Harriet Allen, a Data Analyst at the Shark Trust, is leading the project "Eggcases and Basking Sharks – linking long-term citizen science sightings data to the Digital Twin Ocean". Through projects like the Great Eggcase Hunt (over 522,000 eggcases from 50+ species) and the Basking Shark Project (over 65,000 individuals since 1986), the Shark Trust has gathered extensive long-term data.
This work is one of the ten winning projects from the second DTO-BioFlow Open Call. The interview was recorded during the exclusive data training workshop in Paris, held from 3–5 June 2025. The immersive event brought together experts and project teams for hands-on sessions in data transformation, quality control, metadata management, and collaborative discussions, refining methodologies and strengthening connections across the growing marine biodiversity data network.
Read the full written interview
Who are you, and what is the name of your institute?
My name is Harriet Allen, and I’m the data analyst for the Shark Trust. The Shark Trust is a UK-based charity, founded in 1997, that works to improve the global conservation status of sharks, skates, and rays.
Where does the Shark Trust obtain its data?
All of our marine data comes from citizen science sightings. These include our Great Eggcase Hunt, the Basking Shark Sightings Project, our general sightings database, and an angling project. We also collaborate with the University of Exeter on an entanglement project.
All of these datasets are based on public sightings—entries like “I saw X number of species A at this location.” Two of the datasets we’re using for this project are long-term data collections that have been running for 20 to 40 years.
What is the current status of these datasets?
Although we produce summary reports, the datasets themselves are relatively dormant. For example, the Great Eggcase Hunt now contains records of over 500,000 eggcases, and the Basking Shark Project has more than 60,000 sightings. These are incredibly valuable datasets that have significant potential to inform policy, research, and conservation advocacy.
By integrating them into the Digital Twin Ocean, we can make them more accessible. Others will be able to use, analyse, and build upon them—helping these datasets “sing” in ways we haven't yet had the resources to do.
What kind of insights can these sightings provide?
Much of our data is UK-focused, but even within the UK, there’s still a lot we don’t fully understand about sharks, skates, and rays.
For the Great Eggcase Hunt, in-situ eggcase records help us identify potential egg-laying grounds—areas that may be important to protect.
For the Basking Shark Project, with roughly four decades of data, we can explore historical movement patterns and even forecast future movements or potential shifts in migration.
These insights can support research, help conservation groups identify priority areas, feed into processes like Important Shark and Ray Areas (ISRAs), and even contribute to environmental impact assessments.
What does participating in the Digital Twin Ocean initiative mean for the Shark Trust?
It’s a really exciting opportunity. It gives us the motivation to sit down and bring our datasets up to international data standards, ensure everything is properly formatted, and ultimately make our data open access.
Once open, our datasets—many of which are currently underused—can reach their full potential and support conservation, policy, research, and industry assessments.
From our perspective, it makes perfect sense to release the data. If we already have it, there’s no need for someone else to invest time and resources in collecting the same data again.
What was your understanding of the Digital Twin Ocean before working on this project?
Before this, I’d only heard about the Digital Twin Ocean peripherally—I knew it existed, but not much more. Once I started looking into its purpose, I found it incredibly exciting.
It’s fascinating to see such large, accessible data repositories, especially ones that link to platforms like EMODnet, OBIS, and GBIF. This connectivity means the data can reach places where it can have a meaningful impact.
For the Shark Trust, it also means our largely UK-based—but geographically wider—datasets, which include records from the Mediterranean and even Australia, can be used by anyone, anywhere, for whatever purpose they need.