Nicholas School of the Environment

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10161/52

Master's projects by Nicholas School of the Environment students, including the Duke Marine Laboratory.

The masters project is done in partial fulfillment of the degree requirements for the professional Master of Environmental Management or the Master of Forestry degree. While the MP may include original laboratory or field research, it may also take the form of management plans, handbooks, educational curricula, or other such products. Each student is advised by a faculty member who reviews and approves the project prior to completion.

A masters projects that is original research should not be as large as a masters thesis although it should be of publishable quality but not necessarily comprehensive enough to stand alone as a publication. A masters projects that does not follow the usual format for scientific research should follow a framework that is considered good practice in an appropriate field.

Duke migrated to an electronic-only system for masters projects between 2006 and 2010. As such, projects completed between 2006 and 2010 may not be part of this system, and those created before 2006 are not hosted here except for a small number that have been digitized.

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Now showing 1 - 20 of 2319
  • Item type: Item , Access status: Embargo ,
    Evaluating the Taxonomic Scope of Tuna Regional Fisheries Management Organizations to Identify Management Gaps and Spatial Priorities in the High Seas
    (2026-04-23) Holsclaw, Natalie
    Tuna Regional Fisheries Management Organizations (tRFMOs) are tasked with protecting biodiversity and ecosystem-related species, yet industrial tuna fisheries in the high seas result in significant bycatch mortality. tRFMO species mandates and which species have conservation and management measures (CMMs) remain unclear, as does how Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ) protections will “not undermine” tRFMO governance. This study defines species mandates and active management by tRFMOs and identifies candidate areas for high seas area-based management tools (ABMTs) under BBNJ. Results show gaps in management of small tuna species and weak protections for ecosystem-related species. Candidate areas identified for ABMT include regions of high species richness and fishing effort, often aligning with productive upwelling systems. These findings highlight opportunities to advance ecosystem-based fisheries management and provide a data-limited approach to identify potentially ecologically significant areas in the high seas.
  • Item type: Item , Access status: Open Access ,
    Assessing Factors that Influence the Effectiveness of Preferential Access Areas for Small-Scale Fishers
    (2026-04-24) Kuptz, Audrey
    Small-scale fisheries (SSF) are vital for producing food and sustaining livelihoods for hundreds of millions of people around the world, but are facing a myriad of pressures, including increased competition with larger-scale and industrial fishing. To protect access to fisheries for SSF, many countries have established preferential access areas that restrict national or sub-national coastal waters for use by SSF. This project examines as case studies the preferential access areas of Liberia and Colombia, two high-performing nations in minimizing the incursion of industrial fishing vessels into their preferential access areas. Through a mixed-methods analysis of scientific literature, digital news articles, and semi-structured interviews with academic and governmental key informants, this research assesses the management tools and enforcement mechanisms implemented to enforce the preferential access areas, as well as the attributed effects. This project provides insight into the factors that affect effectiveness and scalability of preferential access areas as a spatial management tool for securing access for SSF.
  • Item type: Item , Access status: Open Access ,
    Identifying and Reducing Waste in Startups: A Diagnostic Framework to Create More Resilient Organizations
    (2026-04-24) Lapidus, Jason; Aguilar, Juan Diego
    Startups frequently fail to deliver on their missions not because their intent or technology is insufficient, but because their organizations generate waste: operational friction, misaligned incentives, and structural inefficiencies that compound under growth. This project argues that waste reduction is the foundational precondition for sustainable mission delivery in startups. Drawing on systems thinking, network science, and leadership practice, this project delivers a Startup Resilience Framework: a practitioner guidebook of diagnostic questions that prompts founders to identify where waste accumulates in their company, what generates it, how it cascades through operations, and where interventions yield the highest return. This enables any founder to assess organizational health and make decisions that minimize friction before dysfunction sets in or continues to grow.
  • Item type: Item , Access status: Open Access ,
    Crossing the Translation Gap: Positioning Academic Innovation for the Business World
    (2026-04-24) Stubbs, Jessica
    This Master’s Project examines a defining constraint on environmental progress: the limited ability to convert scientific discoveries into real-world consequence at scale. Research universities generate advances that can reshape modern systems, yet much of this innovation remains confined to the labs in which they originate. This project investigates the structural dissonance through an analytical case study of Duke University’s Cassar Lab at Prototypes for Humanity in Dubai, an international showcase in which academic innovations first engage the global audiences and industry conditions that shape their commercialization pathways. By strategically codifying this high-stakes engagement, the study interrogates the operational misalignment and decisive inflection point between scientific verification and market validation. At this boundary, the question shifts from whether an innovation works to whether it matters. Further, it positions direct market engagement as the critical capability within research institutions that determines whether innovation reaches and influences the systems they are intended to transform.
