II. Synthesis of Findings from The Community Studies: A Comparative Analysis

A. Dimensions of the Problem

B. The Magnuson Act and the Management Council

C. Purpose and Objectives of the Study

D. Background and Methodological Considerations

E. Definition of Community

F. Demographic Issues (Tables 1 ,2, & 3)

G. Dependence on the Multispecies Groundfish Fishery(Tables 4 & 5)

H. Social and Cultural Parameters of the MGF(Figures 2,3,4, & 5)

A. Dimensions of the Problem

New England and Mid-Atlantic fishing communities, particularly those dependent upon the Multispecies Groundfish Fishery (MGF), are experiencing severe social and economic uncertainty--both real and perceived--from recent regulatory changes and legal challenges to their way of life. Declines in groundfish stocks, Amendments # 5 and # 7 to the Multispecies Groundfish Fishery Management Plan, Marine Mammal Protection legislation (the MMPA), coastal access conflicts, threats and promises of limited entry, licensing moratoria, season closures, net bans, the extension of current quotas and the development of Individual Transferable Quotas (ITQs)--have created an environment where fishers incorporate anticipated regulations into their fishing and survival strategies.

What gears to use, which species to target, where to fish, and how to pioneer new and maintain old markets for their catch no longer depend primarily on fishers' ethnobiological understandings of fish and ecological cycles nor their economic calculations. Now fishers modify their interactions with the marine environment based not only on the availability and robustness of fish stocks but on their understandings and evaluations of the political process (including its legitimacy), state and federal enforcement capabilities, and past experiences with federal and state interventions in their fishing styles. What they perceive was once a largely solitary existence, dependent on seasonally variable, daily interactions with the sea has become a legal tangle that forces them, their family members, and other members of their social support networks into uneasy organizations and coalitions that engage the state in seemingly ever more hostile discourse.

This crisis of uncertainty and anticipation is neither restricted to the ports of Massachusetts, Maine, or other parts of the New England and Mid-Atlantic regions, but constitutes a complex of social, cultural, and ecological problems facing commercial fishing as an industry and as a way of life that is central to the identities of coastal families, neighborhoods, and communities. The deep investments that fishing families make in cultural capital--or those symbolic elements of their ways of life that lend identity and meaning to their actions, facilitating well-being and productive membership in the nation and their communities--have been chronicled in articles, essays, and popular and academic books for several decades (e.g., Acheson 1987; Garrity-Blake 1994; Dyer and McGoodwin, eds. 1994). These investments are encouraged, realized, and facilitated by extensive networks and social relationships that link fishing families to seafood dealers and processors, marine suppliers, harbor masters, government agencies and enforcement personnel, and a variety of service providers within the financial, insurance, and real estate (F.I.R.E) sectors of the U.S. economy.

Families that depend on fishing and the seafood industry along the eastern seaboard of the United States are economically, socially and psychologically stressed because of declining fish stocks, increased state and federal government regulation, coastal development and gentrification, and conflicts between different populations of fishers. During 1995, for example, gill nets were banned in Florida waters and moratoria on licenses were put into effect in North Carolina and for fishers in the multispecies groundfish fishery of the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions (from the Gulf of Maine to Cape Hatteras). Several other states have been experimenting with new fishing licensing systems, limited entry or other kinds of reduced access programs, and various closures of fishing regions for environmental or biological reasons (e.g., designated nursery areas). Even as ground fishers witness fishing stocks dwindling and habitats continuing to shrink or become polluted, fishing interests in other states and other countries are considering or putting into place measures to restrict access to fisheries which displaced ground fishers might enter.

Fishing families have responded to these changes in a variety of ways, including experimenting with other fishing methods and gears, taking alternative positions in other fishing enterprises (e.g., moving from captaining their own vessels to working as crew on others), leaving fisheries for shore-based jobs, establishing aquaculture operations, or moving to other states with more relaxed regulations. Attempts to maintain the fishing lifestyle often involve taking part-time or full-time jobs, within fishing and fishing related fields (at marinas or dry dock facilities) as well as in the various segments of the labor market that are not related to fishing. Family members' contributions to these efforts are often substantial, with working wives, mothers, daughters, and sons providing expenses during seasonal or occasional downturns in fishing or fish marketing activity.

This occurs at a time that labor market opportunities in construction, manufacturing and other economic sectors where fishers and their family members are likely to find employment have been constricting, and jobs in unskilled sectors of the economy are increasingly staffed by temporary, casual, and immigrant workers who keep wages at minimum levels. In addition, developments in the industrial sector that fishers have supplied for generations--food and kindred products--threaten to confine those at all levels of food procuring and producing to low levels in company hierarchies. Recent economic developments along these lines include the expansion of Tyson, ConAgra, RJR Nabisco, Phillip Morris, and other food and tobacco companies into fish processing, building on the vertical integration/ contract production models of poultry and, more recently, hog processing (Griffith 1993; Stull, Broadway, and Griffith 1995).

Under these systems, direct producers become little more than caretakers of ponds, herds, flocks, or fields, hired or contracted for specific tasks, and have little stake themselves in the fish, plants and animals they tend. Similar contract fishing arrangements would likely emerge under the large food companies, with more and more vessels staffed by hired captains and crew with less long-term, enduring interest in the health of the resource than independent, owner-operator fishers who hope to leave the resource and their fishing operations to their children. Fishers we interviewed for this study, particularly those fishing from small- to medium-sized vessels (i.e., vessel measuring between 30' and 75'), fear that Individual Transferable Quotas (ITQs) will speed this process by reducing the quotas available to many fishers to levels below which they cannot survive, forcing them to sell their quotas to larger corporate interests.

