While the benefits of harnessing the expertise of local ecological knowledge to enhance conservation and research around the world are becoming increasingly better recognised, there has – until now – been little in scientific data to actually quantify the value in fishers tales.

Thanks to a new study, published this week in the journal Ocean and Coastal Management and led by Plymouth University, new lengths have been gone to to de-shroud the mystery and provide hard evidence that – when it comes to understanding the local environment – local knowledge among artisanal fishers is not just good, it’s almost as accurate as satellite data.

This study focuses on the local ecological knowledge shared among artisanal fishers; setting out to establish its value by measuring its ability to generate high-quality habitat maps around five Greek islands in the Aegean Sea.

Based on their individual experience and knowledge, ten fishers were asked to pinpoint areas where they believed seagrass beds could be found along the coastlines of their respective islands.

The maps they produced were then compared with satellite data of the same regions, with analysis showing an average accuracy of 78%… and a high of 92%.

It was found that the fishers’ maps were in fact 11% more accurate than those used by the Greek government in the development of environmental policies, with more than half the government maps underestimating the scale of seagrass beds found across the region.

The researchers say their findings are a clear demonstration of the value of tapping into local knowledge, and how doing so can be a low-cost means of generating environmental data without compromising the high accuracy needed for the data to still be valuable for policy use.

The study – carried out by researchers from the University of Plymouth and the Archipelagos Institute of Marine Conservation – worked closely with fishermen on the islands of Fourni, Arki, Patmos, Lipsi, and Leros each of which are home to communities made up, largely of small artisanal fishing vessels.

“Some of the fishermen we spoke to had been sailing the same waters every day for more than 60 years,” said Konstantis Alexopoulos, a BSc (Hons) Ocean Science and Marine Conservation graduate from the University of Plymouth now pursuing a Ph.D with the Scott Polar Research Institute at the University of Cambridge, and the study’s lead author.

“That experience has given them a huge amount of knowledge, but we wanted to test precisely how accurate their empirical data were in comparison to more traditional sources of information.

“For some personal recollections to be 90% as accurate as the data provided from satellites is really impressive, and something we should be taking into greater account.”

The study has gone lengths to highlight the importance of gathering this kind of local ecological knowledge, indicating that there is a “huge wealth of data” within local fishing communities that runs a real risk “of being lost forever” as fewer younger people enter the profession.

Those involved in the research say it’s yet another example of how communities, scientists, and decision-makers could work in collaboration to meet ambitions set out within the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

Despite it being centred around the eastern Aegean Sea, they believe their findings – and the methods used to reach them – will be relevant in other parts of the ocean. In particular, they believe local ecological knowledge could play a pivotal role in generating a greater understanding of deeper marine ecosystems which satellites can’t see and for which there are currently little or no maps available to guide management decisions.

Dr Abigail McQuatters-Gollop, associate professor of marine conservation at the University – and the current study’s senior author – added: “There is a huge global drive to get more people involved in projects that incorporate elements of citizen science.

“Despite that, expert local ecological knowledge is still being dismissed or discredited by those making decisions about the environment. But just because information hasn’t been generated by expensive technology, it doesn’t make it any less valuable.

“Using people’s life experiences – gathered from fishing and living in an area over many years – alongside other scientific data can help us develop and implement actions that maintain a healthy global ocean.”

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