With a greater population to feed and fewer resources to do it, overfishing has been a systemic problem for decades. But as it turns out, reductions in overfishing are one of the biggest success stories in recent government initiatives in environmentalism. Despite these many successes, some fish that are so often featured on the dinner table are still missing in their natural habitats, which affects the entire local marine ecosystem.
Every quarter since 2009, NOAA has issued reports about the status of overfishing in the US and has made maps to illustrate it. Visually, the maps are relatively uninteresting-- the color only serves to designate the regions for certain types of fish. But the maps do give us a clue as to which fish continue to be those most at risk. While it would be nice to look at the rebuilt stocks, NOAA only started making those apps in 2012, so there’s not enough data to make something interesting over time.
But it’s easy to find information about the health of the fish populations that are most at risk. Another data element that NOAA issues with its report is a summary table indicating each fish’s Fish Stock Sustainability Index (FSSI) score, which indicates the population’s health. The higher the score, the healthier the population. From the NOAA web site--
Criteria Points Awarded
1. “ Overfished ” status is known 0.5
2. “ Overfishing ” status is known 0.5
3. Overfishing is not occurring (for stocks with known “ overfishing ” status) 1.0
4. Stock biomass is above the “overfished ” level defined for the stock 1.0
5. Stock biomass is at or above 80% of the biomass that produces maximum sustainable yield (BMSY) 3
(this point is in addition to the point awarded for being above the “overfished ”level) 1.0The maximum score each stock may receive is 4. The value of the FSSI is the sum of all 2271 individual stock scores. The maximum total FSSI score is 920, achieved if all 2271 stocks were to each receive a score of 4.
Instead of the map I suggested in my first pitch, I think it’s more informative to show the progress of several individual fish over time. Before choosing which fish to include, I’d like to speak to an expert in overfishing, such as Sylvia Earle, the former head of NOAA and now a National Geographic explorer-in-residence. My initial thought is to use the fish from the NOAA maps, or to use more general categories of fish that people see at the grocery store (cod, salmon, tuna) and then break them down further by type (tuna: sockeye, albacore, bluefin, etc.), in conjunction with their FSSI scores. I could label the y-axis “health score ” and the x-axis “time ” and have different fish move across the graph by quarter. Ideally, this would be interactive, allowing users to select the type of fish that will then “ swim ” across the graph.
Skills to learn: how to isolate the data for particular fish (I think I could actually do this on Excel fairly easily), how to make an interactive graph, how to make the fish “ swim” across the page.
Publication: Washington Post or environmental publication such as OnEarth, Climate Central, etc.