Also, fishers typically see independence as a key defining feature of their identity; thus they submit with extreme difficulty to the close supervision associated with many jobs and with contract production or contract fishing, where a regimen is established around production quotas or input conversion ratios. They are used to "share" rather than "wage payment" systems, which they view as incentive systems that join labor (crew) and management (captains/ vessel owners) in common desires to maintain high productivity per unit of time and investment of capital. Similarly, fishers' work schedules--erratic and dictated by weather and the habits of fish, affecting the schedules of other members of their households--do not translate into time-clock regimens of factories, offices, and other jobs.

Wives and children of fishers interviewed during this study described how they had accommodated their own schedules to absent husbands and fathers and expressed some trepidation over the prospect of the fishers staying at home for long periods of time. When fishers are forced into the labor market, their status as small businessmen predisposes them to finding informal, casual jobs when they need to, rather than investing time in career-oriented training, or to operating other independently owned and operated businesses, always looking to return to fishing on a part-time or full-time basis.

These considerations become important as we consider the notion of the dependence of fishers, their families, and the wider communities in which they live on the MGF. With the exception of New Bedford, it is difficult to argue that groundfishing occupies the economic heart of any of the communities profiled in this study, or that each community could not weather or absorb its demise with alternative economic development initiatives. Nevertheless, placing the demise of groundfishing in the broader context of material and symbolic linkages with one of our nation's most important natural resources--historically and today--allows us to define dependence at once more loosely and more comprehensively. The loss of stores of human, social, and cultural capital that currently cement those directly involved in groundfishing with those less and less directly involved--from ice suppliers to insurance executives--will constitute a reduction in social and economic diversity that is no less a threat to the well-being of these communities than the loss of biological diversity is to the marine ecosystem. We elaborate on these issues further in the sections that follow. First, we present a brief overview of the Magnuson Act and the regional council system as they are related to the study.



B. The Magnuson Act and the Management Council

The Magnuson Fisheries and Conservation Act was signed into law to protect the marine resources and fishing communities of the United States. It established the 200 mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) for territorial* U.S. waters and a regional management council system to regulate fisheries in the federal zone. The initial concerns of the Act were to eliminate foreign competition and maximize productivity of the American fishing industry. As fisheries have become stressed, there has been a shift towards conservation of resources. Along with the Act came the creation of a bureaucracy through the council system to manage the EEZ and fishery dependent communities linked to the resource. The fishing community-fishery dynamic was not considered a priority for managers in the early years of Magnuson, and until recently little attention was paid to the social impacts of regulations.

* Note by Clay: "Territorial" waters in the legal sense extend only to 12 miles. In the EEZ control is over the resources, not the territory.

The Magnuson Act established eight regional fisheries management councils. The New England Fisheries Management Council (NEFMC) has jurisdiction over federal waters (from 3 to 200 miles) in New England. The NEFMC develops management plans and the National Marine Fisheries Service writes the regulations to implement the plans. Both are administered by the National Oceanic and Space Administration (NOAA) under the Department of Commerce.

The NEFMC consists of 15 members, who are appointed to indefinite terms and are chosen to represent stakeholders in the fisheries, including various regions, scientific and conservation interests, and gear and vessel types. Committees develop management plans and address critical issues for fisheries under the jurisdiction of the council. For example, there are committees on scallops, gear conflict, herring, aquaculture, and lobsters.

Each committee has a Plan Development Team (PDT) which liaises with NMFS biologists, economists and others at Woods Hole to develop the suggestions of committee members into plans which are reported to the full council. Agendas for the development of plans are highly varied depending on what are deemed critical issues, as well as the interests and priorities of particular council members. Once the council has completed development of a management plan, it is submitted to the National Marine Fisheries Service/NOAA for review. Important criteria which go into the review process include statistical analysis of the population dynamics of utilized fish stocks and estimated catch effort on stocks. Historically, little social and economic data have been factored into regulation development, even though their consideration is mandated by the Magnuson Act.

If NMFS deems a management plan acceptable based on the best available biological, economic, and social information, regulations will be written by NMFS staff to implement the plan. Proposed regulatory actions are published in the Federal Register, followed by a period of public commentary. It is historically rare for public commentary to significantly alter the final form of any proposed regulation, a factor which has promoted widespread cynicism among fishers about the regulatory process. After the commentary period, the Secretary of Commerce signs the regulation into law. The Secretary also has the power to veto any proposed regulations. The Magnuson Act prohibits court injunction against fishery regulations developed through the Council system. It is the only law with an injunctive prohibition in the history of American jurisprudence. The stages under the council system through which a management plan is considered and matching regulations developed are detailed in Dyer (1994).

Because the southern range of the MGF extends across the Hudson River bight and the Chesapeake Bay to Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council (MAFMC) also has an interest in the development of groundfish regulations, particularly flounders and other flatfishes, but relies extensively on the New England Council for recommendations. Communication between the two councils takes place primarily through the MAFMC's New England Liaison person, currently residing in Wakefield, Rhode Island. Twelve private citizen appointees make up the MAFMC's voting members, who come from New York (2), New Jersey (3), Delaware (2), Maryland (2), Virginia (2), and Pennsylvania (1). In addition, six public official members and their designees, representing state marine and fishery management agencies, vote on matters before the council. Day-to-day operation of the council is accomplished by ten staff persons, including an executive director, executive secretary, administrative officer, senior ecologist, senior fishery management specialist, two fishery management specialists (a biologist and an economist), an economic information systems manager, an administrative secretary, and a secretary/word processor.

