At he beginning of the project, Northeastern Brazil was characterized by the paucity of information available on the distribution of living organisms and human activities at-sea, an iconic data poor situation that may hamper any pertinent and balanced MSP approach.

To address this issue, a Mixed International Laboratory between IRD, UFPE and UFRPE, gathering an interdisciplinary team of researchers in oceanography, biology, ecology, data science, statistics, fisheries governance was launched in order to favor the exchange of best practices in terms of data collection and processing on marine organisms and human activities at-sea, and to foster the development of fundamental interdisciplinary databases for a near-future MSP development.

This Mixed International Laboratory consists in technical platforms (oceanography, acoustics, biologging, natural tracers) that had to be set up. These technical platforms were then used to foster the training of scientists and students to data collection, make them available in interdisciplinary FAIR databases and more generally used as an interdisciplinary knowledge exchange platforms. As an example, it fostered discussions between academics in electronics and fisheries governance in order to develop low-cost remote tracking solutions for the monitoring of artisanal fisheries of the Northeastern Brazil. It allowed too the development, by a data science expert, of an open-source, user-friendly software for visualizing the GPS track of artisanal fishing vessels, made available to scientists of fisheries governance working on a pilot monitoring project.