Student Researcher: Transparency and Communication Essential to Research Partnerships with Fishermen
In a concept that touches the very mission of sustainability, Sarah Ebel and her colleagues went directly to Maine lobstermen to ask questions. They were not merely asking these stakeholders for information about what they do. They were asking lobsterman how they think about their role in collaborative research – if they think they have a role at all.
A very different set of questions.
Ebel, a PhD student in UMaine’s Department of Anthropology, conducted the interviews with her advisor, Christine Beitl, Assistant Professor of Anthropology. They were part of a yearlong study funded by the Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions, which focused on broadening the scope of the Mitchell Center’s community-based mission.
At the center of the research was the little-known cusk, a potentially endangered finfish species often caught accidentally as “bycatch” by lobster fishermen. While other team members worked out on the water, Ebel and Beitl set out to discover what lobstermen knew about the cusk issue – and what they thought about the idea of collaborative research with universities and other entities.
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