Tagging observation of specimen delivered to fish plant/cannery

[lampriformlady]

Lately I’ve been combing through years of old photos for species I’ve documented that feel particularly worthwhile to upload- one such being these three school/soupfin sharks that were caught as Pacific whiting bycatch and delivered to a fish plant I worked at.

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/383668801

Since I didn’t have access to vessel logbooks, I wouldn’t be able to know for sure where the sharks were caught, but so far as I know every trawler that delivered to this plant fished in Oregon waters.

Tagging them as not wild/captive feels to me like it implies that they were brought from their native range to somewhere considerably outside that range, but that might be me misjudging how the tag should be used. Should describing the circumstances I observed these sharks as I did in the notes be enough, or is there a better way I should be documenting this? Thanks!

[AdamWargon]

Welcome to the forum, Katie!

Here’s what Charlie said in a similar thread:

@charlie

I would either mark them as not wild or not the correct location. I can see the point about local small fish markets but unless you know how far their boat went from shore you can’t set the uncertainty buffer correctly anyway. I think marking not wild/captive makes a bit more sense than mapped wrong because the organism WAS found where observed, it just was brought there by a person. Also there is the potential that someday the ‘not wild’ observations will still be able to get research grade or train the algorithm whereas ‘mapped wrong’ locations are basically useless for most things

And Ralph said this:
(I bolded one line, to highlight his role as a museum collection manager)

@rfoster

there should be no hard, fast rule and that it should be judged record by record, based on the evidence and using common sense. If more info is required to make a decision then ask the observer. Here’s an observation that is important because it’s one of very few (perhaps the only) record of the species in this part of Indonesia.
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/7128306
The fishers, who undertake overnight trips in small vessels (without refrigeration), indicated that it had been caught locally and there was no reason to doubt them. In my role as a museum collection manager, I would readily accession this specimen into the collection with the data supplied (and, incidentally, many new species have been described and named from specimens purchased in Indonesian fish markets). Even with the uncertainty, it’s way too valuable a record to lose to casual status based on a recommendation that it be marked down because it’s in a fish market.

@lampriformlady

Should describing the circumstances I observed these sharks as I did in the notes be enough

Detailed notes are a best practice for any observation:

@astra_the_dragon

If you know the individual who collected the fish, and thus the correct location, that’s really great. But I’d do two things in that case:

1. write on the observation how you know the collection location, for future reference
2. make sure the accuracy circle on your location is large enough to cover the whole area in which the fish may have been caught.

[barbetsmith]

@charlie

unless you know how far their boat went from shore you can’t set the uncertainty buffer correctly anyway

This statement doesn’t seem correct to me. It should often be possible to set an upper limit on how far their boat could have gone from shore, and that’s exactly what an uncertainty buffer is for.

[cthawley]

Welcome to the iNat Forum!

The core of iNat’s definition of captive/not wild is:

“Checking captive / cultivated means that the observation is of an organism that exists in the time and place it was observed because humans intended it to be then and there.”

Based on this, it doesn’t matter whether

@lampriformlady

they were brought from their native range to somewhere considerably outside that range,

It may be “disappointing” in some way, but based on iNat’s guidelines, these should probably be posted as captive/not wild.

I see the reasons for this as three-fold:

1. Based on your description, when you observed them, they definitely were captive, having been brought to a fish plant (they certainly wouldn’t be there otherwise unless they were a strangely motivated fish!).

2. This is also important because iNat’s fundamental unit, the observation, is about an observer’s “encounter with an individual organism, or recent evidence of an organism, at a particular time and location”. Your encounter was with the fish at the fish plant, not on a boat out on the ocean (which was someone else’s encounter with it when it was caught).

3. The most accurate data available is for the location of your encounter. It sounds like it is possible to speculate, but not be sure of, the area that the fish were caught in maybe a general date range that they might have been caught (the encounter that those on the boat had with it).

You can see some other threads about essentially the same scenario:

https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/fish-market-observations/50883

https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/fish-market-observations-marked-casual/54522