Entangled Shorelines, translating tacit knowledges for coastal stewardship

Small-scale fisheries have a long heritage in the Wadden Sea area, working flexibly with traditional practices that adapt and respond to the changing natural environment (Geintegreede Visserij, 2018). Through their constant presence on the Wadden Sea, listening and responding to the changing environment, these fishers have accumulated generations of vital tacit knowledge, embodied in their attitudes and ways of working together with the landscape. Their relationships with the Wadden Sea exemplify how local cultural practices can ‘through active participation and humble restraint- become attuned to the community of life and constitutive of the well-being of the places in which they live, work and play’ (van Horn and Hausdoeffer, 2017). But despite this, small-scale fishing cultures are at acute risk of disappearing in the Wadden; fewer and fewer younger generations are interested in adopting the vocation and the fishers themselves struggle to communicate their intimate knowledge and significance of the role that they play in the Wadden, leaving them struggling to find a seat at the table in coastal transition discussions (Riemesma, 2021). In order to accelerate holistic and innovative coastal transitions, strategies are urgently needed to bring the tacit knowledge of small fishermen (and other likewise locally embedded actors) to the surface, to find a language of exchange for ‘the most invisible knowledge’.