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Courtesy of the Aquarium of the Pacific: 

Landscape Analysis of Aquaculture Outreach – Final Report

Summary

This brief survey was developed for educators and institutions that specialize in ocean literacy and seafood businesses that provide information to their customers. The objective of the survey was to create a landscape overview of efforts to communicate about marine aquaculture across diverse networks. Specifically, this survey was created to determine:

1. Who is sharing information about aquaculture?
2. In what context are they sharing information about aquaculture?
3. How are they sharing information? What channels are they using?
4. What tools and resources are most useful to various stakeholder groups to share information about aquaculture to their audiences?

This overview will help shape recommendations, which will lead to the development of tools and resources targeted to cohesive, science-based public education about marine aquaculture.

Key Takeaways

• Information about aquaculture is being presented to the public by diverse stakeholder groups.
• The general trend in terms of tone is positive or neutral across stakeholder groups for the various types of aquaculture production.
• Most respondents believe they have access to adequate information to educate their audiences about aquaculture and its potential as a conservation tool.
• There are real and perceived information gaps among some stakeholder groups that may impact an organization’s confidence in terms of public engagement about marine aquaculture.
• Images and video, summary reports from multi-stakeholder workshops, and the ability to tour farms were cumulatively identified as the most helpful communication tools for those who do not believe there are real or perceived information gaps.
• Among those who do believe there are information gaps, communications toolkits that translate the science for educators was the most selected as a helpful communications tool.
• Connections to producers and university and government scientists also ranked high as communication resources across stakeholder groups.

About the Working Groups

Ocean Literacy and Aquaculture (North Atlantic and Arctic) are two of the priority themes identified in the transatlantic cooperation established by the Galway Statement and operationalized through the Atlantic Ocean Research Alliance (AORA) among Canada, the European Union, and the United States of America. The Galway Statement Implementation Committee’s Ocean Literacy Working Group and Aquaculture Working Group are working together to address public perception of aquaculture by examining the current state of aquaculture outreach and recommendations to encourage more consistent messaging about aquaculture across diverse stakeholder groups.