  • Item type: Item , Access status: Open Access ,
    Using AUV’s and AI to Automate Data Collection and Imagery Data Analysis to Better Inform Offshore Energy Planning and Resource Management
    (2026-04-28) Mularo, Evan
    Benthic imagery collected by Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) provide crucial ground-truth data needed for seabed habitat characterization, yet the manual annotation bottleneck required to convert these images into useful datasets remains a major challenge. A single AUV survey track can provide upwards of 8,000 images, requiring an estimated 13 workdays on manual annotation. This makes large-scale habitat characterization impractical without the use of automated systems. This study evaluates the viability of using a YOLO-based convolutional neural network (CNN), implemented within the software CoralNet-Toolbox to assist in automating the classification of benthic imagery collected in the NOAA R/V Seahawk mission in the Carolina Long Bay Wind Energy Areas. The secondary objective of this study was to assess how image patch size influences classification performance, testing three patch sizes of 164 x 164, 224 x 224, and 264 x 264 pixels. Results showed that classification performance is sensitive to patch size, with the 224 x 224 model achieving the highest overall accuracy (80.8%), balanced accuracy (76.5%), and macro-averaged F1 score (0.41) across four substrate classes of Rock, Sand, Shell, and Biological. The smallest patch size (164 x 164) exhibited increased confusion between Rock and Sand due to insufficient spatial context, while the largest patch size (264 x 264) maintained high overall accuracy but showed reduced minority-class recall, indicating a bias towards the Sand class. Minority class performance (Shell and Biological) remained unstable across all models due to there being limited training representation for those substrate types. These findings establish that patch size is a crucial design variable in patch-based benthic classification workflows. The framework developed in this study provides a reproducible methodology for integrating AI-assisted image analysis into large-scale offshore habitat mapping.
  • Item type: Item , Access status: Embargo ,
    Nature at Work: CEI’S Habitat & Species Playbook
    (2026-04-22) Carignan, Annemarie
    Biodiversity loss presents growing environmental and business risks, prompting companies to integrate biodiversity considerations into sustainability strategies. Cox Enterprises, Inc. (CEI) established Habitat & Species goals to protect, restore, or sustainably manage more land than it uses. However, achieving these goals requires engaging employees and translating enterprise-level commitments into practical site-level action. This project developed the first iteration of a Habitat & Species Playbook for CEI to support employee participation in biodiversity initiatives across CEI sites. Hosted on SharePoint, the Playbook provides educational resources, examples of biodiversity initiatives, and guidance for employee engagement. A central component is the Walk Your Site Form (Form), a guided site-level assessment that integrates CEI’s use of iNaturalist while encouraging employees to observe and evaluate biodiversity at their work sites. The Form also serves as a pilot mechanism for collecting site-level information to support future monitoring and follow-up by the Habitat & Species team. Together with a supporting content toolkit, these resources provide a framework for engaging employees and translating CEI’s Habitat & Species commitments into site-level action.
  • Item type: Item , Access status: Embargo ,
    The Hiddden Demands of Artificial Intelligence
    (2026-04-24) UPADHYAY, SANGEETA
    Global AI-led data center growth is driving localized constraints across energy systems and water resources. This project develops a geospatial decision-support framework (AI Risk & Opportunity Index) to assess site-level risk and opportunity in the United States, reframing AI infrastructure as a location-dependent physical system. Leveraging a GIS-based modeling approach, the methodology applies spatial overlays, normalization, and weighted scoring to develop a rounded view of site-level risk including grid stress (emission intensity, energy mix , load capacity, congestion, and price), water stress (basin stress, availability, and quality), resource intensity (land use, ecosystem sensitivity), and overall regulatory and reputational risk. The framework integrates site-level scores with company transition readiness to enable geo-spatially intelligent decisions for stakeholders.
