This travel bursary application is to attend a 3-day workshop, ““Data Management and Local Knowledge: Building a Network to Support Community-Based Research and Monitoring" to be held in Boulder, Colorado, U.S.A, on November 15, 16, 17, 2011. The purpose of the workshop is to bring together researchers, industry and community members, organizations, and projects working on issues surrounding data management for both Local and Traditional Knowledge (LTK) and information from community and industry-based research and monitoring. They are interested in projects and initiatives that work with LTK and are addressing data management issues in some way – from asking questions about how we can archive our data and information for future generations, to fully operational data management systems. The organisers have written to invite me to attend (pdf attached) in order to exchange experiences and information on how we can better gather, utilise and acknowledge important information that is held within our marine industries and communities.

Formally incorporating fisher knowledge into our assessment and management frameworks has never been so critical. Fishers need to alter what they do in response to marine ecosystem changes (i.e. adaptation), yet many fishers do not acknowledge climate change or trust traditional scientific information about climate change. We need platforms that collect and display information fishers trust -their own industry information.