Collaboration is at the heart of CoastConnect. By drawing on the shared wisdom and expertise of Indigenous communities, researchers, practitioners, and agencies, the platform ensures a collaborative approach to managing and monitoring our marine environment—where knowledge flows both ways, and solutions are grounded in real-world needs.
Our Collaborators
The Canadian Integrate Ocean Observing System (CIOOS) is Canada’s national ocean data infrastructure, built on FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) and coordinated across regional associations from coast to coast. CoastConnect draws on CIOOS data and tools — including the CIOOS Data Explorer and CIOOS Data Catalogue — and is designed to drive uptake of CIOOS resources among coastal end-users in British Columbia. Hakai Institute is an active data contributor to CIOOS Pacific, and OceanConnect was developed collaboratively with CIOOS.
Parks Canada
Parks Canada is the federal agency responsible for protecting and managing Canada's national parks, national marine conservation areas, and national historic sites. Along the British Columbia coast, Parks Canada manages sites including Pacific Rim National Park Reserve and Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve, National Marine Conservation Area Reserve, and Haida Heritage Site. CoastConnect tools and monitoring workflows support the kind of place-based ecological monitoring that Parks Canada and its partners carry out in these protected areas.
Fisheries and Oceans Canada
Fisheries and Oceans Canada is a federal government department responsible for safeguarding Canadian waters and managing fisheries and oceans resources. DFO co-funded CoastConnect’s first chapter through the Marine Conservation Targets program and is a major source of ocean and coastal data used throughout the platform.
Collaboration in Action
Through the development of CoastConnect, the Hakai Institute supported a student-centred internship program in partnership with the Council of the Haida Nation (CHN) to support the coastal marine planning and management activities of CHN. As part of this work, interns assisted CHN staff with data entry and management for CHN’s marine invasive species monitoring program, which monitors for invasive tunicates and other invasive species at various locations around Haida Gwaii.
The interns then created a communications piece to highlight the significance of invasive tunicate monitoring to marine spatial planning for Haida Gwaii. Read the storymap they created in collaboration with CHN in the following link.
Connect with us
If you would like to collaborate with CoastConnect, please reach out to us!