From Data to Decisions: Empowering Small-Scale Pacific Fisheries Through Community-Led Data Analysis

Fishing is vital to food security, livelihoods, and cultural identity for coastal communities around the world, but many small-scale fisheries lack the necessary data and tools required to support sustainable management. In particular, there is a lack of tools to analyze fisheries-independent data within these communities. Unlike fisheries-dependent data, which are derived from commercial fishing operations (e.g., catch logs, catch per unit effort, and landing records), fisheries-independent data are collected through standardized scientific surveys (e.g., underwater visual surveys, intertidal surveys, and hook-and-line methods). These ecological surveys are often conducted by community members through citizen science programs, but the resulting data can be difficult to analyze without technical expertise, limiting their use in local decision-making. As a result, many communities remain dependent on external scientists to interpret their data, creating barriers to timely and autonomous resource management. This project partners with The Nature Conservancy to expand FishKit's capabilities, an open-access platform that supports community-based fisheries management. Currently, FishKit's toolbox relies on fisheries-dependent data that many small-scale fisheries struggle to obtain. This project will expand FishKit's toolbox to include fisheries-independent data, better supporting the sustainable management of these fisheries. The team will develop an accessible framework and an evaluation tool hosted on an R Shiny App for analyzing fisheries-independent data, informed by a review of survey methodologies and by end-user engagement. By focusing on intuitive data visualization and user-friendly design, the project aims to equip local community members with the tools needed to translate monitoring data into actionable insights. Ultimately, this work seeks to strengthen data sovereignty and adaptive capacity in small-scale fisheries communities across the Pacific. By improving access to scientific analysis, the project will support more equitable and resilient fisheries management, enabling communities to make informed decisions that sustain both marine ecosystems and the livelihoods that depend on them.