  • Item type: Item , Access status: Embargo ,
    Defining Ecovoltaics: A Systematic Review and Framework for Ecologically Integrated Solar Development
    (2026-04-24) Aggarwal, Ananya; Smith, Arthur
    The rapid expansion of ground-mounted solar photovoltaic infrastructure creates fundamental tensions between renewable energy deployment and biodiversity conservation, which ecovoltaics aims to reconcile. This systematic review of 20 studies demonstrates that native vegetation can be successfully established beneath solar arrays, that construction methods are a key determinant of ecological outcomes, and that panel configuration can stabilize vegetation productivity in water-limited environments. However, current research remains geographically concentrated in the semi-arid United States and parts of Europe, temporally limited to early establishment phases, and lacks critical data on long-term performance and economic viability. Evidence supports implementation in specific contexts but the evidence base needs broader geographic coverage, longer monitoring timescales, and rigorous cost-benefit analysis before ecovoltaics can be confidently scaled beyond demonstration projects.
  • Item type: Item , Access status: Open Access ,
    Hydrologic Risk and Sewer System Stress: Prioritizing Green Infrastructure for Flood Resilience in Pittsburgh, PA
    (2026-04-24) Barbera, Gretchen
    Combined Sewer Systems (CSS) convey wastewater and stormwater through shared pipes and remain the widespread primary infrastructure across U.S. cities. During precipitation events, CSS are vulnerable to flows exceeding pipe capacity, resulting in Combined Sewer Overflows (CSOs) that discharge untreated effluent into receiving waterways. Aging infrastructure, increasing precipitation intensity, and expanded impervious surface from urban development contribute to and exacerbate CSOs. Pittsburgh, PA, exemplifies these intersecting challenges due to its legacy CSS and uneven historic development. To mitigate the CSO threat, green infrastructure (GI) implementation is an emerging planning solution. This study assesses how hydrologic dynamics contribute to CSO occurrence, how CSO risks relate spatially with CDC social vulnerability index (SVI) scores, and identifies at-risk sites well-suited for GI. Results demonstrate a significant spatial overlap between neighborhoods with high SVI, elevated overflow potential, and limited existing GI. These findings highlight critical gaps in current stormwater management strategies and identify priority areas for equitable GI implementation.
  • Item type: Item , Access status: Open Access ,
    Assessing Marine Mammal Species Distribution Model Usage and Future Modeling Considerations in the United States Northwest Atlantic
    (2026-04-24) Fitzgerald, Kendall
    The Northwest Atlantic is shaped by dynamic oceanographic features that drive biological productivity, attracting a diverse array of species whose distribution overlaps with extensive human use activities. To effectively manage this shared resource, environmental managers rely on spatial models of seasonal species distribution to monitor potential overlap. This project used a mixed-methods survey to examine stakeholder usage and perceptions of the Marine Geospatial Ecology Lab’s marine mammal species distribution models throughout the Northwest Atlantic. Survey results indicate that stakeholders frequently apply these models in management and conservation contexts and find them valuable for decision-making, while also identifying opportunities to improve accuracy and applicability in certain contexts. Through this analysis, I identified general limitations associated with species distribution modeling throughout this region and provided three recommendations to address them.
  • Item type: Item , Access status: Open Access ,
    The Role of the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network within the Coral Reef Governance System
    (2026-04-24) Dear, Megan
    Coral reefs are some of the most biodiverse and valuable ecosystems on the planet, yet they are experiencing unprecedented levels of die-offs due to climate change and compounding local stressors. As global reefs are reaching their thermal tipping points, reducing their ecosystem services, there is an increased need for coral reef monitoring data to inform adaptive and effective management and conservation of these foundational ecosystems. Ocean science, in general, is proliferating due to the technological possibility, digital revolution, and increased interest in oceans for their conservation and development potential. This interest underlies the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development, or the “UN Ocean Decade,” with its tag line of “the science we need for the ocean we want.” Research by the Digital Ocean Governance Lab has identified and described Ocean Data Science Initiatives (ODSIs), as ocean governance actors that mobilize new data technologies with the goal of improving ocean conditions. This Master’s project uses a case study of the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network (the Network) to contribute to this broader research program. Results of the analysis found that direct impacts of the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network on policy are few, but there are many more indirect governance functions, including shaping policy priorities and building capacity and awareness. Ultimately, the results suggest that a broader understanding of governance may be better suited to understanding the role of ODSIs than a narrow focus on policy impact.