The Magnuson Act has gone through reauthorization four times since its inception in 1976.* Presently, it is up for reauthorization in Congress. Over time, the initial objective to limit impacts of foreign fishing activities in US waters has shifted towards the conservation of "overfished" stocks within the EEZ, and towards conservation of habitat (embracing an ecosystem approach to management).

* Note by Clay: The Act was re-authorized as the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act in the fall of 1996.

A proposed modification* in recent reauthorization hearings relevant to this report is found under Title I; Conservation and Management: Section 107 of S.39, and Section 7(8). The modification is to National Fishery Conservation and Management Standards. Part of the proposed modification is to require:

"minimization of adverse economic impacts on fishing communities."


*Note by Clay: For full current text of these two provisions return to NEFSC homepage, choose "Information" and then Magnuson-Stevens Act. Go to Sec. 301(8).

Under Section 7(8) is a related provision that clearly extends the responsibility of management to consider the sustainability of fishing communities;

This provision can be seen as a needed safeguard mechanism to ensure the survival of these communities if allocation rights are deemed necessary. Amendment #7 clearly has an impact on the allocation of fisheries resources by limitations on days at sea. Community dependence on the fishery, as determined in this report, can be utilized in making decisions on the impacts of Amendment #7 and in planning management policy consistent with the community language of the Magnuson Act.

Under the dictates of Magnuson, the ability of managers to consider the community impacts of fishery regulations must be guided by 'best available' social and economic data. This report provides such baseline data, assessing fishery dependence and pointing to areas where further research is necessary. This report cannot be used to measure the magnitude and direction of social and economic impacts of specific regulations, but rather provides focus on critical issues that can only be comprehensively addressed through a Social Impact Assessment (SIA). An SIA informed by our dependency model and identified critical issues should fulfill the requirements of Magnuson while allowing managers and communities to work cooperatively towards mitigating the harmful impacts of needed fishery regulations.



C. Purpose and Objectives of the Study

Until the autumn of 1995, fishers in New England and the Mid-Atlantic states believed that the implementation of a moratorium on new entrants to the Multispecies Groundfish Fishery (MGF) and a reduction of the number of fishing days by 50% over a five year period--along with other regulatory changes known collectively as Amendment #5--would have devastating social and cultural impacts on fishers, fishing families, those in fishing-related occupations, and others in fishing communities over a broad geographical range. Late in 1995, however, while grudgingly adjusting to the new regulatory environment, fishers learned of the new and even more restrictive regulations of Amendment # 7, regulations designed to conserve stressed groundfishing stocks (especially the signature species of Atlantic Cod, Gadus morhua). News of the pending regulations sent a mixture of alarm, malaise, betrayal, and anger through fishing communities from Maine to New Jersey and even as far south as Cape Hatteras. Against the background of this emotional and legal turmoil, we entered several major and minor groundfishing communities of New England and the Mid-Atlantic to accomplish the following objectives:

  1. Ascertain community-dependence on the MGF and the nature and scope of social impacts of the MGF management measures on fishers, others working in fishery-related employment, and their communities;



  2. Provide information on the demographics and numbers of fishers, fishing craft, and persons involved in fishery-related industries, by community, county, and state;



  3. Identify social science data bases and describe social issues which should be used or considered in any follow-up (Phase 2) to this study of social impacts of fishery management in the New England and Mid-Atlantic areas of the United States; and



  4. Develop a classification system that will aid in predicting the social impacts of changing fishery regulations on fishery dependent communities.



This report provides detailed information on the major MGF communities of New Bedford/ Fairhaven, Gloucester, and Chatham, Massachusetts; Portland, Maine; and Point Judith, Rhode Island. In addition, we provide less detailed information on several smaller ports in Maine, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina. These include:

1. Stonington and the "Down East" Ports of Maine (e.g., Machiasport, Jonesport, Winter Harbor)

2. Portsmouth, New Hampshire

3. Provincetown, Massachusetts

4. Newport, Rhode Island

5. Montauk, New York

6. Cape May, New Jersey

7. Ocean City, Maryland

8. Tidewater Region, Virginia (including Hampton Roads and Newport News)

9. Wanchese, North Carolina

Go to map of ports


Information presented in this report on the secondary ports varies fairly widely based on the importance of groundfishing in the ports and the extent of time we were able to spend in these ports.

Together, the community information provides a basis for classifying communities based on their dependence on the MGF, as suggested by five predictive variables to emerge from the study. This will enable both fishers and regulators to prepare more effectively for future real and perceptual crises in the MGF and related fisheries.



D. Background and Methodological Considerations

Prior to the current study, with a few exceptions buried in local repositories, information on the social and cultural dimensions of the MGF has been dated, anecdotal and incomplete, giving fishery managers little basis from which to estimate how the impacts of the new regulations vary by community, by sector of the fishery, or by other social and cultural phenomena. Through the systematic collection of data on the social and cultural dimensions of the MGF, in this report we develop a classification system that will enable fishery managers to predict the probable consequences of current and future regulations.

