Managing Scientific Data for Listed Salmonids and Seafood Safety

The Scientific Data Management (SDM) team at the NOAA Fisheries Northwest Fisheries Science Center (NWFSC) works with researchers and managers to coordinate, manage, analyze and disseminate scientific and management data related to fisheries management and ESA-listed marine species. The Center is responsible for data and research to support the assessment of listed Pacific salmonids as well as west coast marine fisheries. SDM has built a series of databases and web applications to facilitate the execution of these responsibilities.

The Genetic Analysis of Pacific Salmonids (GAPS) system tracks genetic data used to differentiate distinct populations up and down the west coast of America and Canada. Abundance numbers, crucial to population status evaluation, are housed in the Salmonid Population Summary (SPS) system. Efforts to help recover listed salmonids through habitat restoration, outreach, and other methods are tracked and measured in the Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery Fund (PCSRF) and Pacific Northwest Salmonid Habitat Project (PNSHP) databases. Monitoring data to evaluate the effectiveness of habitat restoration efforts is stored in and accessed from the Status and Trends Effectiveness Monitoring (STEM) database.

The NWFSC has also played a lead role in toxicology analyses to support seafood safety during and after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. SDM has joined sample collection information (location and date of collection), sensory analyses, and analytical chemistry to publish reports, maps, and web services of the data used to re-open areas closed to fishing during and after the spill.

These SDM systems utilize a set of web enabled ad-hoc query and dynamic reports, interactive mapping, and data entry and update forms for authorized end users (both internal and external). They are built with a common set of tools including Oracle RDBMS, Oracle Application Express (APEX), ESRI ArcGIS Server, AJAX, and javascript libraries.