Marine stocks and human activity facilitate the easy display of traditional distribution maps. This applies to several marine species, maps of vulnerable areas and complex visualizations based on information from research databases and projects.
User-operated methods will be developed to create custom animations showing how the distribution of marine stocks change over time. Initially the service will be developed to display modelled distributions of fish larvae drift along the Norwegian coast through spring and summer. Later it will also include modelled feeding and spawning migrations of fish stocks, as well as observational data collected on research voyages over several years.
By linking the Institute of Marine Research's FishExchange database directly to the map application in BarentsWatch, the user can retrieve and visualize the distribution of a desired stock, observed during research voyages in a specific year and a specific season.
The Institute of Marine Research's Sjømil database includes data on how the size of the commercial stocks have evolved over time. The link between maps and the Sjømil database allows users who are interested in the distribution of cod in the Barents Sea to create visualized graphs in combination with a map that shows the amount of cod from 1981 to the present day.