To develop this classification system and achieve the other objectives listed above, working in an environment as socially and culturally diverse as the New England and Mid-Atlantic MGF, we have drawn on a combination of traditional ethnographic work and more systematic data collection techniques. These include the Rapid Appraisal (RA) techniques and Rapid Ethnographic Assessment Procedures (REAP) of cultural mapping, in-depth interviewing, and holding focus groups; we supplement these with limited survey research and the techniques of cognitive anthropology known as pile-sorting tasks and multidimensional scaling. A drawback of any RA technique is the difficulty in getting consistency of data across communities, particularly when dealing with communities under stress that vary widely in their ethnicity and history. Establishing rapport takes longer in some communities than others, and can also affect the quality and depth of field data. For example, rapport was quickly established in Gloucester with the cooperation of a local fishing organization, the Gloucester Fishermen's Wives Association (GFWA)*. The cooperation and assistance of this organization made possible the gathering of fine grained ethnographic information in Gloucester on critical issues such as breakdown of social networks and economic problems in the fishery. Such information was not as readily accessible in other ports such as New Bedford. Thus, under the limitations of RA methodology particular issues highlighted in one community study may not be addressed in another. This is reflected in the variation in section headings for the community studies.

*Note by Clay: For more information on GFWA see http://www.gfwa.org/~gfwa/index.html

Understanding MGF participants' perceptions is crucial to implementing management plans, being particularly useful in designing educational and outreach programs or marine advisory efforts to prepare MGF participants for regulations, advise them about alternative economic strategies, and otherwise reduce the deleterious effects of management measures. Because the success of regulations depends, in part, on high degrees of voluntary compliance, understanding the perceptions of individuals involved in the fisheries is necessary to convince these individuals to comply.

To assure the collection of representative information, our strategy for selecting the study communities combined state and federal licensing data with repeated visits to coastal communities between Maine and Cape Hatteras. We found the licensing data, for the most part, far less helpful than the community visits, with some ports listed as important in terms of vessel tonnage and numbers of groundfishing permits actually being home to few or no groundfishers. Nevertheless, we utilized licensing data to guide our initial regional tours, which resulted in narrowing the number of communities in which groundfishing remains an important primary or secondary fishery. Key informants, such as state enforcement personnel, NMFS port agents, and local fishers and active members of fishing associations, assisted in selecting the MGF communities discussed here.



E. Definition of Community

In a recent collection of case studies of folk management in fisheries around the world, Dyer and McGoodwin (1994) draw upon the concept of the Natural Resource Community (NRC) as a social unit anchored in local history and local understandings of ecological relationships, consisting of "a population of individuals living within a bounded area whose primary cultural existence is based on the utilization of renewable natural resources" (Dyer, Gill, and Picou 1992, cited in Dyer and McGoodwin 1994: 5). According to them, "...a localized worldview, and locally developed assertions about how to best manage fisheries, still arise among fishing peoples at every level of technological sophistication" (ibid.). Although fishers interact, often quite regularly, with individuals and institutions who have few or no ties to fishing, "where they [fishers] live and work is still a localized, specific place, and quite often they perceive that they take their catches from a specific, bounded, marine ecosystem, which from their perspective has unique systemic attributes" (ibid.).

The fishing segments of the primary and secondary ports identified above can be considered Natural Resource Communities (NRCs) in so far as they include significant populations of individuals who depend directly on a renewable natural resource, but they depart from the definition of NRCs in important ways. None of the fishing NRCs we have selected for study are in any sense "bounded," set apart from the commerce and institutional apparatus of the cities and towns in which they are located; nor do fishers in these communities seem to perceive the ecosystems upon which they depend as closed systems. On the contrary, similar to the findings of others (e.g., Griffith 1996; Durrenberger 1996; Dyer and McGoodwin 1994), most fishers we interviewed for this study viewed marine ecosystems as dynamic and complex, affected by global weather conditions and shore-based human activities. Fishers and their families are particularly concerned about industrial pollutants and coastal real estate development that results in the destruction of wetlands and other marine habitats. Nevertheless, those individuals who comprise the NRCs we have selected--fishing communities within larger, more complex communities--do conform to the NRC model in the depth of their dependence on a renewable natural resource and in the extent to which they are rooted in local history and local traditions, deriving social and cultural identity from a sense of place whose life rhythms rise and fall with populations of fish, seasonal conditions at sea, and the increasingly complex regulatory environment entangling their traditions.

We can consider the NRC of each port as a regional contributor to whatever commerce is stimulated by fishing in general and groundfishing in particular, and as a means of providing sustainable support to fisher families as they contribute a high-quality food product to the region and nation. While only the fishers themselves interact with marine resources, they are nevertheless embedded in wider communities and towns, contributing to the food security of those communities and towns and buffering coastal development in a way that contributes to social and economic diversity. In the section that follows, we present some limited information on the numbers of individuals and firms within the target study communities that benefit directly from the fishing lifestyle.



F. Demographic Issues

As noted earlier, we selected our primary and secondary ports based on available licensing data combined with brief site visits, phone calls to individuals in the areas, and conversations with fishers and others familiar with the MGF. In general, we found that highly specialized groundfishing has become more concentrated in recent years, confined primarily to the three primary ports of New Bedford, Gloucester, and Portland. In addition, we found that groundfishing remains an important part of fishers' annual rounds in the primary ports of Chatham and Point Judith and among small groups of fishers in Stonington, Maine, the Tidewater region of Virginia, and Wanchese, North Carolina. In most of the other ports, however, other fisheries--particularly shellfish (lobster, scallops, clams, blue crab, shrimp)--have either become recently or have for some time been more important than groundfish. Maine ports outside Portland, for example, have become more dependent on eels and sea urchins in recent years than groundfish.

