Using Gaming Technology to Explore and Visualize Management Impacts on Marine Ecosystems

We have developed an approach that connects a complex and widely used scientific ecosystem modeling approach with a game engine for real-time communication and visualization of scientific results. The approach, OceanViz, focuses on communicating scientific data to non-scientific audiences to foster dialogue, offering experimental, immersive approaches to visualizing complex ecosystems whilst avoiding information overload. Within the context of ecosystem-based fisheries management, OceanViz can engage decision makers into the implicit operation of scientific software as an aid during the decision process, and it can be of direct use for public communication through appealing and informative visualizations. Beside a server-client architecture to centralize decision making around an ecosystem model, OceanViz includes an extensive visualization toolkit capable of accurately reflecting marine ecosystem changes through a simulated three-dimensional (3D) underwater environment. Here we outline the ideas and concepts that went into OceanViz, its implementation and its related challenges. We reflect on challenges to scientific visualization and communication as food-for-thought for the marine ecosystem modeling community and beyond.

The Importance of Values in Predicting and Encouraging Environmental Behavior: Reflections From a Costa Rican Small-Scale Fishery

Encouraging people’s pro-environmental behaviors is an objective of Education for Sustainable Development. In the context of small-scale fisheries, unsustainable fishing practices are compromising the integrity of coastal communities and ecosystems. Ecopath with Ecosim (EwE) is an ecosystem modeling software that presents interactions/changes in the food web as a result of fishing. Despite the multiple applications of EwE in fisheries management, it is unknown from a quantitative perspective whether the application of EwE trophic modeling in environmental education processes and management produces effects on norms and ecological beliefs, and if it alters behavioral intentions of the participants receiving ecosystem modeling information. We conducted a behavior change intervention with gillnet fishers in the Gulf of Nicoya, Costa Rica, to compare antecedents of pro-environmental behavior between participants who received an ecosystem-based intervention (lectures containing EwE models; treatment) and those who received lectures that didn’t involve EwE (control). Based on theories of environmental psychology, we used a pre–post survey design, to evaluate changes between control/treatment, and to assess the influence of psychometric constructs and fishing characteristics on the behavioral intentions to support sustainable fishing measures and owning a fishing license (revealed behavior). Personal norms and values were significant at explaining management measures’ support, along with some fishing characteristics (e.g., fishing site). Deliberating about possible future scenarios (via EwE-modeling) helped reduce uncertainties, increasing legitimacy and a perceived behavioral control (PBC) to support measures. Currently, licenses in the Gulf aren’t granted under defined ecological criteria, and although altruistic-biospheric values scored highly before the intervention began, due to mistrust and high illegal-unlicensed fishing, fishers may be underestimating how much others care about the environment. Value-oriented and ecosystem-based interventions may assist to effectively redesign the licensing system and encourage fishers to support sustainable measures. Our research indicates the importance of education interventions that teach about the impacts of fishing in the ecosystem while helping participants to perceive themselves as capable of implementing actions (PBC) and expressing biospheric-altruistic values to restore trust. Redirecting human behaviors to reconnect with ecosystem resilience can be a leverage point for sustainability and for the compliance of small-scale fisheries management measures.