Talking Golden Fish: Estuarine Researchers meet in Perth at the ECSA 57 International Conference!

This month has been very busy for the Golden Fish Team. Besides planning for the next fieldwork season (stay tuned for news on that), attending Sarah’s graduation and analysing data, the whole team managed to find a few days to present at the International conference ECSA 57: Changing estuaries, coasts and shelf systems - Diverse threats and opportunities, here in Perth!

Sarah and Clara presented some results on the social values of recreational fishing for Blue Swimmer Crab in the Peel-Harvey Estuary and the fisher’s perception on restocking as a management approach; and on the two-phase interdisciplinary method used to record and understand these values, respectively. See their presentations here and here. These presentations and others in the "Social values" session demonstrated that this is a topic of increasing importance. Moreover, several of the keynote speakers highlighted how relevant it is to incorporate social and cultural values research plans and even management.

The team also used the conference to get feedback on a few news ideas with James (on behalf of Denis) compiling a poster on the proposed economic analyses and Clara one an approach to investigating social-ecological systems. See their posters here and here.

The event was fantastically organised, and the whole team got the chance to meet researchers from different countries working on similar and different aspects of fisheries and ecosystem management. There was talk at the conference of special editions of i) Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science and ii) Ocean & Coastal Management; so stay tuned.

Thanks, everyone for great talks and discussions afterwards. We will stay in touch, and hopefully, we will get to catch up at a future conference!