Navigating the Global Fisheries Atlas Virtual Laboratory: Tools and Techniques

This 4-hour course empowers ocean scientists with a comprehensive understanding and practical skills for using the Global Fisheries Atlas Virtual Laboratory within the Blue-Cloud Virtual Research Environment (VRE). During this course, you will explore the benefits of standardized, FAIR fisheries data via a Virtual Laboratory (VLab). You will also get familiar with virtual facilities, either through graphic user interfaces (GUIs) or through programmatic access (APIs), and learn how to access web mapping products to browse the Global Record of Stocks and Fisheries (GRSF) and datasets describing Tuna Atlas fisheries globally. The course also provides methods to reproduce, update, and customize the systems for other use cases.

The aim of this course is to equip ocean scientists with the knowledge and skills to effectively navigate, utilize, and customize the Global Fisheries Atlas Virtual Lab for accessing, analyzing, and contributing to global fisheries data and research. Through hands-on experience with the Data-Interpolating Variational Analysis in n dimensions (DIVAnd) framework, participants will learn to integrate and analyze multi-source observational datasets to reconstruct and interpret surface ocean current patterns.