I’m wrapping up the data collection from my first research project this year, and really my first research project—this is the first time I’ve collected quantitative data for my own work.

The project is an online survey that I sent to US marine and coastal managers and stakeholders to ask them which ocean research questions they think are the most important. Dr. Murray Rudd, a scientist at University of York, did this with marine scientists (check it out here, if you’re interested), and I want to compare the priorities of scientists with those of the people who manage, live, and work with the oceans.

Rudd essentially assigned each question a numerical “importance score” based on how the scientists had ranked it, and produced an ordered list of research priorities. I thought this would be a great opportunity to quantitatively demonstrate the “science-policy gap:” the disconnect in communication and understanding between scientists and decision makers. I think about this gap all the time and plan to write a separate post on it soon—essentially, scientists tend to do a terrible job of communicating their work, and policymakers tend not to use science in their decisions.

I sent a shortened version of Rudd’s survey to hundreds of marine managers and stakeholders, and will compare their rankings to those of the scientists. I hope to use the results of this project to identify areas of disagreement between scientists and managers, and call on scientists to focus on research applications that people on the ground (or, as it were, in the water) most want and need. I’m particularly interested in the perspectives of fishermen, since they depend on the oceans for their livelihoods and also tend to know the oceans much better than scientists do. Although some scientists have been advocating for including fishers’ perspectives and familiarity with their environment (in scientist jargonese we call this “local ecological knowledge”) in our scientific understanding of marine systems for decades, the perspectives of resource users are still rarely included in academic literature.

I’m going to put up some results soon, but the most interesting takeaway so far is how much distrust and criticism I’m getting from respondents, especially fishermen. Below are some comments I’ve received through the survey, or in phone or email conversations I’ve had while trying to distribute the survey (all original wording and spelling intact; bolding is my own):

“Is this legit or some ploy by someone we do not want to deal with”

“I’m a fisherman all my income comes from fishing and feel that over regulation has effected my life…the science is always two years behind what is happening at sea I think their out to put small boat fishermen out like the small farmers”

“…the survey pigeonholes you to positions…that have not been agreed to or accepted by fishermen…a tremendous amount [of] hubris or assumptions that preconceived positions are universally accepted by all.”

“The questions are too academically worded. I won’t have this coming out of my office. I just can’t see sending this out [to the fleet]. I think it would do more harm than good.”

“Very few scientists are honest. Trust is hard to earn in the real ocean.”

Here I thought I was doing a great thing by reaching out and listening to fishermen, so this feedback was distressing! Even though I hadn’t even written the questions (I needed to keep everything consistent with Rudd’s original survey to be able to rigorously compare results), I felt oddly ashamed. From these few conversations, I get the impression that these fishers’ interactions with scientists, even ostensibly pro-fisher scientists, inevitably result in restrictions and regulations that threaten their (the fishers’) income and employment, so they’re fearful and resistant about putting in more time and effort to help scientists only to get screwed over again. Had I spent a few years getting to know these fishermen, listening to them and demonstrating that I was trustworthy, I might have gotten away with fielding this survey, but as a stranger sending cold emails I was just another dishonest scientist.

I’m grateful to have learned the importance of building relationships and trust so early on: a powerful lesson I’ll keep with me for future work with fishers and decisionmakers. Next month, I’m heading to Peru to work with small-scale fishing communities, and my trip will be explicitly devoted to groundwork in building trust—going in with open ears and an open mind, and getting to know people as people rather than survey respondents.