Local Ecological Knowledge – what has recently been described by the scientific community as Local Ecological Knowledge – the knowledge about the environment that local island communities bring to us is an invaluable source of information that in Greece has been devalued for decades and nowadays we are in danger of losing it. 

We are very fortunate that even today we find and join forces with coastal fishermen on the Aegean islands with knowledge of marine species and ecosystems and a real understanding of their processes, the ways in which they have been changing over the last decades, and the factors that threaten and destroy them.

Alongside Archipelagos Institute’s specialised research in the open sea, which aims to achieve effective marine conservation, on each island and in each region where we focus, we have been using and recording for 25 years the invaluable information shared with us by local communities and especially the fishermen.

In the photo we are on the boat of captain Mihalis from Fourni island