I’ve been working hard on the openfisheries.org data API and Carl Boettiger has been working hard on a package for the R programming language as part of the rOpenSci.org project. The package downloads openfisheries data into the R development environment for further processing. An initial test of the API allowed Carl to download the data required to produce this graphic with the ggplot library for R. Looks great!

With results like this, development on the API must continue. Goals for the immediate future will include adjustments to the API that will allow for downloading landings by ecosystem and by species group. I’ll also need to make sure that species information, which is currently byASFIS classification is sufficient for most scientific purposes, as well as to be combined with other fishery data like the RAM legacy stock assessment database.