Marine environments hold shared resources accessed by diverse stakeholders with different interests and responsibilities, creating potential barriers for effective shared custodianship. This is especially true in environments shared amongst culturally diverse stakeholders, where divergent value-systems can result in conflicting perspectives. Different knowledge systems can hamper effective communication and shared decision making in cross-cultural environments. Indigenous Knowledge is considered a fundamentally different world view to Western Scientific Knowledge, yet their integration is essential for joint management of resources and country.
Here, we present on the first stages of a new cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural partnership of traditional owners, marine scientists, social scientists, and marine park managers to integrate social- cultural- and ecological research to advance the shared management of dugong and turtle between Traditional Owners and the WA state government. We will describe the planning stages of the project, including assembling of project participants, deriving project objectives, and the cultural induction that marked the official start of the project. We hope our journey to date will offer some important insight into the approaches that lead to genuine partnerships that benefit both science and community.