  • Item type: Item , Access status: Open Access ,
    Can culturally relevant narratives motivate climate change related public policy reforms and community action in Hong Kong?
    (2026-04-24) Ip, Natalie Man Yi
    Hong Kong is a global financial hub, uniquely positioned by its history and political alignment. Current environmental reporting frameworks in the city are based on Western-centric frameworks that often fail to account for Asian cultural contexts and mechanisms of collective social influence. This project aimed to support the Nature Conservancy’s efforts to translate scientific work and Western methodologies by testing the relevance of framing climate urgency through Hong Kong’s intangible cultures and case studies, through a think tank dinner and a communication tool. Methods to create these tools included regenerative strategy framework and asset mapping.
  • Item type: Item , Access status: Open Access ,
    An Assessment of U.S. Origin Aquaculture Companies Using the Seafood Stewardship Index
    (2026-04-23) Roxbury, Cole
    To determine the U.S. aquaculture industry’s progress in sustainable development, this study uses the Seafood Stewardship Index Methodology to determine the strengths and weaknesses of U.S. origin aquaculture by sampling 17 companies. This study found that sampled companies were strengthened by third party certifications, science-based approaches, conservation efforts, and stakeholder engagement. Weaknesses included lack of disclosure and low prioritization of human rights. It is recommended that companies pursue third party certifications, prioritize human rights policies, and publicize sustainability metrics and ecosystem conservation efforts. It is recommended that future iterations of the SSIM clarify scoring guidelines, include indicators for varying aquaculture types, and collaborate more closely with third party certification standards to streamline the achievement of sustainable development goals.
  • Item type: Item , Access status: Embargo ,
    Who Gets Left in the Dark? A Data-Driven Study of Power Outage Patterns in North Carolina
    (2026-04-27) Chuang, Jessalyn
    This study examines energy justice in North Carolina by analyzing who is most affected by power outages as grid stress increases. It integrates high-resolution distribution level outage data from Duke Energy (May 2024–January 2026) with socioeconomic, weather, and tree canopy data. Principal component and cluster analysis identify community and outage typologies across four scales: statewide, the Research Triangle, Charlotte metro, and Western North Carolina. Results show that outage risk is multi-dimensional and does not always align cleanly with socioeconomic vulnerability, with several outage-socioeconomic archetypes emerging. Case studies illustrate how infrastructure, weather, vegetation, and historical disinvestment shape reliability. Soft interventions such as resilience hubs and community preparedness outreach are evaluated as cost-effective strategies to reduce outage impacts. Broadly, this study offers an integrated framework for analyzing distribution system reliability and highlights the importance of region-specific outage analysis.
  • Item type: Item , Access status: Open Access ,
    Rack n’ Roll: Assessing the effects of acute and chronic mechanical agitation on farmed eastern oysters (Crassostrea virginica)
    (2026-04-24) Meshanko, Ryan
    Oyster aquaculture is economically and ecologically important across much of the Southeastern United States, but unusual summer mass-mortality events are threatening farmer livelihoods and reducing water filtration through the death of oyster crops. Prior research indicates that oysters are negatively impacted by mechanical stress on both acute and chronic time scales, as evidenced by hormonal changes and increases in mortality. Exposure to these forces are tied to farming practices such as tumbling on the acute level and to culture gear selection and site-specific wave action on the chronic level. However, the specific mechanisms and impact of these forces on oyster health and mortality have not been studied directly. In order to investigate how oysters respond to mechanical disturbance on both acute and chronic time scales, I performed a series of field and laboratory experiments on triploid eastern oysters (Crassostrea virginica) in coastal North Carolina. Eastern oysters were found to experience increased mortality when exposed to excessive mechanical stresses on both acute (hours-days) and chronic (weeks-months) timescales. Acute mechanical stress was found to be associated with increased expression of the interferon-induced protein 44 (IFI44) and interleukin 17 (IL17) genes. Fixed aquaculture gear is shown to reduce chronic oyster G-force exposure, but only at sites with high ambient wave action. This study suggests that sites with abnormally high wave energy, as well as culture practices that expose oysters to high levels of agitation, can trigger stress pathways and potentially leading to reduced growth and performance. Replacing floating aquaculture gear with fixed gear at high-energy farm sites may improve oyster resilience in these locations by limiting exposure to mechanical stress.
