TEK meets eDNA

The need to put into place true collaborative co-management is the focal point of the newly Proposed Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary off the coast of central California. USC Sea Grant has funded a study that will enhance a collaborative plan between the Chumash community, NOAA National Marine Sanctuaries, Stanford University, and Stanford’s Hopkins Marine Station. It uses an existing eDNA research project to move towards tribal collaborative/co-management for the sanctuary by including more indigenous community involvement in biodiversity research. The project will test two different Tribal-led citizen-science delivery systems for collecting eDNA specimens and compare them to previously funded collections based on long-established scientific protocols. The study will compare results from these sets of samples, and use the results to propose building greater involvement in Tribal communities in eDNA research in the proposed sanctuary. The team will also begin the process of describing sampling locations with their Chumash names to bring the traditional ecological knowledge about location history and features into the eDNA descriptions.