. So, there are disadvantages to data sharing. Someone could publish your data, or misinterpret it. They could scoop you on your big deep-sea story. Or use an image without crediting you. You may be helping your competition by giving it up for free.

Open-access advocates would lead you to believe the benefits of data-sharing outweigh the risks. The theory goes that public information begets more public information. For example, public albums can generate new data through viewer comments and viewer statistics. As traffic routes through the site, you build a demographic profile for your target audience. This new information adds value to the data, and may even supersede it.

To test the open-source idea, NOAA's Southwest Fisheries Science Center (SWFSC) is experimenting with two new public data products from their 2010 deep-sea coral and sponge research. The first is a new online Google database from the SWFSC Habitat Ecology Team in Santa Cruz, CA. The database is called a Google Fusion Table. Data and images for Southern California can be viewed in map form or spreadsheet form.

The second is a new Picasa photo album from the SWFSC Phantom ROV team and marine biologist Dr. Peter Etnoyer. The photo album is a narrative slideshow for sharing with National Marine Sanctuary partners on-shore, the public, and the ship's crew of NOAA Bell M Shimada. 

Both image galleries show incredible deep-sea sponges, rockfish, soft corals, and sea stars from 150 to 450 m depth; as well as geological features, and marine debris like a large abandoned trawl net and a discarded cable.

Ocean of benefits from open-access publishing

Aquanautix is reveling in happiness from a series of marine protected area designations. New MPAs were established last month in the North Atlantic, at Sala y Gomez Island in Chile, and on Saba Bank in the Netherlands Antilles.

Aquanautix has been working for Saba Bank's protection since 2006 under a partnership led by Department of Environment and Nature of the Netherlands Antilles (MINA) and Conservation International to assess marine biodiversity relative to anchor damage from foreign oil tankers. The project culminated in an online collection of open-access scientific articles at PLoS One called Biodiversity of Saba Bank.

One question raised in the mutually congratulatory conversations about Saba Bank's new MPA status was "how important was the publication of the Biodiversity of Saba Bank collection at PLoS One to the declaration of Saba Bank as a marine protected area?"

Saba Bank researchers saw the benefits of PLoS One from the start. The journal is open-access, so anyone can read results for themselves. Readers have access to all the maps and figures online. Everything is freely downloadable at high resolution. The review process is relatively speedy, so timely publications can result, and novel results are not prerequisite to publication.

What we were curious about was the importance of the Collection to the success of the marine protected area effort. So, we put the question to project leader Paul Hoetjes from MINA. His response confirmed the positive:

"The PLoS One collection certainly helped the process along... without it chances are that we might not have been able to get the decree passed in time for the constitutional changes in the Netherlands Antilles, which could have set back the process with a year or more ... so, I think you can say that the collection has been instrumental in getting the decree passed."

There you have it, the PloS One Collection was "instrumental" in the passage of new legislation. Open-access publishing helped save Saba Bank!

Let me add, "where else will you find 200 full-color Caribbean fish pictures freely available online for your downloading pleasure?"

Here's a few images by Jeff Williams at Smithsonian NMNH from the article Biodiversity Assessment of the fishes of Saba Bank Atoll, Netherlands Antilles. The article is a gold mine of fish pictures! I love this part, especially:

"... based on results presented herein, the number of species known on Saba Bank is increased from 42 previously known species to 270 species."