This is more than just fish markets, but any markets, including trade in medicinal plant and animals, or their parts, powders or potions.
The bottom line is that the animal/plant is not “in the wild” and the observation is the interaction between the observer and the organism at the place, date and time that it was photographed.
It is not correct to claim that the place, date or time is incorrect because it is not where the organism was wild. Think of it as an observation of the human trade of the organism at that place and time. Where the organism was farm reared it is of relatively little interest on iNaturalist, but animals and plants in markets that were caught/poached/harvested from the wild - even if from halfway across the world - are of immense interest. In fact, not only those in markets, but even those on sites such as eBay and Facebook that are for sale, auction or donation are of interest - even if only to gauge elicit trade (here the location would be either where the organism was stored or collected: just be clear on the observation to state which it is that you are recording).
As with Facebook and Ebay, there are privacy issues with recording observations at markets, so find out if the owner approves, or if you are willing to take the risk if the owner takes legal (or physical) action.
That there are projects for this sort of observation says that they are significant:
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/illegal-harvesting-s-afr
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/used-medicinally
My understanding of “location is not accurate” is that the coordinates on the map do not match where the evidence (photograph, sound, etc.) was obtained, to a sufficient degree that it degrades data quality.
If the evidence did come from the mapped coordinates, then there are maybe other data quality issues, but not a location issue. If the organism is at a location only because a human put it there, that to me is part of the definition of captive/not-wild.
I personally think such observations should be marked as “Organism is not wild”. Interestingly enough there has been a batch upload of fish market observations in Hong Kong recently.
FYI, the guidance for preserved scientific specimens that I have gleaned from other discussions and guidance is:
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Location and Date reflect where the specimen was obtained – Location=accurate; Date=accurate; Wild/Captive – depends on how the organism arrived at the original collection site.
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Location and Date reflect where the photo of the specimen was taken, and it is obviously far in space or time from where the specimen was collected: Location=not accurate; Date=not accurate; Captive=Yes.
On that basis, if one wanted to argue that fish in a fish market are analogous to collected specimens, then #2 above would apply (contrary to my previous post).
Not yet fully sure how I feel about this analogy, just something for us to ponder…
For me, working in an area where poaching is rampant, and it’s very clear that the specimens are taken from the wild and not captive raised, I’d lean on the side of leaving them marked as wild and making a note that they have been poached/wild-caught.
The location of the market/etc is important information for people doing conservation work in the area and we need to know what is going on vis-a-vis hunting, poaching, trapping, collecting, etc as well as knowing where the markets are (and who is doing the selling).
I’d leave the location that of the market as that’s where the observation was made, and you have no reliable way of determining where it came from originally.
Well, you wouldn’t want places where people were selling ginseng to be in a ginseng range map used to model species locations, etc. so if it isn’t mapped where it naturally occurred i don’t think it should be mapped as wild. It creates wrong range map data. I think the issue rather is that very valuable forms of data like this that are “not wild” are marked as casual by inat and the data kind of hidden. (As discussed elsewhere on the forum). So I think that’s the real issue and imho we shouldn’t map things as wild With a location if you don’t know where it was found.
In the short term maybe a project to collect that sort of thing? Would make t easier to track while still keeping it separate from wild stuff.
A marker for “market” or something similar might be worth thinking about as an addition to the wild/not-wild or as a separate field.
Even for the case of something like ginseng (where it travels far from the point of origin, unlike local poaching/bushmeat hunting in much of the world) marking the points of sale would be useful from a conservation perspective.
In the case of ginseng specifically there wouldn’t be any real way to tell from a market observation if it was wild gathered or not anyway, and you can’t really trust what people selling items like that say in any event.
Should we write “Location not accurate” as a comment? Or is there some tag / label / checkbox somewhere.?
We have A LOT of fishmarket observations that we haven’t uploaded (particularly sharks). For some I can say “this was hook and line/gill net caught here” but that is a 40km radius. For some I’d tip my hat to “caught by the local fleet” (200km) but for others I honestly couldn’t say whether they’re regional or air-flown in! (E.g. Singapore)
But often our images include hammerheads and guitarsharks which have serious conservation implications. If I photograph baby hammerheads on the slab then chances are they weren’t born 1000km away even though there are no underwater images (nor ever likely to be) and the image must have data validity, surely.
If you scroll down on an observation you’ll see “Data Quality Assessment” with a bunch of yes/no questions underneath including “Location is accurate”, you can set this to no by clicking the thumbs down. This will set the observation to casual which means it won’t be exported to the gbif database and is harder to find for other inaturalist users.
If you’re fairly certain that the animal was caught within 40 kms (or even 200) I think it’s reasonable to set the accuracy that high and leave “Location is accurate” as a yes.
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