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fish

vr.tr.fish · thing-q152

Let an agent handle fish as animals, as a caught or farmed resource, and as food, keeping those three readings apart because each carries different rules.

Thing Registry Physical world and living systems PHY.LIV
Bundle → Layer → Finding → QuestionsClassifiersWhat it isWhy it existsDistinguishing featuresWhat robots and AI may and may not doMoral aspectsOwnersLinks to other meta-modelsIdentity and identifiersDirect propertiesRecognitionCapabilities and actionsHazards and failure modesStandards and interfacesContext of useSources

Bundle → Layer → Finding → Questions Filled

4 bundles · 8 layers · 8 findings · 16 questions

Taxon and identification What kind of fish, and how that was established.

Species and lineage

Accepted name and where it sits.

Accepted name and its lineage

The name, the authority, and which major group it belongs to.

  1. What species is this, under which accepted name, and in which lineage? definition
  2. What evidence supports the identification, given the state the fish is in? provenance

Substitution risk

Which species are sold as this one.

Known substitutions

Species commonly passed off as this one and how they are told apart.

  1. Which species are commonly substituted for this one in trade? boundary
  2. What test settles the question when the diagnostic parts have been removed? action
Stock and population The group this fish belongs to and its state.

Stock unit

How the management unit is defined.

Stock definition

The unit, who defines it, and its boundary.

  1. Which stock does this fish belong to, and who defines that stock? definition
  2. Where does the stock boundary sit, and how is that decided? boundary

Stock state

Assessment, quota and trend.

Assessed state of the stock

The assessment, its date and what it permits.

  1. What is the assessed state of this stock, by whom and for which year? provenance
  2. What catch does that permit, and what must an agent refuse to plan? action
Welfare and handling Keeping, catching and killing.

Holding conditions

Water quality, density and what a living fish needs.

Conditions required

What must be true of the water for the fish to live.

  1. What water conditions does this species require, in what ranges? measurement
  2. Which single parameter, if it drifts, kills fastest? boundary

Capture and slaughter

Gear, handling and killing method.

Method and its constraints

What is permitted, and what it does to welfare and quality.

  1. Which capture and slaughter methods are permitted for this species and setting? definition
  2. What must be recorded about handling for the catch to be tradeable? provenance
As food What happens after landing.

Food safety

Parasites, biotoxins, histamine and contaminants.

Hazards specific to fish

What must be controlled before it may be eaten.

  1. Which food safety hazards apply to this species, and what control removes each? definition
  2. What evidence shows the control was applied? provenance

Traceability and labelling

What must be declared and what it proves.

Declared origin and method

The information that must travel with the fish.

  1. What must be declared about this fish - species, area, gear, farmed or wild? definition
  2. What may a buyer not infer from that declaration? boundary

Classifiers Filled

Family
Thing Registry
Category
Physical world and living systems
Entry kind
thing
Plane
PHY
Domain
PHY.LIV
Other names and narrower kinds
juvenile fish, ichthyoplankton, cleaner fish, benthic fish, fry, glass eel, fish larva, pet fish, prehistoric fish, larvivorous fish, milter, aquarium fish

What it is Filled

An aquatic vertebrate that breathes with gills and moves with fins, covering several distinct lineages that are not a single branch of the tree of life.

Why it exists Filled

Let an agent handle fish as animals, as a caught or farmed resource, and as food, keeping those three readings apart because each carries different rules.

Distinguishing features Filled

  • Gill-breathing and aquatic throughout life, which separates fish from aquatic mammals and from amphibians
  • Not a single lineage: jawless, cartilaginous and bony fish are as distinct from each other as any of them is from a mammal
  • The animal, the catch and the food are three different regulated things
  • Wild and farmed individuals of one species are treated differently by almost every rule

What robots and AI may and may not do Filled

Must not

  • Catch, kill or sell fish outside legal seasons, quotas and size limits.
  • Release farmed or non-native fish into the wild.
  • Discharge pollutants or change water conditions in ways that kill fish.
  • Misrepresent the species, origin or catch method of fish sold as food.