Many fishers throughout New England and the Mid-Atlantic states have moved into the burgeoning dogfish fishery, as well as expanding their stakes in the traditional shellfish and squid fisheries. Fishers and state regulators familiar with or dependent on these alternative fisheries fear that fishers currently being displaced by groundfishing will move into these fisheries, causing crowding and overfishing problems similar to those that are occurring in groundfishing today.

Early in our research we discovered discrepancies between vessel license data and the numbers of active groundfishers reported during visits to the ports. For example, the first three to four days of field work in the Down East region of Maine revealed that ports such as Machiasport and Jonesport had one or two gillnetters who still fished for groundfish, yet licensing data indicated that Machiasport had 9 permits and Jonesport had 12. The small populations of these ports, moreover, resulted in high per capita numbers of permits, leading us to believe these ports were highly dependent on groundfishing. Field visits proved this not to be the case. Montauk, with 76 active MGF permits and only 24 working groundfish draggers, represents the largest disparity between permits and working vessels. Many MGF permits are held by captains of recreational day boats, some of whom used to fish commercially but now utilize their permits as an option on trips targeted for popular game fish such as tuna.

Table 1*, then, compares federal licensing data with some information on the numbers of active groundfishers per port.

*Note by Clay: Numbers of permits are for vessels which claimed a particular port to be their home port. Some of those who hold a permit do not actively fish it. In addition, some discrepancies are to be expected due to other factors, e.g., "New Bedford" does not include Fairhaven, a vessel may change its home port during the year in response to fishery conditions.

Demographic information about the communities and some of the support infrastructure reflect their dependence on fisheries (Table 2). We supplemented this information with brief telephone surveys in the three principal groundfishing ports of New Bedford, Gloucester, and Portland, finding groundfishing to indeed occupy a core part of their fishing industry, accounting for between 44 and 53% of their seafood dealing and processing capacity and significant employment (Table 3).

Figures from both of the above tables allow us to derive rough estimates of shoreside employment from handling seafood (icing, shipping, and processing) that derives directly from the local MGF. We accomplish this by multiplying average numbers of employees by number of plants by the percentage of business derived from local groundfish.

These figures, of course, refer only to those who handle the catch, excluding those who participate in other shoreside industries such as ice plants, fuel barges, marine railways, marine suppliers, welders and repair operations, and so forth. We discuss these in the following section.





G. Dependence on the Multispecies Groundfish Fishery: Developing a Community Classification System

Understanding community dependence on the MGF requires identifying critical indicators of dependence, assigning them values based on our qualitative data, and comparing them across the study communities. The sum of the values then gives us a rough index of dependence by community.

Since each community is a product of a unique environmental history and political ecology, assigned dependency categories must be understood in the context described in each case study. It is clear from the variability seen across communities that changing regulatory or fishery stock conditions will result in community-specific impacts and adaptive responses. Identifying similarities and differences across communities reveals critical social issues that can constitute the basis of a follow-up (Phase II study) Social Impact Assessment (SIA).

The dependency index presented in Table 4 is based on the combination of specific physical-cultural indicators of dependence and general social-geographic indicators isolated across the range of target communities. The data we include in the index are derived from a combination of qualitative interviews, field work observation and quantitative analysis from secondary data sources. They are not meant to represent the total range of possible physical-cultural factors, but instead represent key factors we encountered in our studies of the five primary MGF communities.

Table 4 shows the fishery dependency scores for the five primary ports. Factors are scored in two ways: nominally (as either present or absent), and ordinally (ranked from 5-highest, to 1-lowest). For example, if a port has 7 suppliers processors, and this is the largest number of the five, it is given a ranking of 5. Normative rankings of a cultural feature, such as secular symbolism celebrating fishing (e.g., a public plaque on a dock) is given a score of 1 (present) or 0 (absent). Thus, higher scores indicate more dependence.

Based on the Fishery Dependence Index (FDI), New Bedford is the most dependent on the MGF, Gloucester second, followed by Chatham and Portland of equal dependence and Point Judith the least dependent. Thus, the large scale communities are more dependent on the MGF than Portland, Chatham, and Point Judith. Among the smaller ports, Stonington is more dependent on fishing in general than Hampton Roads/Newport News, or Montauk.

Point Judith and Chatham are intermediate in size, but Point Judith is the least dependent because of its flexibility in utilizing a wide range of fish stocks and gear types. They differ in aspects of adaptability and geography from New Bedford and Gloucester. For example, the configuration of the Chatham port restricts the size of fishing vessels to the small-medium range. Point Judith can handle larger vessels, but the limited dock space, short history, distance from fishing offshore grounds, depletion of inshore groundfish stocks, and emphasis on diversification make it less a presence in the offshore MGF than either Gloucester or New Bedford.

Despite the number of MGF permits held in Point Judith (78), the concentration of the fleet is on offshore midwater species, and with the short history of the fishery and an approach to fishing that does not depend on extensive kinship or village networks, the fishery is more adaptive than Gloucester or New Bedford. New Bedford has a greater capital investment by scale than Gloucester, and repair and service capacity for vessels. Features of Gloucester that make it more dependent than Portland include: linguistic and work-organizational boundaries to change, high investment in offshore dragging with large crews and parallel large family networks dependent on the fishery.

