Dharmae: Valuing Coast project data collection

The Valuing Coast data collection contains interviews conducted by Michelle Voyer for her PhD thesis titled 'Assessing the social acceptability of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) - a comparison between Port Stephens-Great Lakes Marine Park (PSGLMP) and Batemans Marine Park (BMP) in NSW'. The aim of the research was to understand and interpret differential community responses to MPAs and gain insight into the factors that influence their community acceptance.

The research took a multi-disciplinary approach in order to explore the full breadth of factors that may be important aspects in determining a community’s response to an MPA, including media analysis, history and demographic analysis and social assessment.

This data collection contains 7 interview transcripts with professional, recreational and Indigenous fishers, conducted in order to answer the research question 'What social impacts have been experienced in each marine park community and by which sections of the community?'

Although 53 participants were originally interviewed for this project, permission to openly archive de-identified interview transcripts was sought retrospectively and by this time few participants could be readily contacted and still fewer responded that they would be prepared to have their interviews published. However, although the collection is incomplete, Valuing Coast complements and geographically extends the data in other collections such as Talking Fish, which pursue similar research questions.