Who Actually Influences Ocean Policy? The Role of Advisors and Intermediaries
There is a persistent image of how science influences policy and decisions. A researcher publishes a paper, a policymaker or decision-maker reads it, and a decision changes. It is a reassuring image. It is also often misleading.
In practice, research rarely reaches decision-makers and policymakers directly. It usually travels through a chain of people, institutions, and processes that filter, translate, synthesise, and present evidence in forms that are useful for decisions. Understanding that chain is one of the most practically important things an ocean researcher or organisation can do. If you do not know how your research travels, it is much harder to help it reach the places where it can be used.
The intermediary layer
Between the scientist and the decision-maker, there is often an intermediary layer. These are the people whose job – formally or informally – is to bridge the two worlds.
They take many forms. Science advisors and technical staff within government agencies synthesise evidence and brief ministers and senior officials. Scientific committees and advisory bodies review evidence and make recommendations. NGOs and advocacy organisations translate research into campaigns, briefings, and public pressure. Knowledge brokers move between the scientific community and the policy world, building relationships and carrying information in both directions. Journalists and science communicators shape how findings reach the public and, indirectly, policymakers.
In ocean governance, this intermediary layer can be especially important. International scientific bodies advise on fisheries and marine management. Conservation organisations translate marine science into advocacy. Technical working groups synthesise research for international negotiations. In some contexts, these actors are the main route through which ocean science reaches the people making decisions about it. In others, local authorities, customary leaders, regional bodies, or donor-funded networks may play a similar role.
Why this matters
If research travels through intermediaries rather than directly to decision-makers, then the communication question is not just “How do I reach policymakers?” but “Who needs to see this, and how does information move from them to the people making decisions?”
That reframes the task. The most important audience for your policy communication may not necessarily be the minister, the agency director, or the negotiator. It may be the science advisor who briefs them, the NGO researcher who synthesises evidence for a campaign, or the technical committee member who reviews papers and makes recommendations. There are always exceptions. In local contexts, it may be that local policymakers or decision-makers can be reached directly, perhaps through town-hall meetings or surgeries, for example. The best route depends on the governance structure the policy/decision-maker is embedded in.
Reaching these intermediaries with clear, credible, and usable information is often more effective than trying to reach decision-makers directly. Intermediaries who trust your work can become long-term conduits for your research, not just recipients of a single paper.
Building the right relationships
Policy influence is less about individual outputs and more about sustained presence in the right spaces and relationships with the right people.
That is not the same as networking in the conventional sense. It is about becoming known to advisors, technical staff, NGO researchers, committee members, and others in similar roles as someone who produces credible, useful work and understands the policy context well enough to communicate it clearly.
Some practical ways to build that presence:
Attend the spaces where science and policy meet. International conferences, policy consultations, and side events at ocean governance meetings are places where intermediaries gather and relationships are built.
Make your work accessible to non-specialists. Plain-language summaries, policy briefs, and clear explanations of what your findings mean in practice are often what intermediaries can actually use.
Respond when people reach out. Intermediaries often need quick, reliable access to expertise. Researchers who are responsive, clear, and willing to engage informally tend to become trusted sources.
Be honest about uncertainty. People working in policy are usually not looking for perfect certainty. They need help understanding what the uncertainty means in practice. What is robust, what is contested, and what would change with more data.
A note on trust
Trust in the science-policy interface is built slowly, by being accurate, consistent, and honest. By acknowledging when you do not know something. By not overreaching beyond your evidence. By being the kind of source that intermediaries can rely on.
It is lost by overclaiming, by being seen as an advocate for a particular outcome rather than a careful interpreter of evidence, or by being unreliable when people need you.
The researchers and organisations that have the most lasting influence on ocean policy are not necessarily those who published the most papers or made the most noise. They are often those who became trusted parts of the information networks that feed into decisions consistently.
