Since 2007 Living Oceans Society has been gathering local ecological knowledge (LEK) throughout the North Island and Central Coast. The LEK project is designed to work with fishermen, coastal community residents and other marine stakeholders. The purpose of the project is to gather and summarize LEK in a way that is accessible and useful to coastal communities, especially so that cultural and economic uses and values can be documented.
The maps that are produced from this project allow us and the participants to better understand our coastal ecosystems through knowledge sharing. In further analyses, Living Oceans Society combines local knowledge with data from scientific research to help bring about sustainable management of our marine resources. We produce maps that summarize local knowledge collected from interviews, and we share these maps with the people that provided the information.
We hope that all participants can use these maps in marine planning processes to make their concerns and needs known.