Hello all. I am new to iNaturalist and curious where would be the best place to seek help on identifying marine fish (Indo-Pacific) from images of commercial/recreational fish landings. Would it be here?
I’m looking forward to contributing to projects and/or establish my own as appropriate, but for now just getting my bearings.
Kind regards (and apologies if I’m missing something obvious).
If you start uploading your fish images to iNat itself (not the Forum) you will get a response from taxon specialist. Maybe add a copypasta - caught locally by artisanal fishers - or whatever. There is a West African fishing project.
Maybe use iNat a bit before you create a project, then you can better see how to set up your project so that it works for you.
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/resources-to-id-indo-pacific-marine-fishes/37572
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/marine-fishes-of-the-central-eastern-atlantic there are a LOT of ‘fish’ projects. Cannot find the West African one.
PS. Some of the trevally and epinephelus species in particular trip me us (especially with colour fading and/or poor images on many of the creel surveys), so hoping there may be experts on these fish in particular :)
Thank you!
If you are in the area covered by this project:
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/australasian-fishes
all you need to do is create observations of fish and they will be collected automatically into the project. There are experts identifying fish there all the time.
For captured fish, such as in markets, there is also this project:
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/fishes-of-the-australian-aquarium-food-trade
It collects any “Casual” fish observations, although only in Australia and territories.
Welcome to the forum!
Just a note that if you are posting observations of fish caught by someone else taken at commercial/recreational fish landings, these will need to be marked as captive/not Wild if the fish were not caught at that time/place (ie, only landed there). This is because the fish are at that place/time because humans intended them to be (and not because they intended to be). If the fish are caught at the observation location (like off the dock with a line/pole) and you are taking the picture at time of catch, those observations would be wild.
See info on wild/captive here:
and other threads on the forum about this use case.
Hi, welcome.
We have a lot of Indo-Pacific fish market observations, mostly elasmobranchs, but anything unusual or interesting too. We specify that it’s a fish market observation and that the catch location is unclear. We also set a very big location circle that probably encompasses where it came from. You will know best whether a catch might have been flown or trucked in (E.g. Singapore) or whether it was landed locally (E.g. Semporna). We put what we think it is (E.g. Epinephelidae) and then other iNat users then help us refine the ID on our observations. Over time we’ve developed our own ID skills and now we have a pretty extensive data set on species that are very rarely seen alive. We know of two publications using our fish market observations for ecology and conservation studies, so don’t worry about people applying a ‘casual’ label, it doesn’t matter to people using the database generally.
Once you’ve uploaded a couple of observations tag us (@tracc) and we’ll come and help you get the ball rolling.
Take a look at some of ours:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?taxon_id=47273&user_id=tracc&verifiable=any
if you want to try identifying fish on your own, here’s a great resource! if you do it’d be awesome if you posted them here on inat!
https://fishesofaustralia.net.au/
and a handy interactive guide on narrowing an ID down based on features:
Many thanks, very helpful. These will be landings in Red Sea waters of Saudi Arabia, and certainly local (landing sites not market). The nature of the fishery (small scale handline or gillnets for commercially caught, local charters for recreational) means they would be caught within approx. 30km of the observation port or marina. The advice from @cthawley (thanks!) also well noted and I will be sure to mark them as captive where relevant. Some are caught by shoreline sport fishers and so will be marked as wild if the photo was taking at time of capture. However I’m mostly fine with the shoreline species, its some of the commercial hauls of various Trevallies and Epinephelus sp. especially that I am having trouble IDing to species level. Some of the photos are rather poor and/or dis-coloration (plus I’m not a taxonomist 
).
Thanks again!
many thanks! I will check these out
PS quick question for you and/or @cthawley - in cases where I have sport fishing catch photos from charters at sea PLUS I have a geo-location at sea (via a sportfishing app) would this best be tagged as wild or capture? The geo-locations are not real-time / AIS, but entered by the individual as the approximate location of the catch. I suspect that if “capture” then the location would be the marina, not the self-reported at-sea catch location (?)
Thanks
If you have the wild caught location then yes = Wild and location at sea. Same for pictures of dead and staked beetles = Wild, Alive, location where it was caught alive.
Fish market = Not Wild, location at the market.
The best location is the location of the catch at sea.
But users on iNat should be uploading their own pictures/experiences as observations, not pictures of others which sounds like it might be the case here. Rare uploads of other users’ pictures are tolerated but not encouraged. But if a user is adding a lot of photos that they were not present for/not their experiences, this wouldn’t be allowed on iNat.
You can see some of the relevant documentation here:
https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/archived+help#observations1
“Photos and sounds attached to observations should include evidence of the actual organism at the time of the observation, observed by the user who is uploading the observation. Media used in your iNaturalist observations should represent your own experiences, not just examples of something similar to what you saw. Please do not upload photos or sounds you found elsewhere, such as online or in a book, since they don’t represent your own experiences and are probably a violation of copyright law. Similarly, please do not upload screenshots from broadcasts of live cameras unless you are the owner of the live camera.”
Yes - but - for ocean fish, recording what fishers catch might be the only way to observe ‘that taxon’. Coelocanth story ?
Thanks. Some are my own and for the others I am interested to start a citizen science project (focused on catch composition documentation) with local charter boat captains and some selected commercial fishers where there is written agreement for me to use them (e.g in the cases, maybe around 10%, where species-level ID is a challenge). Would this be acceptable? (the alternative of having participants sign up to iNaturalist may be quite challenging, including the language barriers but others). Thanks for your continued advice.
It’s probably more about the absolute number than proportion of observations uploaded. If these are going to be recurring partners (which it sounds like), you could consider setting up an account for them that you help them manage (ie, they share the password with you). That way the copyright on their photos/observations would belong to them, but you could assist with managing data/photos/posting. You would just need to be careful to not “double vote” on their observations (ie, you add an ID with your account, and then an ID from their account that you help manage). You would want to make the account profiles clear what is going on (e.g., this is an account for XXXXX helped managing by YYYYYY with your iNat username).
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