The history of vessel-of-opportunity ocean observation programmes is not encouraging from a partnership standpoint. The JCOMM Ship of Opportunity Programme, historical XBT deployments, and various regional vessel-based monitoring efforts have one thing in common: they treated the vessel operators as passive carriers of instruments, not as active participants in a scientific endeavour.
This is a design failure. And it is not only an ethical failure - it is operationally self-defeating.
Why this matters for network sustainability
A network that does not genuinely partner with its participants will experience attrition. Fishers who feel they are being used will stop participating. The transaction cost of re-enrolling a fisher who has decided the programme is not worth their time is high. The reputational cost within fishing communities of a programme perceived as extractive is higher still.
THALWAG is built around a different model. It is not a novel model in principle - researchers in participatory action science have articulated it for decades - but it is unusual in practice for oceanographic observation programmes.
What genuine partnership looks like
Four things:
Monetary compensation. Fishers receive direct payment per valid transmitted observation. This is not a token gesture; it is an acknowledgement that the fisher’s participation has economic value and should be compensated as such.
Co-authorship credit. Data contributors receive named co-authorship credit in published research that draws on their observations. This is opt-in - some fishers will prefer anonymity, and that choice is respected - but the default is visible credit.
Information reciprocity. Participating vessels receive ocean state and weather information back in real time. Better information makes their work safer and more productive. The network is a two-way system.
Governance representation. Fishing communities have direct representation in decisions about how the network operates. This is not a community advisory board that can be ignored; it is a structural governance requirement.
Why this is harder than it sounds
The hard part is not articulating these principles. The hard part is implementing them in a way that is credible to fishing communities who have been promised things by outside organisations before and have usually been disappointed.
Trust is slow. It cannot be bought or announced. It accumulates through consistent delivery over time. The THALWAG model accepts that the network will grow more slowly as a result - we would rather have a smaller, genuinely trusted network than a large one that collapses when the fishers decide the relationship is not worth maintaining.
This is a constraint, not a problem to be optimised away.