Navigating diverse commercial fisher perspectives for effective knowledge exchange in fisheries research and management

Local Ecological Knowledge held by commercial fishers is a valuable but underutilized resource for advancing scientific understanding in fisheries and marine management. To better incorporate this knowledge into management agencies and research departments, a thorough understanding of knowledge exchange between fishers and research scientists is essential. While previous studies have reported successful knowledge exchange, often based on consensus statements or gauged by tangible management outcomes, few have critically explored fishers’ engagement experiences, preferences, and the factors influencing these. To address this gap, we employed an inductive research methodology and conducted semi-structured interviews with twenty-one commercial fishers from two contrasting Western Australian commercial fisheries targeting different species with different gear types. Six key engagement themes were identified, revealing diverse attitudes held by fishers toward knowledge exchange with fisheries research scientists. We found that a minority of fishers from each fishery were highly engaged, acting as knowledge brokers, whereas the remaining fishers were disinterested or had minimal opportunities to engage researchers. We also found higher levels of engagement and a wider variety of interactions in the more valuable (and well-resourced) fishery. Key barriers to knowledge exchange included the use of technical scientific language and approaches alienating some fishers, limited research budgets, and fishers' reservations about sharing their expertise. We discuss strategies to overcome these barriers, including tailored engagement models, training research scientists in communicating with individuals from non-academic backgrounds, increasing funding to support industry partnerships in low-value fisheries, and broadening the focus of fisher engagement beyond the realms of fisheries science.