The evolution of fisheries science and management toward an ecosystem perspective necessitates the meaningful incorporation of human dimensions. Whereas great strides have been made over the last ...several decades at moving toward ecosystem based fisheries management (EBFM), largely through the development of integrated ecosystem assessments (IEAs), the inclusion of human dimensions into these efforts has often been fragmentary and, in juxtaposition to the biophysical dynamics, sometimes even seemingly superficial. This presents a great challenge to the accuracy and applicability of these results, as the lack of appropriate incorporation of humans can be problematic in terms of both social and biophysical consequences. This study systematically documents current social science understanding of the multiple human dimensions that should be incorporated within ecosystem assessments and the overall approach to each of these within IEAs and other EBFM efforts. These dimensions include the multi-faceted nature of human well-being, heterogeneity in human well-being derived from fisheries, adaptive behaviors, and cumulative effects. The systematic inclusion of these dimensions into IEAs is then laid out in a conceptual framework that details how a perturbation reverberates through a fisheries system and the iterative approach that should be undertaken to understand its impacts on human dimensions. This framework is supplemented with a data collection scheme that is intended to facilitate operationalization. The detailed examination of incorporating human dimensions within IEAs presented in this study should further resonate with other ecosystem assessment efforts, providing not just ample evidence of the need for moving beyond simplistic assumptions of human homogeneity but a means of systematically integrating a more realistic and representative perspective.
Some of the longest and most comprehensive marine ecosystem monitoring programs were established in the Gulf of Alaska following the environmental disaster of the Exxon Valdez oil spill over 30 years ...ago. These monitoring programs have been successful in assessing recovery from oil spill impacts, and their continuation decades later has now provided an unparalleled assessment of ecosystem responses to another newly emerging global threat, marine heatwaves. The 2014-2016 northeast Pacific marine heatwave (PMH) in the Gulf of Alaska was the longest lasting heatwave globally over the past decade, with some cooling, but also continued warm conditions through 2019. Our analysis of 187 time series from primary production to commercial fisheries and nearshore intertidal to offshore oceanic domains demonstrate abrupt changes across trophic levels, with many responses persisting up to at least 5 years after the onset of the heatwave. Furthermore, our suite of metrics showed novel community-level groupings relative to at least a decade prior to the heatwave. Given anticipated increases in marine heatwaves under current climate projections, it remains uncertain when or if the Gulf of Alaska ecosystem will return to a pre-PMH state.
While key to the sustainability of fisheries, women’s contributions to this sector are largely outside of the conventional discourse on fisheries participation and remain poorly understood and ...unrecognized. Furthermore, the research on women’s engagement in fisheries has largely focused on small-scale fisheries in a development context. This study extends this geographic focus by using a systematic analysis of the literature to explore how women’s fisheries participation has been examined in developed countries in Europe and North America. We demonstrate the preponderance of themes and methodologies that have been utilized in these regions, highlighting the reliance on case studies employing qualitative methods due in part to the dearth of gender disaggregated data in this sector. Although such methods can yield a deep understanding, the results are often limited in geographic scope and generalizability. In response, we present a methodological approach that can extend the scope of research and comprehensively examine women’s participation across its multifaceted dimensions. We demonstrate the accuracy of a freely available software to predict gender using limited personal information and apply it to harvest data in Alaska, addressing the previous impediment of a lack of a gender attribute within fisheries datasets and extending the methodological applications to include quantitative methods. This is coupled with focus groups across highly engaged fishing communities in the Gulf of Alaska to integrate the multiple themes that have been explored in the literature on women’s fisheries participation, evidencing the utility of a mixed-methods approach to explore the multi-faceted nature of women’s fisheries engagement.
