In order to ease this process, the two embarked on creating marmap (short for marine maps) …īenoit and Eric quickly realized that, for most ecologists, the existing workflow to produce publication-quality maps was to either spend a lot of money by using proprietary software or to spend a lot of time by using free alternatives with a steep learning curve.
The process was tedious, convoluted (especially for the manually download online bathymetric data) and required a good knowledge of the R scripting langage. They both had bits and pieces of R scripts scattered around their hard drives to (i) import bathymetric data previously downloaded locally from public databases, (ii) reshape these data in a form suitable for plotting in R and (iii) plot the bathymetry together with other data such as sampling sites or other locations of interest. Meanwhile, they had their own not-so-easy tasks of creating publication-quality maps for themselves as well as their colleagues. Thus, on a daily basis, they were both approached by colleagues and students to take a look at their data analysis and graphics. The two quickly realized they were in a lab in which few people had the expertise or taste for coding. A couple years ago, Benoit Simon-Bouhet ended up sharing an office with Eric Pante, then a post-doc fellow in his former lab.