Are We Heading in the Right Direction for Exchanging Fisheries Data?

Efforts to improve data exchange among agencies and organizations that both generate and use data from fisheries and aquatic ecology surveys have been ongoing for decades.  To further the development and eventual adoption of common standards to facilitate the compatibility of core fisheries data elements is challenging, but also important to pursue in order to advance innovative science and collaboration among fisheries and aquatic professionals. Designing a standard that can accommodate evolution and change is critical for the standard to be adopted and sustained through time. Building from past efforts that have laid the groundwork for developing a national fisheries data exchange standard, a group of aquatic biological data specialists tackled questions of why we share fisheries data and what data would improve our jobs if they were broadly available and more easily exchanged.  We will present the work initiated by this group of experts that dove into these questions and the foundational approach for developing a fisheries data exchange standard. The job is big and more experts are needed to take on the work that lies ahead.  Are the steps we have taken pointing future work in the right direction to ensure progress?