Abstract
Marine Social Science is quite an established field of research. If we would use the MARE People and the Sea conferences as an indicator we see a gradual growth of the community and its output. The majority of the researchers work at universities, teach, perform research and write lots of articles and preferably monographs and (thick) books. Thus there is a whole lot of marine social science knowledge out there, but does it make a difference? Increasingly the world’s seas and oceans are used more intensively by a more diverse group of users and studied with ever so much more scrutiny. Fisheries and their impacts are observed under magnifying glasses with increasingly less ocean space for them to use. Whilst this is ongoing, interest for applied marine social science in the European context is growing. The EU’s directorate general for the seas and oceans (DGMARE) is interested in the ‘social dimension’ of its policy and the intergovernmental marine science organization ICES initiated the ‘strategic initiative on the human dimension’ some years ago. In my talk I will sketch these ongoing developments, give some examples of the applied social science work I have been engaged in with my colleagues in the Netherlands & Europe and discuss the question: how can we (marine social scientists) as soon as possible become as relevant as possible so that we can make a difference before it is too late?
