Across all disciplines, the thrust is on developing statistical and mathematical models to harmonize and visualize disparate data and address complex problems. This includes marine science research, which is increasingly data-driven. But in a financially-constrained environment, there is an added emphasis on leveraging existing datasets from varied ocean observing platforms or animal sensors rather than solely relying on independent and traditional modes of expensive data collection and analyses. Recognizing the need to be nimble and ready to tackle challenging management issues, NOAA Fisheries has invested and facilitated the development of analytical products and applications that are cross-disciplinary and span multiple taxa protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act and Endangered Species Act. Referred to as the National Protected Species Toolbox (NPST) initiative, the long-term goal is to develop, evaluate, and disseminate a wide range of analytical products and applications to comprehensively assess species within the US Exclusive Economic Zone in support of species conservation and recovery.
Results/Conclusions
The NPST initiative began in 2013, and thus far 19 funded projects have resulted in the development of user-friendly products advancing population assessment methods and model evaluation techniques. Topics covered include estimating species abundance and density, predicting animal movement and species distribution patterns, risk assessments, and analyzing human impacts on vulnerable species. Snapshots of research products are presented to help in the wider dissemination and evaluation of these applications by the broader ecological community. The data are collected from various platforms and instruments, such as manned and unmanned observing systems, telemetry, vessel, aircraft, or shore-based platforms, and passive acoustic recorders. Specifically, products include an observer coverage calculator to estimate minimum coverage needed to obtain target bycatch estimation CV, an R package to create ensembles of predictions from species distribution models (SDMs) made at different spatial scales or with different prediction units, and models to statistically analyze animal movement and population trend data. Products are housed in a Fisheries Integrated Toolbox GitHub repository, which is a centralized platform to share NOAA Fisheries’ fish, ecosystem, human dimensions, and protected species-focused toolboxes. Further, to understand the use and effectiveness of these products results from a NOAA Fisheries online survey are shared to inform the nature and type of products desired by scientists and managers in the future.