Communities of Practice (CoP) are groups of individuals who share common concerns, set of problems, or interests in a particular topic, coming together to achieve both individual and collective goals.

In BioProtect, CoPs will be established in the DSs by site specific stakeholders who will be actively involved in the co-creation and co-implementation of BioProtect tools and solutions and will focus on sharing best practices and generating new knowledge. In the CoPs, local communities and interested groups, MPA managers and ocean planners, governmental bodies (policy makers and regulators), NGOs, researchers, citizens, and industry representatives will be included, while existing CoPs such as in Norway (e.g., local level, Lofoten council for coastal zone planning or regional scale, the national Management Group for Norwegian EBSAs and ocean basin scale multi-sector reference groups) will be associated with the project for cooperative implementation.