If you ever need to quantify species presence within a certain area or set of areas have a look at this Jupyter Notebook. It displays some key figures quantifying chiton (Class Polyplacophora) species abundance inside and outside New Zealand's marine reserves, but it can be easily customised to any given taxon and/or place.
In this new publication we evaluated, in terms of theoretical protection, the Highly Protected Areas (HPAs) proposed under the original Sea Change - Tai Timu Tai Pari Hauraki Gulf Marine Park Spatial Plan as well as the HPAs from the ministerial response Revitalising the Gulf.
The last few weeks I have spent a good amount of time writing a paper on reviewing benthic bycatch data from an area within the South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organisation (SPRFMO) boundaries.
Using the iNaturalist-Mātaki Taiao API I was able to obtain a dataset of verified and geo-referenced observations from the different no-take marine reserves of the Hauraki Gulf Marine Park.
Since Auckland Council released the Kauri Dieback Report in 2017, some media outlets (and other platforms/sites) have made use of the following (or similar) statement: "70% of infected trees are within 50m of a walking track". Four years later I have a look at council data from the Waitākere Ranges which tells a different story.
After last year's cancellation due to COVID-19, the forum was back this year and I had the pleasure to give a talk.