  • Item type: Item , Access status: Open Access ,
    Bridging the Gap: Mobilizing Investment for Community Resilience in High Point, NC
    (2026-04-25) Felix, Didra; Mundy, Ky; Sarno, Liz
    With evolving political conditions, competing priorities, and growing natural hazard frequency and severity, it’s difficult for cities to obtain the financing needed for critical resilience projects. The goal of this project was to identify opportunities for new funding mechanisms for resilience projects in High Point, North Carolina and to connect data-driven analysis to the city’s capital improvement planning to recommend a reliable, forward-looking financial approach focused on engaging public-private partnerships and local businesses to invest in resiliency projects. This project utilized a literature review, GIS analyses of vulnerability and flood risk data, and investment research to create a wholistic approach to resiliency planning for High Point. Recommendations included areas of focus for resiliency work, integration of resiliency into existing capital improvement projects, and methods to increase public-private partnerships for co-development of projects.
  • Item type: Item , Access status: Open Access ,
    Integrating Environmental Justice into Hydrogen Energy Transitions: Community-Based Analysis and Engagement in the SH2INE Project
    (2026-04-24) Bell, Lindsay; Martis, Malaika
    This master’s project examines how environmental justice considerations can be integrated into hydrogen energy transition planning and decision-making. As hydrogen is increasingly promoted as a key pathway for decarbonizing hard-to-abate sectors, we sought to understand how the impacts of this transition may be experienced by fenceline communities of hydrogen infrastructure development and how those experiences can inform more equitable energy system modeling. We conducted this research as part of the Sustainable, Holistic Hydrogen Integration Evaluation (SH2INE) project, an interdisciplinary effort to model interactions across the electricity, natural gas, transportation, and hydrogen systems in the Northeast United States. Our role within this broader project was to investigate how environmental justice considerations, particularly those that are not typically captured in quantitative models, can be identified and translated into indicators that can be integrated into those models and used to inform planning decisions. To do this, we used an ethnographic case study approach in two locations: Genesee County, New York and Fairfield County, Connecticut. Genesee County represents a site where hydrogen development has already been proposed and contested, while Fairfield County reflects a context where hydrogen is still being discussed through planning and policy processes. We drew on multiple data sources, including interviews with key informants, analysis of public documents, and observations of public meetings, to understand how different actors engage with and perceive energy infrastructure development. We analyzed these data using a framework of distributive, procedural, and recognitional justice, which allowed us to examine how benefits and burdens are allocated, how decision-making processes are structured, and how community knowledge and identities are accounted for in planning. Our findings showed that community responses to hydrogen are shaped less by the specific characteristics of hydrogen energy technologies and more by prior experiences with development, existing environmental conditions, and the structure of decision-making processes. Across both sites, concerns consistently emerged around three areas. First, communities questioned whether the economic and environmental benefits described by developers would actually materialize locally, particularly in areas already facing environmental or economic burdens. Second, participants described engagement processes that allowed for input but did not appear to influence outcomes in meaningful ways. Third, community members emphasized that planning processes often overlook how people understand their relationships to land, place, and infrastructure, especially in historically marginalized or overburdened communities. Our key takeaway was that environmental justice in hydrogen development could not be addressed as a secondary consideration after sites were selected and projects were designed. Instead, injustice was produced through the processes that defined where and how development occurred. As a result, we argue that policy and planning frameworks need to integrate environmental justice considerations into early-stage decision-making, including site selection and infrastructure planning. To support this shift, we propose a set of indicators that translated qualitative insights into measurable criteria for evaluating distributive, procedural, and recognitional justice in modeling and decision-making contexts. Ultimately, this research demonstrated that the success of the hydrogen transition depends not only on technological innovation, but on the ability of institutions to address longstanding inequities in how energy systems were developed and governed. Without such changes, hydrogen risks following the same trajectory as previous energy transitions—technically successful, but socially contested and uneven in its impacts.
