Duke's seamapping dream team

Computer savvy ecologists at Duke are taking spatial analysis offshore as part of a worldwide effort to take stock of what lives in the sea p.4

It’s not that the data doesn’t exist. Scientists have been studying marine life for years, but they have not done a great job of archiving their findings. Some data exists in paper tables; some in outdated computer programs and much data is otherwise inaccessible or unknown to researchers who might be able to use it.

“What we’re trying to do is develop and harness that activity,” Read said. “It’s an experiment. People are still very proprietary about their data.”

Halpin agrees. In some cases, researchers have suffered through difficult field trips to collect their data. Others have built entire careers around certain datasets. So in addition to creating new ways to use GIS programs, the SEAMAP team is learning the fine art of negotiation. But the contributors will get something out of it as well — the opportunity to improve the way they analyze and present their own data.

The OBIS-SEAMAP program will allow researchers who may have limited technical resources to do spatial analysis, create relational databases and build maps and graphs, to make their work more accessible. “There are times when you get your results and bury them in a white paper and hand them to a policy maker, “ Halpin said. “It just doesn’t have the same impact as showing them a map.”

For Halpin himself, the beauty of the OBIS-SEAMAP project is that it will allow him to see his efforts begin to pay off in a big way. As one of the key players in the effort to move landscape ecology offshore, he believes the project couldn’t have come at a better time.

“There was a lag where the terrestrial scientists have been using spatial analysis tools for 20 years and it’s now a hot new area in the marine world,” Halpin said. “There is a big demand to take a lot of these tools and apply them to the marine environment. We’re, in a sense, ramping that up.”

Tinker Ready is a health and science writer based in Cambridge, Mass. Her work has appeared in Nature Medicine, The Boston Phoenix, the Utne Reader, the Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, Esquire, and Parents.

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