Partnerships in marine monitoring combining Traditional Ecological Knowledge and western science are developing globally to improve our understanding of temporal changes in ecological communities that better inform coastal management practices. A fuller communication between scientists and Indigenous partners about the limitations of monitoring results to identify change is essential to the impact of monitoring datasets on decision-making. Here we present a 5-year co-developed case study from a fish monitoring partnership in northwest Australia showing how uncertainty estimated by Bayesian models can be incorporated into monitoring management indicators. Our simulation approach revealed there was high uncertainty in detecting immediate change over the following monitoring year when translated to health performance indicators. Incorporating credibility estimates into health assessments added substantial information to monitoring trends, provided a deeper understanding of monitoring limitations and highlighted the importance of carefully selecting the way we evaluate management performance indicators.

结合传统生态知识和西方科学的海洋监测伙伴关系正在全球范围内发展，以提高我们对生态群落时间变化的理解，从而更好地为沿海管理实践提供信息。科学家和土著合作伙伴之间就监测结果的局限性进行更充分的沟通以识别变化对于监测数据集对决策的影响至关重要。在这里，我们介绍了澳大利亚西北部鱼类监测合作伙伴共同开发的 5 年案例研究，展示了如何将贝叶斯模型估计的不确定性纳入监测管理指标。我们的模拟方法表明，当转化为健康绩效指标时，检测下一个监测年度的即时变化存在很高的不确定性。将可信度估计纳入健康评估中，为监测趋势添加了大量信息，提供了对监测局限性的更深入理解，并强调了仔细选择评估管理绩效指标的方式的重要性。