  • Item type: Item , Access status: Embargo ,
    LiDAR-Based Drainage Ditch Mapping for Peatland Restoration Across Low-Relief Coastal Landscapes in North Carolina
    (2026-04-24) Yang, Emily Guyu
    Peatlands store approximately 25% of global soil carbon while providing critical ecosystem services, including water regulation, biodiversity support, and climate mitigation. In the North Carolina coastal plain, widespread construction of drainage ditches for agriculture, forestry, and development has lowered water tables, degraded peat soils, and increased risks of carbon loss, wildfire, flooding, and saltwater intrusion. Restoration efforts aim to reestablish natural hydrology by raising water tables, but a major barrier to effective planning is the lack of accurate, high-resolution data on drainage ditch networks. Existing national datasets often omit small, artificial ditches, limiting their use for site-level restoration design and prioritization. This project, conducted in partnership with The Nature Conservancy (TNC), addresses this gap by developing high-resolution drainage ditch mapping products and scalable workflows to support peatland restoration planning. The objectives were to 1) generate spatially explicit ditch datasets for priority sites, 2) develop transferable workflows for extracting ditch networks from LiDAR data, and 3) explore how ditch networks influence saltwater intrusion vulnerability. The project used publicly available USGS 3D Elevation Program (3DEP) LiDAR data, supplemented by drone LiDAR at select sites for validation. Drainage ditches were identified using a terrain analysis approach that detects linear depressions in high-resolution terrain models. This workflow was formalized into a custom ArcGIS Pro toolbox (DitchExtraction) to enable consistent, semi-automated mapping across sites. In parallel, a supervised machine learning approach using a Random Forest classifier trained on 14 features was developed to evaluate scalability for regional applications. A pilot saltwater intrusion vulnerability assessment was also initiated by integrating derived ditch networks with hydrologic modeling and terrain analysis. Results show that 3DEP LiDAR data are suitable for high-resolution ditch mapping across a range of peatland environments, performing comparably to higher-resolution drone data. Application of the DitchExtraction toolbox across approximately 383 km² of study sites produced 2,036 km of mapped ditches, generating the first high-resolution drainage network datasets for these landscapes. The Random Forest classifier demonstrated strong performance (96.96% overall accuracy; precision and recall of 0.97) at a test site, indicating that automated classification can effectively identify ditch features and holds promise for broader regional application. Early steps in the saltwater intrusion assessment established a foundation for evaluating how drainage ditch networks influence coastal vulnerability. This project establishes a replicable framework for high-resolution drainage ditch mapping and delivers actionable datasets to support TNC’s peatland restoration planning. The framework and datasets enable more informed, cost-effective restoration decisions and advance broader goals of climate mitigation, ecosystem restoration, and coastal resilience.
  • Item type: Item , Access status: Open Access ,
    A Participatory Approach Towards Reporting and Mitigating Air Pollution and Heat in Durham, NC
    (2026-04-24) Clauer, Anna
    Urban Heat Islands (UHIs) and air pollution pose significant risks to human and ecological health, with disproportionate effects to vulnerable populations in urban areas such as Durham, NC. Existing studies on air quality and heat rarely consider their interactive effects or use participatory research frameworks to engage impacted communities. To address this gap, this project used a mixed-methods approach, which included analysis of indoor and outdoor weather and air quality as well as interviews and surveys with Durham residents. This approach was used to identify the best methods for reporting community-collected data to help Durham residents understand and improve their exposures and health. Findings from this project were used to co-create data reports for study participants as well as broader community members. This study also provides insights on indoor and outdoor sources of heat and air pollutants that have implications for health outcomes and effective mitigation strategies.
  • Item type: Item , Access status: Open Access ,
    Developing a Community-Based Data Collection System in Data-Limited Small-Scale Fisheries in Sonora and Sinaloa
    (2026-04-24) Kroger, Elizabeth
    Small-scale fisheries in Latin America are essential for food and economic security, but sustainability challenges are difficult to manage due to data limitations. Pesca.Blue is a Mexican fisheries collective that aims to address these issues by connecting conservation-minded artisanal fishers to premium domestic markets, recognizing them for their voluntary contributions to marine science and responsible fishing practices. To advance the quality of Pesca.Blue’s voluntary data collection system, this research project developed a fisher-based data collection method in Sonora and Sinaloa, established a baseline of catch and bycatch per unit effort across seven gear categories, identified challenges in the method, and explored a sourcing strategy for Pesca.Blue. Overall results indicated that gillnets had the highest levels of bycatch, while divers had the lowest. Key challenges included variation in data accuracy among fishers and structural barriers to sourcing, as many fishers are committed to selling to intermediaries. It is recommended that Pesca.Blue conduct CPUE analyses with the data collected, protect data privacy and create a standardized training protocol to improve accuracy, and expand sourcing beyond gillnet fisheries to include low-bycatch fisheries.