Community Fisheries Management Handbook - Saint Mary's University

Participating in research is a good way to build relationships between
fish harvesters and scientists, managers and regulatory agencies. Harvesters
can consider inviting these potential supporters to assist them in their
activities.
HOW TO DO IT
The research process starts with people asking questions, then developing
a plan to find explanations and answers. Like almost everything else in
community-based management, people talking together and asking themselves
“why?”, “how?” and “what if?” questions is the basis of good participatory
research.
The rest of this chapter reviews some important elements of the research
process.
Developing a
Research Plan
WHAT IS A RESEACH PLAN?
A research plan outlines research priorities and how they will be addressed.
It lists specific research projects and identifies by whom, how, and when
they will be completed.
WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?
A research plan helps in allocating resources to research and in identifying
gaps, such as lack of funds or lack of trained people, which need to be
filled before research can begin.
A research plan makes sure that research is not forgotten in the midst of
the ongoing demands on an organization’s time and resources.
A research plan is a roadmap for action; without clearly focused research
priorities, an organization can get involved with too many research projects
and/or ones that might not strengthen community-based management
efforts and may never be completed.
HOW TO DEVELOP A RESEARCH PLAN
1) Figure out what you need to know. The first step in developing a research
plan is to figure out what the organization really wants to know.
Some questions to ask include:
What information do we need to manage our fisheries?
Why do we want to know this?
What do we already know about this topic?
The answers to these questions will likely produce a long list of potential
research topics. These are the basic building blocks of a research plan that
help in identifying research priorities to meet the organizations’ immediate
and long term needs.
2) Divide research needs into categories. It is easier to identify specific
research priorities when a list of research topics is divided into research
categories. Some examples of categories of research include:
Biological or scientific (e.g. the status of fish stocks and their distribution)
Marketing and economic (e.g. the community economic value of local
fishing activity)
Policy research (e.g. alternatives to current management approach)
Local knowledge studies (e.g. local spawning ground identification)
Many organizations do a research plan as part of their overall fisheries
management plan (Chapter. 3 – Fisheries Management Planning) with
research being one element of the larger plan. The types of research are
then matched to the different management goals they are to support. For
example:
information about groundfish catch limits can support a goal to develop
an effort-based management alternative.
research into fisheries enforcement in other jurisdictions can support a
goal of setting up a local infractions committee.
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