This report presents a case study of how to improve the quality control and interoperability of marine spatial data, and focuses on the quality control of fish and shark annotations from baited remote underwater stereo-video (stereo-BRUV) imagery. The GlobalArchive-CheckEM service conducts a series of quality control checks on annotation data against life-history information, based on the Codes for Australian Aquatic Biota (CAAB). This report provides a ‘how-to guide’ for CheckEM and we propose that, in addition to review by expert fish ecologists, any fish and shark image annotations collected in Australia should be validated using CheckEM. Data validation, quality control and interoperability of spatial data are key to enable data discovery and re-use for biodiversity reporting and science communication. This report outlines how Findable Accessible Interoperable Reproducible (FAIR) aspects of marine data can be improved and implemented at a national scale.