Hey, Larry, Larr? Look up from row 502, column 1254 sunshine; it’s us again. We’ve added some fresh details to the Goldfish API.

This week, we have brrrrrrr 🥁 harmonized Gear Types! But not just any gear types, FAO Gear Types, and just for funsies, they’re also associated with vessels!

We know that assessing vessel data is challenging when there are sooo many ways to identify associated gear types. People commonly use FAO ISSCFG gear type identifiers; however, even this list has multiple versions in active use. Such as;

• Outdated-did-you-find-this-list-on-a-set-of-8”-floppy-disks versions
• ISSCFG 2016 here
• ISSCFG 2010 here
• ISSCFG 1990 here
  

We’ve chosen to work with the most recent version (2016) mainly because some on the team thought retrieving data from diskettes on a VAX-11/780 was “a ridiculous idea,” and “what is wrong with you, Ryan?”

Anyway, It’s all pretty dull. That’s why we did the work for you. The team reviewed and developed a system that harmonizes each vessel from every vessel list and conforms every gear type, regardless of version, to the 2016 version of FAO ISSCFG, which is pretty useful.

Oh, and Larry, if you want to learn about gear types, check out our previous blog post here. It’s less you-us than these posts, but the content should be helpful.

How does this look in our API?

The API will now auto-magically produce a structured output of a vessel’s gearTypes data. It includes three data points: the gear type name (faoName), a standard abbreviation (faoAlpha), and an ISSCFG code (faoISSCFG).

For example:

We've updated our handy API Guide here so you can learn how to play with Gear Types on the Sandbar 🏖️

*Bonus: For folks using no-code solutions, the new cURL & No-Code Considerations subsection in the Guide explains how to access our API with those tools.

Until next week, the Product Team @ Goldfish 👋