About

The story

Founders Cooper Van Vranken and Berthe Vastenhoud met at the Technical University of Denmark in 2016. The spark that eventually led to BDC, was a shared frustration with traditional fisheries management. We saw exciting new paradigms fisheries oceanography linking ocean conditions with stocks as part of ecosystem-based fisheries management and ecological forecasting. But the data, especially at depth, going into this science was problematic. Putting sensors on fishing gears was a common-sense idea to collect data exactly where the fish are. At first, we saw an opportunity where fishermen could catch data necessary to improve science and management related to their fisheries. But during this process, we realized that it was not just fisheries science that was lacking this type of data, but also everyone else… 

Core team

COOPER VAN VRANKEN (US)

FOUNDER

Moving from commercial fishing into fisheries science in Denmark lead to the diverse perspectives and inspiration for Berring Data Collective.

BERTHE VASTENHOUD (BE/NL)

CHIEF SCIENTIST

With a background in fisheries science and management, Berthe has specialized in fisheries modeling and data processing for maritime spatial planning applications.

CARLES CASTRO MUNIAIN (ESP)

CHIEF DATA OFFICER

Carles has a background in Industrial and Electrical Engineering, and can do anything and everything.

Publications

Webinar

In May 2020 we co-hosted a webinar with EMODnet Physics in place of an in person workshop to bring together the emerging community collecting ocean data with fishing vessels for the first time: