Indonesian team visits Vancouver
After more than a year of mostly remote collaboration, it was time to get in the same room.
Project Seahorse recently hosted our Indonesian Field Lead, Muthya Farah, and our collaborator at Indonesia’s Badan Riset dan Inovasi Nasional RI (BRIN), Masayu Rahmia, for a focused two-week visit at the UBC Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries. Together with Jana McPherson, they worked on extracting critical insights on Indonesia’s seahorse fisheries and trade from field survey data collected over the past year.
The timing matters. Two workshops in May, organized with BRIN and Kesatuan Nelayan Tradisional Indonesia (KNTI), will push this work into decision-making spaces. The question on the table isn’t abstract: how do you allow use of seahorses without collapsing the resource?
Indonesia hosts 13 seahorse species. That biodiversity is an asset – and a management problem. Any policy that treats them as a single stock will be wrong by design.
This visit focused on sharpening the evidence base so those workshops don’t default to guesswork. The team also thought carefully about workshop design, to ensure that key interest-holders in Indonesia, from coastal communities to central government, can take ownership of the discussions and jointly identified solutions.
Thanks to Syd Ascione for analytical support, Gina Bestbier for taking care of logistics – as always, and to Amanda Vincent and Sarah Foster for co-hosting and keeping the work anchored in real-world conservation outcomes.