The Fishery Dependence Index (FDI) does not include details of social and geographic factors in its determination, yet the results are supported by the social and geographic characteristics of each port. Furthermore, it complements and is consistent with the fine-gained ethnographic details and identified critical issues presented in the case studies of each primary port. These variables provide the means to operationalize the concept of dependence by creating an index that includes qualitative and quantitative data about variables that differentiate between ports in terms of: (a) the city's or town's dependence on the fishing industry, and by extension on the MGF; and (b) the NRC's dependence on the MGF to the exclusion of other fisheries or other economic activities.

An index of this nature, however, remains a crude estimate of dependence, partially because of the difference between fishers' dependence on the MGF or community dependence on the MGF. Comparing the community studies, we find that while the city of New Bedford is most dependent on their fishery for overall community health, the fishers of Gloucester are more heavily dependent on the MGF than the fishers of New Bedford. This is primarily due to New Bedford's Portuguese community and the opportunities it provides for dealing with the crisis in groundfishing by moving back to Portugal. Observations of this nature suggest, and our studies confirm, that neither New Bedford nor Gloucester would weather a prolonged crisis in groundfishing without widespread suffering.

Comparing the information from the principal communities allows us to develop a rough ranking of communities in terms of their dependence on the Multispecies Groundfish Fishery. In combination with the FDI information presented above, it appears that fishers in New Bedford and Gloucester are more dependent on the MGF than fishers in Portland, Chatham, and Point Judith; by the same token, Stonington, ME and Wanchese, NC are more dependent on fishing in general, if not the MGF in particular, than the other secondary ports. In both cases, among a segment of the fishing families in these communities, the MGF is important as providing both core and secondary target species within a flexible fishing strategy that, through the course of a year, might combine three to four gears and target three to four species.

Fleets in some of the secondary ports have either become relatively marginalized or have managed to integrate themselves into the tourist and leisure uses of the coast to such a degree that they would be difficult to dislodge at this historical juncture. In Cape May, NJ, for example, the fisherman's wharf extends from a cluster of tourist shops and restaurants to a retail seafood market to a series of processing houses as malodorous and cluttered as the busiest seafood houses of New Bedford; in this case, as in Chatham, the fishing industry is an integral component of what attracts the tourists, who dine on fresh fish only yards from where the vessels off-load and ice-down their catches.

While some differences in dependence are due to one port's economic complexity relative to another's, with some ports experiencing more and more diverse job growth than others, we would have trouble arguing that there is an inverse relationship between economic complexity and dependence on the MGF. Portland and New Bedford are roughly equally economically complex, both struggling with constricting manufacturing sectors and attempting to enter the 21st century via trends in globalization, international commerce, and developing professional services, yet Portland's economy as a whole is less dependent on its commercial fishing sector than New Bedford's. By the same token, the character of job growth in Gloucester, Chatham, and Point Judith is similar--all three cities attempting to enhance their images as tourist destinations and artists' colonies, with even some of the Gloucester city fathers believing that some kind of boutique fishery will emerge from the current crisis--yet the fishers in Gloucester are having a far more difficult time adapting to a new political economic climate than those in either Chatham or Point Judith.

The same applies to variations in a port's isolation or distance from main transportation thoroughfares such as interstate highways. Chatham is no less isolated than Gloucester, nor Stonington any more isolated than Machiasport or Jonesport, yet variations exist in terms of these communities' relative dependence on groundfishing. Ocean City, MD and Cape May, NJ are roughly equidistant from the sprawling metropolitan area that includes Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Camden, but the fishing fleet in Ocean City has been relegated to a small harbor on the south edge of town while the Cape May fleet, as just described, ties up in a bustling tourist center. The Ocean City fleet, further, may be destined for further reductions, judging by the land for sale around the commercial fishers' harbor--land which suggests that zoning has begun to expand the tourist shops and recreational marinas into the space currently occupied by the commercial fleet. By contrast, the Cape May fleet seems well ensconced.

Observations addressing the variations between MGF ports are further complicated--if also partially explained--by the variation that exists within the ports, between different fleets and groups of fishers. Within each of these ports, some fishers are more dependent on the MGF than others; these distinctions seem loosely related to fishers' degree of specialization, their histories of moving between fishing and nonfishing fields, vessel size and ownership status (how heavily the vessel is mortgaged), and their histories of participation in alternative fisheries.

In addition to these social and economic sources of dependence, cultural factors also affect dependence on the MGF. Although ethnic factors differentiate groundfishers of New England and the Mid-Atlantic states, these distinctions become important only in so far as they have resulted in ethnic enclaves and ethnically-grounded economics. For example, the New Bedford fleet is composed of large numbers of Portuguese fishers and Norwegian fishers, yet the Portuguese have developed a thriving Portuguese ethnic enclave while the Norwegian enclave is less isolating. Thus, for the Portuguese fleet of New Bedford, ethnic status becomes an important factor in determining the character of one's dependence on and behavior in the fishery, but among the Norwegians ethnic status is less important. This is because the enclave nature of the Portuguese community in New Bedford has made it possible for Portuguese fishers to remain relatively detached--culturally, linguistically, and occupationally--from other economic sectors of New Bedford. On the one hand, this makes it particularly difficult for them to move into other economic sectors as crises develop in fisheries. On the other, they are more willing to keep other Portuguese crew members employed even under conditions of deteriorating incomes and many of them have kept the option open of returning to Portugal by continuing to maintain strong social ties with their home communities in Portugal.

