We recently completed a summative and formative evaluation report on the Digital Fishers project:
The CANARIE investment in the Digital Fishers (DF) component of its NEP-67 grant to NEPTUNE Canada was intended to build a capacity within Oceans 2.0 to support ongoing interaction with a growing Internet-based community interested in contributing to scientific research into oceans issues. At the end of the initial capacity-building phase of the Digital Fishers initiative, the evidence suggests that the CANARIE decision to undertake that investment was well-founded. The development of Digital Fishers has both created a capacity to support ongoing oceans research within Oceans 2.0 and built a foundation for a number of very promising future activities that might also extend the high-capacity “big-pipe” CANARIE system into a range of important distributed applications. Among the benefits of this initial investment by CANARIE Inc is the potential to build – through both formal education and informal citizen engagement – a widening community of interest supportive of ongoing public investment in scientific research into oceans issues.
Justin Longo, phd 