Beyond the tick and flick: Leveraging enduring benefits from IMS surveillance in Western Australian ports to sustain engagement

Introduced Marine Species (IMS) are known to cause negative physical, social and economic impacts to natural environments and industries such as commercial ports. However, there are few long-term IMS surveillance programs in ports worldwide. Western Australia (WA) Port Authorities (hereafter referred to as WA Ports) have engaged in IMS surveillance as part of a collaborative, ongoing endeavour with the state regulator for over 14 years. This program has attracted increased interest and financial support over time, and it is now implemented in major ports across the state. We investigate engagement in IMS surveillance across WA Ports by examining how and why it can be positively implemented and sustained over time from both individual and organisational perspectives using a cognitive mapping approach, interviews and a workshop were conducted to reveal nuanced insights into WA Ports' engagement in surveillance based on their perspectives and understanding. Our results highlight that IMS surveillance delivers beyond simple risk management. Individual, organisational and societal benefits emerge throughout its implementation. We have developed an emergent model of engagement for IMS surveillance to highlight how effective implementation delivers these additional benefits, ‘small wins’. We discuss why they must be leveraged to drive engagement into the future, which is critical in overcoming a biosecurity surveillance paradox and maintaining vigilance against aquatic biosecurity threats. Our model, grounded in stakeholders' perspectives and self-determination theory, advances our understanding of stakeholder perspectives and provides practitioners with a roadmap to foster sustained, individual-level engagement in collaborative IMS surveillance.