We asked project lead Danielle Ogurcak about her experiences serving as a project lead across different phases of the Mangrove Coast Collaborative and how collaborative science made a difference for how she approaches research. Below, Danielle discusses how she first started in collaborative science, how the Mangrove Coast Collaborative came to be, and the lasting impacts of the team’s collaborative approach.
This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.
Why do you use collaborative science?
I've found it has so far proven to be the best way to get to impact. To solve problems, we need the input of a diversity of perspectives. By contrast, when I haven't used collaborative science in other projects I’ve done, oftentimes the research is maybe missing the mark, or managers, for example, might find it interesting, but not really meeting their needs. So once I discovered that collaborative science, and really co-production, was a framework that people used, there was kind of this “aha” moment that this was a way not only to get better results for actionable science that could make a difference for conservation outcomes but that could also strengthen networks and relationships in a way that opens up a whole host of other opportunities.
Early on in my career I was a technician. I think some of what I remember being disappointed about was that a bunch of the work I did early on wasn't being used. There was no mechanism for the funders to check back in beyond reporting and there wasn't a lot of discussion and so I never saw a “pivot.” Once I saw truly collaborative science and co-production, the amount of pivoting we did – I don't think the structure in those prior projects would have even allowed for it.
“There is a structure to continuously get new perspectives.”
I think another key difference is in the way that new individuals are brought in. For example, a charter for how you meet– that was something completely new to me coming into the work of the Science Collaborative. In other projects, when you're a new individual, you're just trying to figure out where you fit, and you either make it work or you don't. Whereas, in collaborative science projects, there is a structure to continuously get new perspectives because it’s anticipated and acknowledged that personnel are constantly changing over time as people move to new positions.
How has collaborative science positioned you and community partners to take action that addresses shared goals?
It allows us to address these challenges in environmental and coastal management that are not going to be solved with one-off projects. They require continuous work and engagement that needs to go beyond most single project funding streams. Through its focus on relationship building, collaborative science allows for that because you're working closely with those people from different disciplines and gaining a better understanding of their perspectives.
“Without the science collaborative project, I wouldn't be working closely with Rookery Bay now– I don't think that would have happened.”
It enabled me to build relationships, and then the reserve said, “Hey, actually, we could really use this here in the reserve, do you want to do these things too?”
I think it's also related to how university systems are often set up for traditional research, with a focus on incentivizing specific activities for tenure track professors. I was relieved from the pressure of having to choose between relationship building and pursuing research because I could get funded through the Science Collaborative mechanism which enables both.
Why did you do this project, and how did you know it was needed?
I knew that post-hurricane recovery was going to be a coastal issue that managers would want to address, especially with such severe storms and the effects on the community. Coming in from a university and not being part of the Reserve System when I started the project, I had previously applied for funding through the Science Collaborative with both reserves, Rookery Bay and Jobos Bay. Not having really understood collaborative science or co-production, at least in the way that the Science Collaborative is defining it, that proposal wasn't funded. And in hindsight, I get exactly why it wasn't funded. I was fortunate that Brita Jessen, the research coordinator at Rookery Bay Reserve at the time, knew how to bring together a lot of different people. She did that through a capacity building grant and we learned a lot, which allowed all parties to talk about what they saw in their respective reserves, what they needed, and then have the scientists who were there at those meetings talk about their academic interests and what their different capabilities were. It was really important to get all those people into one place, and then bring in some community representatives to discuss what the project could and could not do.
What kind of changes have you seen as a result of the project?
There was a lot of strength in relationships, particularly within the project team. Meeting with a project team monthly, as we did from 2020 to 2025, built greater understanding of the similarities and differences between the two reserves. I think Rookery Bay and Jobos Bay have a really close bond and are better able to see ways to tackle some management challenges; that’s been really valuable to the individuals at both reserves. I think that matters for positioning us to continue the work.
Supporting the ongoing exchange of knowledge is also important. We did this project immediately following the storms and recovery and there's going to be another storm in the future– that's inevitable – so it makes it easier, the next time it happens, to already have such a large data set for both social science as well as natural science types of data. All the reserves have long-term monitoring efforts so it's really valuable across reserves, for synthesis reasons, to understand what's happening on a wider scale and to make sure that we're monitoring the same way.
What was the role of collaborative science in making those changes possible?
It definitely wouldn't have been possible to tackle such an interdisciplinary topic without collaborative science.
“Really thinking about how managers are going to use these data sets was an important component of the project that needed a collaborative approach.”
We had these external users who continued to engage with the project for four and a half years– I don't know how often that happens. Clearly it was important to have this larger community of folks thinking about and focusing on these ideas and bringing them to their own work, and I think that we could not have done that without a collaborative science framework where those individuals felt like they were benefitting from being involved, felt genuinely heard, and knew their feedback was being used with real intent. I think having a lot of transparency, and just making it easy for folks to stay involved at the level at which they wanted to be involved was important. We would have missed out on a lot without having that; it couldn't have been the same project because we would not have had the breadth of perspectives.