Last week, the NECCTON Stakeholder Workshop: Co-design of Future Products was held virtually. This two-day workshop took place on June 28th and 29th with the aim of presenting NECCTON's future products and gathering stakeholder needs. The first public event of NECCTON attracted over 100 participants, including key stakeholders, project scientists, and potential users of NECCTON products.
On the first day, a plenary session introduced the project to the audience, presented future products, visualization tools, case studies, and user testimonies. Following this, engaging discussions between NECCTON scientists and stakeholders took place in four parallel sessions held in 2 rounds, led by WP 5 to 8 leaders. The thematic options for discussion included new capabilities for pelagic lower-trophic-level modeling, benthic habitat modeling, higher-trophic-level modeling, and marine pollution and stressors modeling. Interactive tools were utilized to collect stakeholder needs, resulting in diverse discussions covering topics such as spatial resolution, variables, geographic areas, trends, and climate projections. The discussions fostered direct dynamic and productive engagement between stakeholders and WP leaders. The day concluded with a wrap-up session, presenting the main conclusions and outline the next steps for NECCTON.
Day 2, led by Patrick Lehodey (Mercator Ocean International), the workshop continued with the presentation of the main needs collected on Day 1 and also included the presentation of case study 11, "Spatial Management of Tuna Stocks and Fisheries under Climate Change." This session started discussions with key stakeholders from the South Pacific, followed by interesting inputs from other scientists and stakeholders. The day concluded with a wrap-up session and final remarks from the PI of the project.
Watch the workshop on youtube