Executive Summary
1. Fishing
communities of New England and the Mid-Atlantic, particularly those dependent
upon the Multispecies Groundfish Fishery, are experiencing a social and
economic crisis brought on by regulatory changes. Amendments # 5
and # 7 to the Multispecies Groundfish Management Plan and Marine Mammal
Protection legislation have led fishers and their families to make several,
often radical, adjustments to their lifestyles in order to maintain their
attachment to the nation's marine resources and preserve their independence
from low-wage sectors of the economy. Those adjustments are neither wholly
new and innovative nor desperate responses to declining fish stocks. Fishers
and their families consider the situation at least as much political as
biological. They disagree with State and Federal assessments of the conditions
of stocks and trace the origins of their problems to policies fashioned
during the 1970s and early 1980s that encouraged low-cost loans, technological
advances, and unlimited entry into the fishery. The over capitalization
that occurred, fishers argue, laid the basis of the economic and social
disruption and the associated crisis of legitimacy of fishers toward national
and regional management agencies.
Aguirre International was engaged to report on
the social and cultural aspects of the MGF
by ascertaining community-dependence on the MGF, providing information
on the demographics of the fishing industry, identifying social science
data bases that could be used in follow-up studies and developing a classification
system that will aid in predicting the social impacts of the changing fishery
regulations on fishery-dependent communities.
2. Using a
variety of Rapid Ethnographic Assessment Procedures (REAP), including in-depth
interviewing, focus groups, secondary source data collection, and pile-sorting
tasks, social and economic aspects of the MGF fleet were identified and
described. Those aspects were then presented in the context of five
primary and nine secondary ports along the Atlantic coast from Maine to
North Carolina. Ports were selected using a combination of information
derived from field visits, licensing data, telephonic interviews, with
individuals in the local area, and consultation with national and regional
National Marine Fisheries Service representatives. Listed from north to
south, the primary ports were (see Figure 1):
a. Portland, Maine;
b. Gloucester, Massachusetts;
c. Chatham, Massachusetts;
d. New Bedford, Massachusetts; and
e. Point Judith, Rhode Island.
The secondary ports were, in some cases, more
regions than individual ports. Coverage of the ports varies widely, primarily
because groundfishing has become more concentrated in recent years.
Ports which seemed to be heavy groundfish ports based on licensing data
were found to be sites of little groundfishing activity. The nine secondary
ports/regions were:
a. Stonington and the Down East region of Maine;
b. Portsmouth, New Hampshire and Southern Maine Ports;
c. Provincetown, Massachusetts;
d. Newport, Rhode Island;
e. Montauk, New York;
f. Ocean City, Maryland;
g. Tidewater Region, Virginia (Hampton Roads, Newport News); and
h. Wanchese, North Carolina.
3. In their
attempts to maintain the fishing lifestyle, most fishers have adjusted
by experimenting with new fisheries, dealing with reduced incomes by rotating
or laying off crew (keeping individual shares stable), supplementing incomes
with casual shore employment or with the labor of their spouses, or curtailing
consumption practices. While moving into alternative fisheries has
been the most preferred response, most of the larger vessels of Gloucester
and New Bedford have become too specialized and too dependent on family
networks for staffing vessels to shift into other fisheries without significant
capital investments. Small and medium-sized vessels (30' to 75') have had
more success moving to alternative fisheries, yet often have been met with
hostility as they attempt to enter fisheries dominated by families and
fleets that have been in those fisheries for generations. Lobstermen of
Maine, for example, are firming up their territories in response to current
and anticipated movement of groundfish fishers into their fishery. Other
states have begun limiting entry as their legislators fear those displaced
from the MGF will move into others waters.
4. Those who
have moved into shore-based jobs have tended to take positions that are
related to fishing or to seafaring (e.g., working marine repair or piloting
passenger or cargo vessels). The aquaculture retraining programs
designed to place fishers into shore occupations have not met with great
success. Fishers view aquaculture retraining efforts as flawed because
they do not demonstrate an understanding of culture of fishers as hunters
as opposed to farmers.
5. From the
community studies, five variables have been determined that predict dependence
on the MGF. These are:
a. The degree to which fishers in
a port are isolated or integrated into alternative sectors of the economy
or alternative fisheries. The more isolated or socially and culturally
cut off fishers are from the wider society, the more dependent they tend
to be on fishing.
b. Type of vessels that characterize
the fleet. Those fleets that have large, highly specialized vessels tend
to be more dependent on the MGF than those with smaller vessels or mixed
vessels.
c. Degree of specialization in the
MGF. The more specialized the more dependent.
d. Percentage of population involved
in fishing or fishing related activities.
e. Competition and conflict between
fleets within a port were associated with high levels of dependence.
6. Based on
the variables in the five primary ports, New Bedford was determined to
be the most dependent on the MGF followed by Gloucester, Portland, Chatham,
and Point Judith.
Among the secondary ports, Stonington, Wanchese,
and Montauk, while heavily dependent on fishing in general, were less dependent
on the MGF in particular. However, the crisis within the MGF was
relevant in all ports because groundfishing is a crucial part of many fishers'
annual rounds and because other fishers were concerned that displaced groundfishers
would move into their fisheries or receive heavy Federal quotas that would
drive smaller fleets out of business.
7. Fishers
interviewed identified 11 critical issues/problems that they believe were
of importance to understanding the current and past adjustments to crises
and to understanding the probable future of commercial fishing in the United
States. For the fishers, these issues are:
a. Fishers respond to crises based
on past experience and by moving into new fisheries and new territories
as opposed to moving into other sectors of the economy.
b. Current regulations are confining
them to specific fisheries, curtailing their abilities to remain flexible
by responding to changing fish stocks.
c. Fishers view the process of regulating
the fisheries as biased, based on inaccurate data, and suffering from a
lack of effective communication links between fishers and fishery managers.
d. The institutional responses,
primarily the vessel buy-back program and the retraining programs, have
been unsuccessful.
e. Crew reductions, days-at-sea
limitations, and competition within and between fleets have caused safety
problems.
f. The current crisis originated
with the over capitalization processes of two decades ago.
g. Fisheries are regulated unevenly,
with some species too tightly controlled while others are not controlled
enough.
h. Competition between ports has
reached epidemic proportions.
i. In designing regulations, fisheries
managers often fail to take into account the full effect of regulations
on the families and households of fishers.
j. Federal regulators have not addressed
the growth in imports of fishery products and their impacts on ex-vessel
prices of fishers in the United States.
k. Credit and insurance have become
severe problems within the fisheries, with not only banks and insurance
companies refusing to finance and cover vessels, but also trip suppliers,
marine repair personnel, and other related businesses backing away from
the fishing industry.
8. These problems, combined, have resulted in fishers relying more on their own internal resources, particularly alterative forms of capital that are available to them by virtue of their membership in meaningful social groups and enclaves. Efforts to address the crisis in the MGF have come from many sources, including fishing organizations, city and state governments, the Federal government, and individual fishers and their families. While there are a number of programs underway, there is no well coordinated effort. Success of these programs is heavily dependent on a better understanding of the nature and extent of the crisis and the unique characteristics and adaptive strategies of fisher families and communities across the MGF.