Rich Budnik, Stu Ludsin, and Kenneth Frank of Queen's University and Fisheries and Oceans Canada, hosted a two-day virtual workshop Monday, May 3 and Friday, May 7 to share information about and gain feedback on their Great Lakes Fishery Commission funded database project. Grad student Lyndsie Collis, research assistants Steven Gratz and Jenny Pfaff, and postdoc James Sinclair all helped with the workshop and project as well.

The Great Lakes Fish Recruitment and Ecosystem Database is unique in that it is being developed at a broader spatial and temporal scale and is geared towards helping researchers evaluate the direct and indirect effects of environmental change on Great Lakes fish communities and the fisheries they support. The goal of the workshop was to achieve agency and researcher buy-in for the database effort, and was an overall success! Great discussions helped to guide the best practices of database development moving forward, and participants now have a better grasp of the goals of the database.