Trawling for Nansis

Our course is structured so that we have lectures in the morning and practical sessions in the afternoon. This is probably a good idea because then there are no sleepers in the room after the three course lunch that we get every day. This morning's theory was about research surveys using trawl nets. It was presented by Tore Strømme who is the Research Coordinator for the EAF Nansen Project which looks after the research vessel Dr Fridtjof Nansen. His presentation was very comprehensive starting with some background on the previous cruises conducted by the old research vessel (of the same name) and the current vessel. This included an explanation on how the EAF Nansen Project focus has changed over the years from the single species stock assessments to the current methods of undertaking ecosystem approaches to surveys ... hope you have not dropped off to sleep! Once we had all the info on how the ship operates, he started in on trawl surveys proper. This covered a huge range of information from the objectives of these particular surveys, the types of knowledge that can be gained from them, the statistical considerations that have to be taken into account, how the surveys need to be designed, and then the planning required, considerations during the data collection phase and the types of analyses required after the cruise. It was once again not particularly new data but was presented in a very interesting format that made a lot of sense.

Tore explaining the trawl gear and the considerations required due to the inherent qualities of the gear.

This lecture finished at 1pm and we went off for a well deserved break and lunch. The afternoon session was dedicated to completing the installation of the Nansis software.

A mess of laptops and cables!

Four hours later and everyone finally has the system up and running. It turns out that I was on the right track last night but the instruction manual was missing a vital instruction and had some old pop-up windows rather than the new ones so I had no idea what needed to go where. I got it sorted out quickly this afternoon and then gave some of my fellow participants a hand. This was complicated by having to try figure out the French menus on their computers and finding the correct selection options! I have GOT to improve my French. Jens-Otto has also asked for my copy of his installation manual which I have been updating as I have done the installation so I'm just going to take that as a compliment :-). The Nansis front-end software is really very easy to install but the database system, Postgres, is the troublemaker!

Jens-Otto Krakstad trying to figure out why the Postgres database will not work!

It was another day of not setting foot out of the hotel but, nevertheless, a good day well spent. Below is a screenshot of Nansis on my computer so you can see it is working and has some data in it. We have to wait until tomorrow to get to grips with how it works as everyone was too exhausted to start tonight. Geek that I am, I personally cannot wait.

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