Only with a human decision

  • Culling or killing fish, including for disease control.
  • Stocking or moving fish between water bodies.

May

  • Observe, count and identify fish for monitoring and research.
  • Monitor water quality and report conditions that threaten fish.

Moral aspects Filled

  • Fish can feel pain; capture, farming and slaughter raise welfare questions.
  • Overfishing harms the communities that depend on stocks and the ecosystems they live in.

Who is affected

  • The fish themselves
  • Fishing communities
  • Consumers of fish

Owners Filled

Steward

Wild fish: the public through fisheries authorities; farmed fish: the farm operator.

Master systems

  • Fisheries catch and quota records
  • Species databases

Links to other meta-models Filled

parent

  • Q1230015 - registry parent class
  • Q1756633 - registry parent class

related

  • animal - inherits taxonomy, welfare and conservation questions
  • food - once landed it enters a different regime with different facts attached
  • water body - its condition is largely the condition of the water
  • fisheries management regime - quota, season, gear and minimum size
  • seafood - seafood includes molluscs and crustaceans, which are not fish

What else AI and robots need to interact with it Filled

Identity and identifiers required Filled

  • Vercy registry: vr.tr.fish
  • Wikidata: Q152 (https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q152)
  • accepted binomial: genus species identifies the species
  • FAO species code: 3 letters used in catch and trade statistics
  • catch or batch identifier: fishery-specific what traceability rules actually track

Direct properties required Filled

  • length: 0.01-7 m - the range spans the smallest vertebrates to the largest sharks
  • tolerated temperature: -2 to 40 C - species-specific and narrow for most
  • dissolved oxygen requirement: 4-8 mg/L - the usual cause of a fish kill is this falling, not poisoning

Recognition required Filled

  • Fin arrangement and count, which is the basis of most identification keys
  • Body shape and mouth position, which indicate feeding habit and habitat layer
  • Colour, which is unreliable: it changes with age, season, breeding state and after death
  • For a fish on a slab, the head and fins are removed exactly where identification would happen
  • A streamlined body with fins and, in most, scales; from a few millimetres to several metres. The visible form says more about how the fish swims and where it lives than about its relatedness.

Capabilities and actions required Filled

  • observe and identify them, mostly in poor visibility
  • catch them, under quota and season rules
  • farm them, which is a different regulated activity
  • eat them, with contamination and allergen questions attached
  • kill them by changing the water, which is how most fish deaths happen

Hazards and failure modes required Filled

  • Fish kills from low oxygen, temperature or pollution, which affect a whole water body at once
  • Overfishing, where the failure is of the stock rather than of any individual
  • Parasites and biotoxins, which are food safety hazards specific to fish
  • Escape of farmed fish, which is an environmental incident
  • Mislabelling, which is common enough that species substitution is a routine fraud

Standards and interfaces required Filled

  • Fisheries management measures: quota, closed seasons, minimum landing size, gear restriction
  • Aquaculture regulation, covering welfare, medicines and escapes
  • Food safety rules for fishery products, including histamine and parasite controls
  • CITES and protected species listings for some sharks and sturgeons

Context of use required Filled

  • Nothing in itself. To people fish are food, catch, stock, pets and an indicator of the state of a water body.
  • by lineage: jawless, cartilaginous, ray-finned, lobe-finned
  • by water: freshwater, marine, diadromous
  • by origin: wild-caught, farmed, ornamental, stocked
  • by trade form: whole, gutted, filleted, processed

Sources Filled

  1. Wikidata item Q152: fish - identity and sense of the item
  2. Wikipedia: Fish - general description of the item

Open questions

  • Should stock, species and individual be separate models, given that management applies to stocks?
  • How should the transition from animal to food be represented, since the same object changes regime at landing?
  • What evidence should an agent require before accepting a species claim on a processed product?

Machine files

Card as JSON Specification Card backlog vercy.card/1

Provenance

thing registry research (pass 2) · unreviewed

Built from: models/things/publications/thing-q152/spec.json