Cape Cod Fishermen and Scientists Working Together for Sustainable Fisheries

In New England and around the world, fishermen and scientists are working together to keep fisheries sustainable while confronting environmental change and human impacts. Small-scale fishermen and shellfish farmers are working with scientists to understand the effects of environmental variability and reduce the impacts of fishing. These collaborations build relationships between the fishing and scientific communities, in addition to providing valuable information for management of sustainable fisheries. True collaborative research involves inclusion of all parties from the beginning, from project inception to presentation of results. I will present some case studies from my native Cape Cod, telling the stories of how and why such collaborations form and how we all work together to build mutual trust and understanding while overcoming the challenges of differing perspectives.

Owen Nichols has been Director of Marine Fisheries Research at the Center for Coastal Studies since 2008, where he conducts research in collaboration with Cape Cod fishermen and shellfish farmers. His primary interests include distributional ecology, fisheries oceanography, marine mammal/fishery interactions, and ecosystem-based fishery management. Owen is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Massachusetts - Dartmouth (UMassD) School for Marine Science and Technology, and a guest investigator at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Owen holds a B.A. in Marine Affairs from the University of Rhode Island and a M.Sc. in Marine Science and Technology from UMassD