Monitoring
The open ocean biodiversity
with fishers
THE CHALLENGES OF OBSERVING and PRESERVING PELAGIC BIODIVERSITY
The open ocean is vast, remote, and difficult to access, making it challenging to collect data on pelagic species. As a result, there is still little knowledge on the health status of many pelagic species.
Currently, only species with available fisheries data—typically marine megafauna or commercially significant species—can be assessed, and their conservation status is concerning:
• 62% of pelagic and mesopelagic sharks and rays are currently threatened.
• Commercial species, such as tropical tuna, are overfished in some oceans.
• 21% of marine mammal species are threatened, while 38% are classified as data deficient.
A large proportion of pelagic fish species with minor commercial value remain unassessed due to the challenges of accessing the open ocean and the lack of data.
PROJECT OBJECTIVES
The MOOBYF project aims to bring new knowledge on tropical pelagic biodiversity, by developing monitoring platforms to observe the open ocean in collaboration with fishers.
MOOBYF aims at involving fishers as major players for the monitoring of pelagic biodiversity. We will develop the monitoring and data collection actions in collaboration with fishers, while accounting for their needs and priorities, putting knowledge exchange at the core of our actions.
Stakeholder engagement is a therefore a key component of the project.
Why Mooby?
Gaps of knowledge on pelgic biodiversity
Many threats:
overfishing,
marine pollution, climate change:
need monitoring
Monitoring Challenges:
pelagic species are remote and difficult to access, sparsely and patchily distributed over large transnational areas
The concept: FADS AS OBSERVATORIES OF THE PELAGIC BIODIVERSITY
In the open ocean, it is possible to observe large aggregations of tropical pelagic species around floating objects (such as natural logs), since many species exhibit an associative behavior with them.
Fishers make use of this behavior and also deploy artificial floating objects (Fish Aggregating Devices or FADs), i.e., buoys or rafts, to increase their catches. Currently, the use of FADs is widespread in tropical tuna fisheries worldwide.
FADs can constitute privileged observatories of the open ocean, due to their number and regular maintenance by fishers.
COMBINING MULTIPLE MONITORING TOOLS
The original concept behind MOOBYF is to combine multiple data collection methods, deployed near Fish Aggregating Devices (FADs), to monitor biodiversity.
THESE METHODS INCLUDE:
- • Bioacoustics, by deploying hydrophones recording underwater sounds beneath the FADs;
- • Active acoustics, by deploying autonomous echosounder buoys underneath FADs to detect the biomass of associated species, processed through artificial intelligence (AI);
- • eDNA metabarcoding, by sampling the water column in proximity of FADs;
- • Stomach content metabarcoding, by sampling the stomach content of large pelagic fish caught by fishers at FADs;
- • Embarked video cameras, using autonomous buoys attached to the FAD, processed through AI;
- • Fishers’ Knowledge (LEK), by conducting interviews with fishers who exploit FADs, to understand their activities and integrate their diverse knowledge.
Each monitoring method has its own advantages and limitations, and as of now, there is no single tool capable of monitoring the full spectrum of pelagic species. The strength of MOOBYF is combining these multiple data into integrated biodiversity indicators.
Project Duration: 3 years (April 2024-March 2027)
Partners
EU Consortium:
IRD
Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, France (Coordinator)
ZMT
Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research
GmbH, Germany
CNR
Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Italy
Università di Padova
Italy
Université de Liège
Belgium
Bilateral collaborations:
BRIN
Badan Riset dan Inovasi Nasional, Indonesia
University of Maldives
Maldives
Funding
This research was funded by Biodiversa+, the European Biodiversity Partnership, in the context of the MOOBYF project under the 2022-2023 BiodivMon joint call.
It was co-funded by:
the European Commission (GA No. 101052342)
and the following funding organisations:
ANR
Agence Nationale de la Recherche
OFB
Office Français de la Biodiversité
FNRS
Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique
BMBF-VDI/VDE
INNOVATION & TECHNIK GMBH
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft e.V.
MUR
Ministry of Universities and Research