The Portuguese of New Bedford (including the islanders such as Cape Verdeans) live in what is considered a transnational community, with social and cultural roots and branches in two and sometimes more than two nations (Basch, Glick-Schiller, and Szanton Blanc 1995). Gloucester Italian/Sicilian fishers occupy something of a middle ground between Norwegians and Portuguese in terms of how much ethnic factors influence their responses to fishery crises. They do not seem to have achieved the same level of transnationalism as the Portuguese fishers of New Bedford, but they do tend to keep other Italian crew members employed as incomes decline (Doeringer, Moss, and Terkla 1986).

The communities have also produced physical expressions of their dependence of fishing. For example, linking a religious structure to fishing, such as the Church of the Fishermen in Gloucester, with its murals and sculpture dedicated to fishing, indicates how important fishing has been and is still to the well-being of church parishioners. Fishing is at the very core of their daily existence, and special prayers for fishing and fishers are a regular part of religious services. Social, cultural, and economic dependence are combined in such symbolism. Because the church in these communities acts as a social extension of the hope and aspirations of its members, religious recognition of fishing is certainly a profound indicator of historical fishery dependence in a community.

Secular cultural indicators of fishery dependence include public dedications to fishers and the fishing industry, such as museums dedicated to preserving the artifacts and history of the industry. New Bedford's whaling museum is one such example, celebrating fishing and mariners of all kinds. Chatham publicly displays its support of fishing with a prominent plaque on the town dock. In Gloucester, perhaps the most famous American fishing icon of all is the bronze statue of the Gloucester fisherman. In a media climate where the fishery has been portrayed as dead or dying, it is significant that Gloucester has recently undertaken to erect a statue of the fisherman's wife, scheduled to be completed and in place several years from now.

These observations lead us to consider what features of New Bedford's and Gloucester's MGF make fishers here more dependent than Portland, as well as to reconsider our notions of community and of dependence. Clearly, those dependent on the MGF do not include entire cities and towns, but subpopulations of larger metropolitan areas and rural towns that comprise communities in the sense of an occupational community or a natural resource community. We suggest that dependence of groundfishing does not vary by city or by town as much as by classes of fishers within the industry who concentrate in specific ports.

While some of the secondary, rural, isolated ports in Maine and other states can be considered highly dependent on fishing, it is difficult to place any of the principal groundfishing ports (besides, possibly, New Bedford) into this category. Portland is a bustling center of commerce, and even New Bedford is exploring alternative economic opportunities in the wake of fishing and manufacturing declines. Gloucester is nurturing a growing tourist trade and fostering its image as an artists' colony. Chatham and Point Judith are neither isolated from commercial activity nor suffering from a dearth of alternative economic opportunities. Even within many of these communities--particularly those in Downeast Maine--one would be hard pressed to argue that the MGF is either as important to communities like Machiasport or Jonesport as it once was or as important as the more densely populated fisheries such as lobster, urchin, eel, scallop, and shrimp.

Despite these observations, several features of the MGF recommend against encouraging its decline, through the imposition of ever more restrictive regulations, on the basis of the rather cold argument that relatively few families will be negatively impacted. The industry is deeply intertwined with the social and cultural resources of the five principal MGF communities and constitutes an important link to one of the nation's most promising renewable natural resources. As more and more of the ties to credit institutions and arrangements, markets, marine suppliers, ice manufacturers, and others directly or indirectly involved in the industry weaken, due as much to negative publicity and perceptions as to the realities facing the fishery, these components of the social infrastructure rely more and more on alternative sources of fish, usually from imports, and alternative patrons for their goods and services. The following classification of communities in terms of dependence thus considers the current difficulties facing the MGF in terms of the potential for these kinds of relationships deteriorating, leaving the Northeast without a basis from which to marshal an efficient fishery.

We have isolated the following five variables as those that reflect and best predict dependence on the MGF. It will become obvious that the five variables overlap somewhat; thus, they must be considered together. These are:

Within each box under the ports we have included a plus sign or a minus sign, which indicate more (+) or less (-) dependence on the MGF. The more plus signs a port ends up with, simply, the more dependent that port is on the MGF.

This classification system leads us to rank the ports, from most to least dependent on the MGF, as follows:

1. New Bedford/Fairhaven

2. Gloucester

3. Portland

4. Chatham

5. Point Judith



H. Social and Cultural Parameters of the MGF: Issues and Data Bases

This concluding section to the synthesis contains three parts. First, we present the results of the perceptual tasks we asked fishers and others familiar with the industry to perform in each of the ports, revealing how they classify various regulations and rules of government agencies and private business. Second, we present a list of several problems that emerged again and again during our interviews and reflect key ways in which fishers are likely to be affected by regulations, as well as how they view regulations and regulatory agencies in terms of legitimacy. Finally, we discuss the various forms of capital in the fishery and how they are tied to the future of the industry under current conditions and proposed regulations.

