Hi there,

 

Glad you think it sounds interesting : ) Thanks very much for your reply.

 

There are a number of very different data sources which could be used, and perhaps the challenge would be in bringing these together. 

 

Re wild salmon, my contact at Cefas (the UK government's dept. for fisheries and aquaculture science) is a salmon telemetry expert and there are a number of scientific research projects which have produced exciting data to show the migrations of individual salmon, from river to sea and back again.  With this type of data it might be necessary to extrapolate it to show general trends - fisheries science would be able to guide how this could be done.  There will also be data held by the UK and Scottish government on estimated numbers of salmon per individual river, when and where they were caught by anglers or fishermen, numbers (and when/where) of juvenile salmon released into rivers in order to re-stock them, also numbers of farmed salmon which escape from each fish farm and when.      

 

Re farmed salmon, as you'd imagine there's a huge amount of very sophisticated data used within the farmed salmon supply chain to accurately manage this, eg the salmon farming companies use databases which record numbers of fish per pen, per fish farm, in well boats en route to the slaughter house (these well boats follow a number of set routes from the fish farms to the slaughter house), in the slaughter house, en route to the processing factory, in the processing factory, also data about numbers of whole gutted farmed salmon and which customers they will be delivered to and when, plus location and time data for all this.  There's also accurate data on average number of sea lice per salmon, their weight, size, life stage (and much more).  There's also data about the movements/behaviour of farmed salmon within their pens (including above water and underwater video which is used to monitor them and their feeding).

 

Salmon ranching is not done in the UK, but is done globally - this is where salmon are farmed for the first few years of life, then released so that they can be caught by anglers and fishermen.  It would be very interesting to show the movements of ranched salmon visually.  There's also potential to show the locations/movements of fish which are caught in order to be processed into fish feed and then fed to farmed salmon.

 

Going one step further, there is also some very exciting data emerging from fish welfare science which can be used to potentially show, visually, what it is like to be a farmed salmon - eg, metabolic rate, cortisol levels etc. 

 

As the lives of fish are so hidden, beneath water, and because fish are still quite mysterious, I think a visualisation which could reveal their lives/deaths/movements as a live animal and as salmon meat products would be fascinating to many - salmon anglers, consumers etc.  Also, due to the controversy around salmon farming it's a very high profile issue - a visualisation would hopefully act to clarify the debates around marine conservation and fish welfare.  There's also a lot of controversy over pain and suffering in fish, with fish welfare scientists arguing that they experience pain in a similar way to birds and mammals.

 

Let me know what you think and if you have any more questions, either here or by email ( julia.walker@soton.ac.uk).

 

Thanks again,  

 

Julia