Defining Death in the iNaturalist Community
Hi Dead Fishes Project Community,
This project has a simple goal: to collect observations of dead fishes from around the globe. A few recent comments have prompted me to consider the nuances of what we consider "dead" fishes in this community. I may have been on my own in my previous considerations, so here I pose to you: what constitutes a dead fish- wash-up, bones, decaying organisms, fishes being preyed on, market fishes, fishes that are dying (i.e. have been poisoned by red tide) but not died yet, or any other markers or conditions? Please leave your suggestions for what constitutes dead fish in the comments. I will collate the suggestions we come up with into a comprehensive list of guidelines for observations to be included in this project.
My main concern is surrounding the boundary of death in observations- must the death be absolute and current (i.e. decayed remains), or do those that are in the act of dying "count" as dead fishes? Is a dead animal dead from the moment it biologically dies, unobserved- or does the moment of its consumption which is observed count? I have also come across a number of observations recently of fish that are ill from red tide that will likely die soon but have not yet- do these observations belong in this project? How we choose to define "dead fishes" as a project will determine how we move forward with such types of observations.
Thanks for your help and support,
Keira (Project Manager)
Comments
For this project one thing you might consider is if you want a different definition from the definition used for the "Alive or Dead" annotation on observations (whatever that is). If you wanted to use the same definition, then you could just have a collection project that automatically collects all observations with that annotation instead of having to manually add them to the project. Although perhaps there are other reasons to have it as a traditional project that I haven't thought of.
@upupa-epops The only issue that leads to hand-selection of observations, is the lack of use of the annotation in a lot of cases, so I typically will go through observations and add by hand those that have not been annotated (and add the annotation).
I would absolutely use the traditional definition, however there is a lot of nuance to it:
"Dead - meaning that evidence shows the organism is dead or shows signs of imminent death", which one staff of iNaturalist defines as "within minutes or an hour or two at most". However the iNaturalist definition of the purpose of an observation states that it records "an encounter with an individual organism at a particular time and location”, meaning that imminent death becomes a vague notion.
From these threads: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/lets-talk-annotations/627/147
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/annotating-animals-as-alive/8453
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/dead-alive-annotation-its-purpose/9806/20
I think dead should be dead. As in, no signs of life. But yes, I am stuck on the imminent death part. How do we know they wont recover, if they are struggling for air, that they wont recover?
I think this is a very valuable project, it is another way to track the effects of climate change on aquatic organisms. Here in eastern Australia we have just experienced widespread flooding of rivers. This, in turn, has created a 'blackwater' event, causing fish kills. Being able to record and search fish kills would be handy for climate change research.
I assumed the purpose of dead fish was (similar to dead bird projects) to attempt to do understand issues that cause dead fish (aside from sport/commercial fishing) and deal with them or at least raise awareness. Thus, I think dead means dead.
Fish that are being caught in the moment and not dead yet or headed the dinner table or market seem like a different type of situation altogether and I'm not sure that needs study.
Hi @hflamholtz - thanks for your input. I have been of the mindset that if the observation is of a dead animal it belongs here, whether the agent of that death was being caught by a person or by any other means. For example dead salmon from the salmon run are a type of observation that I include, as it is of a dead fish, even though the cause of death is very normal and cyclical- it still has important information to provide. I definitely agree that animals that are not yet dead do not belong here, as there is a chance the animal did not in fact die, thus the animal in no way is a 'dead fish'. I have not been including these observations (i.e. just caught fish, fish caught by birds, etc) since this discussion began though some may slip through as I am the only person doing significant work to build this project and it can be a lot of work at times.
I do think that observations at markets and from anglers (when the fish is clearly dead, i.e. on ice or gutted) can provide potentially useful information for example on the scope and focus of smaller more local fisheries. As the fish are clearly dead at the time of observation, I do not see a benefit in excluding their observation from this project- though their observations should generally be casual as they are not wild at the point of observation. There is some discussion of the utility of fish market observations in these threads -(https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/how-to-deal-with-observations-of-fish-on-fish-markets/397/3 ; https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/still-wild-or-already-captive/17340/3). Personally, I think that limiting the focus of 'dead fish' to exclude harvest of fish by humans would harm the research potential of the data in the project.
The topic of dealing with or raising awareness of the causes of fish death is a bit more nuanced, and I don't think that should be the only goal of the project in the first place. Raising awareness of events like red tides, changing water tables, and the above mentioned blackwater events draw important attention to issues facing fish (pollution, climate change, habitat loss, etc), however some fish are simply stranded by the tide, die expectedly (in the case of some salmon), or die by some nebulous cause at sea and are washed ashore. I also think that excluding seemingly natural causes of death (that do not need to be dealt with or have awareness drawn to them) would negatively impact this project's research potential, as seeming randomness could potentially have some pattern or research potential that we have not yet thought of. This project is different from the birds or mammals project in that so much of the world's supply of fish as food is caught wild, on a scale that mammal or birds simply are not. One of the biggest problems facing fish, in terms of mortality, is probably large-scale commercial fishery.
This is all off the top of my head, please let me know if there is anything you think I am missing or discounting. Let me know if you have any more questions, comments, concerns, or suggestions.
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