Hello and welcome to my Professional Practice presentation - Session 2 (July 1st, 18:00 - 19:30 CET)

Studying the effects of an offshore wind farm on demersal and pelagic fish communities

This website was made as part of IMBRSea's Diving into Marine Minds Virtual Symposium 2020.

Introduction

My Professional Practice was done with the Flanders Research Institute for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (ILVO) in Belgium. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, my professional practice could not be conducted in its original form, and had to be switched to doing only remote computer work. My Professional Practice was done under the supervision of Jolien Buyse, a current PhD candidate at the institute.

The two main tasks I carried out during my professional practice were:

1) Developing habitat suitability models of fish in the Belgian Part of the North Sea (BPNS)

2) Writing a paper on the spatial and temporal-scales of life history of plaice.

Task 1: Habitat Suitability Modelling

What is Habitat Suitability Modelling? It is modelling that uses environmental variables, such as salinity or depth, to predict where certain species are likely to be found, i.e., to predict the species' the density, abundance, or presence/absence of a species in different parts of a study area. The work I did may eventually be used to make maps that will help to develop management policies for fish stocks and to plan and manage marine protected areas in the Belgian Part of the North Sea.

Main Steps:

1. Literature Review

o Learn about the current state of knowledge:

What is Habitat Suitability Modelling?
What are its goals?

- What are the steps to achieve them?

o Review literature to learn what type of data and software is needed to construct my models

2. Make step-by-step workflow

o Based on the literature review, prepare a step-by-step workflow with all necessary steps

3. Learning how to use data to build a model

o Learn how to use necessary software, like ArcGIS, including the Benthic Terrain Modeler tool

4. Environmental Data

o Find, select, import, explore, and extract environmental satellite data

o Types of data used: temperature, sea surface temperature, bottom temperature, salinity, chlorophyll, bathymetry, bottom composition

5. Biological Data

o Use fishing trawl survey data from the Belgian Part of the North Sea (2017 – 2019)

o Count and density data for 5 fish species:

- Common dab (Limanda limanda)
- Whiting (Merlangius merlangus)
- European plaice (Pleuronectes platessa)
- Common sole (Solea solea)
- Pouting (Trisopterus luscus)

6. Data exploration

o Check for departures from usual statistical assumptions

e.g. Heteroscedasticity, collinearity, covariance, outliers, etc.)

o Interpret the results of these statistical tests

o Software used: R and R Studio

7. Constructing Models

o Start with the simplest models: generalized linear models (GLMs) with normal distributions

o Moved on to models with Poisson and negative binomial distributions

o Evaluate the need to use other models, like generalized additive models (GAMs)

o Software used: R and R Studio

8. Future Steps:

o Select the best model (e.g. AICc)

o Evaluate the performance of the model: with 2/3 of the data already used to make the model (training dataset), use the remaining 1/3 of the data to evaluate the model (testing dataset)

o Additional tests:

Spearman’s rank correlation test, sensitivity tests, diagnostic plots

o Model Mapping:

- Create maps to visualize species distribution predictions

o Software to use: R, RStudio, ArcGIS

Examples of maps I used for my modelling. Shown are the annual average data for 2018 of:

Chlorophyll
Salinity
Bathymetry
Sea Surface Temperature
Bottom Temperature
Slope
Substrate Type

Task 2: Plaice Spatial-Scale Paper

What is a Plaice Spatial-Scale Paper? It summarizes current scientific knowledge on a certain species, in my case, European plaice (Pleuronectes platessa), focusing on temporal and spatial scale information. The work I did provides a reference point for future studies and identifies where the current knowledge gaps are.

European plaice (Pleuronectes platessa)

Main Steps:

1. Search literature

o Find relevant literature on European plaice (P. platessa)

o Search engines used: Google Scholar, Scopus, Web of Science

2. Read papers, highlight and extract important information

o Familiarize myself with the format and objectives of spatial-scale papers

o Review relevant papers on European plaice

o Share the literature and notes with other researchers using Mendeley

3. Wrote the paper

o Presented and discussed life history information on European plaice in one document

o Software used: Microsoft Word

4. Making graph

o Work on a figure summarizing spatial and temporal ranges of life-stage impacts

o Software used R: and R Studio

Flanders Research Institute for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (ILVO)

The Flanders Research Institute for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (ILVO) is a multidisciplinary research institute funded by the Flemish government. They support the economic, ecological, and socially sustainable development and maintenance of agriculture and fisheries.

Over the past 80 years, ILVO has done both basic and applied scientific research to support development of policies of the Government of Flanders (which funds the institute) for the agricultural and fisheries sector development and agricultural policy for rural areas. It also works to improve the quality and safety of agricultural and fisheries products.

ILVO has many research partners in academia and industry. It has twelve main research themes, including: aquatic environment and quality, fisheries and aquatic production, food science, and crops.

Reflections

Here are some of my reflections on my Professional Practice experience.

Reflections on my Professional Practice

Here I discuss how:

I Improved my professional competences
I contributed to my host organization's objectives
I used previously acquired theoretical and practical knowledge
I used previously acquired theoretical and practical knowledge
My career aspirations have been modified

Thank you for your time!

Habitat Suitability Modelling steps are based on the following papers:
Degraer, S., Verfaillie, E., Willems, W., Adriaens, E., Vincx, M., & Van Lancker, V. (2008). Habitat suitability modelling as a mapping tool for macrobenthic communities: An example from the Belgian part of the North Sea. Continental Shelf Research, 28(3), 369–379. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.csr.2007.09.001Lauria, V., Gristina, M., Attrill, M. J., Fiorentino, F., & Garofalo, G. (2015). Predictive habitat suitability models to aid conservation of elasmobranch diversity in the central Mediterranean Sea. Scientific Reports, 5(February), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1038/srep13245Maxwell, D. L., Stelzenmüller, V., Eastwood, P. D., & Rogers, S. I. (2009). Modelling the spatial distribution of plaice (Pleuronectes platessa), sole (Solea solea) and thornback ray (Raja clavata) in UK waters for marine management and planning. Journal of Sea Research, 61(4), 258–267. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.seares.2008.11.008

Statistics software used:R Core Team (2020). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. URL https://www.R-project.org/
Source of European plaice photo and video:
haraldhjellum. (2008, March 18). Chasing a European Plaice [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MhZyeXt9Z0
Hillewaert, Hans. “Category:Photographs by Hans Hillewaert.” Category:Photographs by Hans Hillewaert - Wikimedia Commons, commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Photographs_by_Hans_Hillewaert.

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