Setting Sail Toward a Global Sea Grant Network
Staci RijalPlaza
The Sea Grant model can be applied internationally to facilitate collaboration around mutual priorities, ultimately providing benefit to both local and international communities. Global networks allow for transfer of information, ideas, experiences, and solutions around shared issues, and a global Sea Grant network can facilitate outcomes that individual Sea Grants can’t accomplish alone, as well as be a venue for sharing best practices. In this interactive session, US Sea Grant programs will have the opportunity to engage in active discussions with NOAA Research’s International Activities Office and other Sea Grants about opportunities, challenges, and ideas for international Sea Grant-related collaboration. While one of the goals of this session is to engage interested parties from US Sea Grants in international collaboration and to identify ways NOAA can assist with these collaborations, this session will also discuss more equitable and open methods of extending the US Sea Grant model to interested international partners.