Over recent years there have been rapid changes occurring across marine ecosystems worldwide, with high latitude systems seeing ecosystem shifts emerging at unprecedented rates. The Gulf of Alaska ...and Bering Sea marine ecosystems have experienced substantial fluctuation in fish stocks, with some species experiencing considerable decreases while others thrive. Following the marine heatwave of 2014, sablefish (
Anoplopoma fimbria
) had a historically unparalleled juvenile recruitment class that is now dominating the stock composition. While this recruitment class bodes well for future fisheries, it is currently undermining the value of the fishery with limited incentives to retain the smaller and less valuable fish, compounding adverse effects on earnings in the fishery due to whale depredation that has been occurring for years. This study examines the well-being implications of fishermen’s adaptive strategies to these ecosystem conditions within the Alaska sablefish fishery using a socio-ecological system framework, operationalized as a qualitative network model (QNMs) and quantitative indicators. We examine the extent to which adaptation strategies, derived from a literature review and stakeholder interviews, are being utilized in the fishery with quantitative indicators. These strategies are then examined with QNMs that explore their impacts across the spectrum of well-being. By coupling quantitative indicators and QNMs, we were able to demonstrate how adaptive strategies can be examined to capture the multi-faceted well-being effects of fisheries participants’ adaptations to changing conditions. This study directly addresses several of the key guiding principles of the U.S. EBFM Road Map, including advancing our understanding of ecosystem processes, exploring trade-offs within an ecosystem, and maintaining resilient ecosystems, inclusive of community well-being. Thus this paper demonstrates how coupled socio-ecological models can elevate the inclusion of human adaptive behaviors, providing a framework for the development of policymaking that can mitigate adverse effects on both the participants and the resource by facilitating the mixture of adaptive strategies that maximizes desired well-being outcomes.
This study examines the dynamics of women's engagement in Alaska commercial fisheries including their roles within fishing families, the evolution of women's participation, perceptions of equity and ...access, and the effects of gender traditionalism. Such gendered effects of changes in ecological, social, economic, and management conditions need to be understood in order to mitigate biases and unintended consequences. Women's engagement in Alaska fisheries was examined using a combination of quantitative analysis of 30 years of harvest data, and qualitative analysis of 7 focus groups. Women's participation in Alaska commercial fisheries parallels trends and influences documented around the world. This participation is highly responsive to and bound by family conditions and is influenced by gender stereotypes, taboos, norms, and harassment. Although study participants perceived that opportunities for women had increased in Alaska fisheries, examination of harvest data showed men continue to dominate the industry. Women play the key adaptive role in fishing families, entering and exiting fisheries in response to changing conditions, especially when having children. This responsiveness may marginalize women in fisheries as the increasing institution of catch share and limited entry programs entitles a set of participants usually on the basis of fishing history and often increases the price of entry into those fisheries. Moreover, fisheries earnings for women are highly concentrated in salmon, which exacerbates their economic vulnerabilities in the face of decreasing diversification opportunities. Thus the dynamics of women's fisheries participation is an important lens for evaluating potential policy effects and is one that necessitates continued research.
•This paper examines the participation of women in Alaska commercial marine fisheries.•Family influences; temporal trends (30 years); species diversity; revenues are analyzed.•The percentage of women harvesters has increased slightly over a 30-year period.•Women mostly participate in salmon fisheries.•Limited access privilege programs may increase women's economic vulnerabilities.
Over the last three decades, fishing families in the Gulf of Alaska have adapted to numerous multifaceted conditions in response to near constant flux in stocks, markets, governance regimes, and ...broader sociocultural and environmental changes. Based on an analysis of seven focus groups held across Gulf of Alaska fishing communities, this study explores the variety of strategies that families across the Gulf have employed to adapt to changing conditions from the 1980s to the present day. Furthermore, the study examines how those strategies have evolved over time to accommodate cumulative effects and synergisms. While families continue to employ long-standing adaptation strategies of fisheries portfolio diversification and increasing effort, they are also integrating new adaptations into their framework as changing management systems, demographics, and technologies shift how choices about adaptations are made. This study also demonstrates how adaptations have implicit intra- and inter-personal well-being tradeoffs within families that, while potentially allowing for sustained livelihoods, may undermine other values that individuals and families derive from fishing.
Display omitted
•This paper examines 50 years of adaptations in Gulf of Alaska fishing families.•The convergence of identities, changing conditions, and choices are explored.•Dynamics of changing fishery conditions have catalyzed an evolution of adaptations.•Traditional adaptations are increasingly constrained exacerbating inequities.•Evolving adaptations represent inter- and intra-personal well-being tradeoffs.
Impacts of climate change are evident and intensifying for coastal communities and natural resource-dependent stakeholders. As climate impacts mount, so does the need to understand mechanisms that ...enable and impede proactive adaptation. Through two years of focus groups and interviews with fisheries participants in the Gulf of Alaska, we explore subjective climate change attribution—the expressed connection between an observed ecosystem change and climate change itself—amongst fisheries stakeholders, and its extension to other stakeholders and coastal communities. Participants’ observations differentiate fishing communities’ experiences of climate change, revealing perceptions of marine heatwave impacts and trends in target and non-target fishery species. We interrogate these findings through models for climate attribution, risk appraisal, and adaptive capacity. Fishermen (We use the term fishermen instead of fishers in keeping with how those participating in the fishing industry in Alaska refer to themselves, irrespective of their gender) recognize tremendous ecosystem change but convey a mismatch between those observations and climate attribution. Perceptions of individual risk and adaptive capacity are complicated by psychological roadblocks, opportunity costs, and a lack of perceived options for adaptation. Yet fishermen’s discussion reveals pathways to reconcile observations of change with attribution, risk appraisal, and adaptive capacity, especially with science in a critical role to bridge the gaps within and across these processes for fishermen, natural resource users, and coastal communities more broadly.
