The Monterey Bay Fisheries Trust is coordinating a meeting for members of the fishing community to meet with representatives of JRD Associates, to learn about the S-K grants and projects that have received funding. This is also an opportunity to share how you as community members would like results of these projects to be shared and made accessible to you.

Each year, the S-K Competitive Grant Program awards approximately $10 million to fisheries research and development projects. The objective of these grant programs is to address the needs of fishing communities in optimizing economic benefits by building and maintaining sustainable fisheries and practices, dealing with impacts of conservation and management measures and increasing other opportunities to keep working waterfronts viable.

Even though the process of selecting the S-K projects is robust and carefully administered it is not known to what extent the result achieved by the projects are being utilized or how well they are being disseminated to the fishing industry.

To improve the dissemination and utilization of these grants, NOAA has contracted JRD & Associates to conduct feedback sessions and interviews to collect information.