Oysters are an important species both culturally and economically on Long Island, New York. They provide numerous ecosystem services ranging from filtering and cleaning the water to protecting the coast against storm surges and providing a local and sustainable source of seafood. Because the myriad services oysters provide are difficult to simultaneously optimize, decisions about which ones to prioritize often arise, and stakeholders may end up holding conflicting positions about best management practices. Throughout 21 focus group meetings across a range of stakeholders, people 1) identified what oyster services matter the most to them, and 2) what actors and drivers they saw affecting those services. This allowed us to understand how these services help shape their daily life.
We used Fuzzy Cognitive Modeling (FCM; Figure 1) to produce quantitative modes of stakeholders’ views of how ecosystem components are interrelated which may allow managers to envision the impacts of various potential management strategies on specific oyster services. While FCM provides a quantitative structure to understand the relationships among participants and the oyster ecosystem, exploring the emotional connections required an additional qualitative tool. In order to illuminate participant perceptions, a photovoice process followed the FCM mapping sess ion (Figure 2).