Impacts of climate change on fisheries are intensifying, especially in northern latitudes, yet pathways to adaptation remain unclear. We analyze the vulnerabilities and adaptations of fisheries ...participants in discourse represented by public comments on state fisheries management in the Gulf of Alaska, where extreme climate events impact diverse and robust cultures of fisheries participation. With 18,422 comments by 5715 commenters from 2010 through 2021, we parse discourse through content analysis in a well-being framework and capture trends in principal component analysis. Climate change becomes more prominent in discourse with the impacts of extreme marine heatwaves. However, attribution and cognitive dissonance processes result in entrenchment of polarizing viewpoints between user groups on fisheries allocations and enhancements. Yet some adaptation pathways emerge that bridge fishing identities with empowered conservation. By expanding approaches to examining public discourse captured in big qualitative data, these methods and findings can help inform fisheries climate adaptation policy.
•Discourse on climate change is more prominent with impacts of marine heatwaves.•Discourse polarizes through processes for attribution and cognitive dissonance.•Science is critical in decision making with uncertainty following marine heatwaves.•Emergent pathways for adaptation bridge fishing identities and conservation.
Integrated ecosystem assessment (IEA) is a framework that organizes and summarizes science to aid in the transition from a traditional single sector toward a holistic management approach known as ...ecosystem-based management (EBM). An essential step of the IEA framework is the development of conceptual models. These models allow the integration of intrinsically linked social, environmental, and biological components of marine ecosystems that is pivotal to address unsolved questions in fisheries management. We constructed social-ecological conceptual models of relevant commercial and subsistence fisheries for Sitka, a fisheries-based community in Southeast Alaska, by collecting and synthesizing available scientific information, local ecological knowledge (LEK), and qualitative information. We conducted focus groups with key informants in Sitka who had in-depth knowledge of their community's interactions with local fisheries and the structure and function of the surrounding ecosystem. The resulting conceptual models coproduced by scientists and Sitka stakeholders, illustrate the main biological and environmental factors driving the abundance of Pacific halibut (Hippoglossus stenolepis) and Pacific herring (Clupea pallasii) in Southeast Alaska. Furthermore, these coproduced models elucidate how the interaction between Sitka residents and these fisheries affect community well-being. Our models will serve as the basis to assess EBM objectives for Sitka as part of an IEA place-based framework. This study also highlights the importance of integrating LEK into science and potentially into the broader Alaska fisheries management structure.
In fishing communities, livelihoods and well-being depend on sustaining access to key fisheries through changes in natural resource management. In Alaska, the rationalization of the commercial ...fishery for Pacific halibut (Hippoglossus stenolepis) in 1995 led to the consolidation of the halibut fleet. The high cost of halibut catch shares have since become a crucial barrier to prospective entrants, especially small-scale operations with few options for portfolio diversification. However, quantitative approaches to understanding that barrier face an information gap: datasets on harvest and catch share ownership in fisheries lack common identifiers for individuals. We match individuals across harvest and catch share ownership data from 1991 through 2019, enabling a detailed examination of entrants and non-entrants – those who acquire or do not acquire halibut catch shares over the time series. We compare fisheries portfolios in terms of participation and earnings through duration, dissimilarity, and network analyses. Differences over time and between entrants and non-entrants emerge across analyses. For both groups, cohorts of participants shrink and real individual earnings increase over the time series. However, entrants' cohorts have decreased further relative to historical participation, while entrants' real earnings and fisheries portfolio compositions have diverged from those of non-entrants. Our results reveal broad differences in Alaska fisheries participants' access to a critical fishery, underscoring the role of catch shares in shaping fishing communities’ opportunities and resilience in the face of social and environmental change.
•Access to catch shares for Pacific halibut off Alaska has shifted over time.•A dataset joining individual harvests and catch shares reveals group differences.•Individuals acquiring catch shares represent a shrinking, higher-earning group.•Networks of fisheries portfolios show a central, growing role for salmon fisheries.•Trends toward narrowing access and greater specialization suggest risks to fishery.
PDF