To get some idea of how fishers thought about various government regulations and policies of private firms, we asked respondents to perform relatively easy grouping or "pile-sorting" tasks in each of the five primary ports. Thirty-seven fishers and others familiar with the MGF sorted 24 cards bearing the following polices and regulations (symbols used in the computer output are in parentheses accompanying the stimuli): 

1. Insurance Policy (IP)            13. Bank/ Credit Policy (BNK)
2. Limits on Participation in       14. Limiting Days at Sea (DAS)
   Multiple Fisheries (LMF)
3. Entry Based on Historical        15. Access Issues (AI)
   Participation (HP)
4. Limited Entry (LE)               16. Mesh Size Restrictions (MSH)
5. Permanent Closures (PC)          17. Landing Restrictions (LR)
6. Species Restrictions (SR)        18. Season Closures (SC)
7. Net Bans (NB)                    19. Area Closures/ Crowding (AC)
8. Individual Transferable          20. Licensing Moratorium (LM)
   Quotas (ITQ)
9. Call-In System (CI)              21. Area Closures/ Habitat (NU)
10. Poundage Quotas (PQ)            22. Limits on Numbers of Gear (LG)
11. Marine Mammal Protection (MM)   23. Gear Licensing (GL)
12. Tow Time Restrictions (TT)      24. Licensing By Fishery (LF)



We selected these items based on early interviews with fishers regarding those laws and rules of private businesses that had influenced their fishing behaviors. We simply handed the respondents cards with the above regulations printed on them and asked them to sort them into piles based on how they believed them to be similar. We told them they could have as many or as few piles as they wanted; what mattered was their idea about how they fit, or didn't fit, together. After sorting the items, we asked them to state why they had placed them in the piles that they had.

Tasks of these type generate data that are amenable to hierarchical clustering and multidimensional scaling techniques of analysis. Both of these methods essentially count the number of times each of the above 24 items occurs with each other item in the groups that fishers produced, but each method presents the output from these counts somewhat differently. An additional benefit that derives from this method is that, while sorting the cards, respondents often talk extensively about how they feel about certain regulations; often it is these comments that are more useful than the clustering or scaling output.

Clustering analysis groups the items, showing hierarchical relationships among them, while scaling plots them in two-dimensional space so that those closer to one another on the MDS "map" are presumably closer to one another in the minds of fishers. The clustering analysis produced the groups and sub-groups as indicated in Figure 2.




Figure 3. Hierarchical Levels Among Groups of Regulations 

          B             I             D M         L  
          I N A M A P S N T P T S N L C A S L H L L M G L
          P K I M C C C U Q Q T R B R I S H G P E M F L F
             1 1 1 1   1 2   1 1     1   1 1 1     2   2 2 
Level     1 3 5 1 9 5 8 1 8 0 2 6 7 7 9 4 6 2 3 4 0 2 3 4
0.8108    . . . . . . XXX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
0.7838    XXX . . . . XXX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
0.7568    XXX . . . . XXX . . . . . . . . . . XXX . . XXX
0.6847    XXX . . . XXXXX . . . . . . . . . . XXX . . XXX
0.6757    XXX . . . XXXXX . . . . . . . . . . XXXXX . XXX
0.6396    XXX . . . XXXXX . . . . . . . . . . XXXXX XXXXX
0.6216    XXX . . . XXXXX . . . . . . XXX . . XXXXX XXXXX
0.5946    XXX . . . XXXXX . . . . XXX XXX . . XXXXX XXXXX
0.5676    XXX . . . XXXXX XXX . . XXX XXX . . XXXXXXXXXXX
0.5676    XXX . . XXXXXXX XXX . . XXX XXX . . XXXXXXXXXXX
0.5495    XXX . . XXXXXXX XXX . XXXXX XXX . . XXXXXXXXXXX
0.5045    XXX . . XXXXXXX XXX . XXXXX XXXXX . XXXXXXXXXXX
0.4937    XXX . . XXXXXXX XXX . XXXXX XXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXX
0.4730    XXX . . XXXXXXX XXX XXXXXXX XXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXX
0.4723    XXX . . XXXXXXX XXX XXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
0.4685    XXXXX . XXXXXXX XXX XXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
0.4523    XXXXX . XXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
0.4324    XXXXX XXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
0.3957    XXXXX XXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
0.3022    XXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
0.1204    XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX



These groupings are not too surprising. The output above shows that the distinctions between the groups become less and less distinct as we get into the higher group numbers. That is, the items in groups 4, 5, and 6 are less distinct from one another than the items in groups 1, 2, and 3. Groups 4, 5, and 6 are correlated at level .4723, while groups 1 and 2 are correlated at the .1204 level and groups 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 at the .3022 level. These numbers indicate that fishers are making progressively less fine distinctions between groups as we move from left to right across Figure 3.

Group 1 are primarily private firms' or private individuals' policies, and these were the most distinct from the other regulations we presented to fishers. We will see in the MDS output below, that these three regulations were far distant from the others, and that presumably they differ significantly in fishers' minds because they are formulated in the private sector. About these, one fisher said, "These have nothing to do with NMFS. They are typical business issues and easily resolved."

Most of the respondents associated the stimuli in Group 2, of course, with "conservation" methods, often considered necessary to preserve spawning or nursery areas or to protect specific marine species. This group generated mixed responses, in that many fishers commented that marine mammals were over protected yet agreed with closures designed to protect habitats. "These are regulations that affect my operation," said one, "but I have no real opposition to them." "Closures are a must," said another. Indeed, finer distinctions within group shows that marine mammal protection was correlated with the others at a lower level (.4324) than any of the others, suggesting that some fishers put it into this group reluctantly and others placed it elsewhere. Fishers expressed the most positive feelings about regulations in this group, however, modifying them with adjectives like "needed," "good," or "helpful."

Group 3, quite obviously, are quota systems, and considered problematic by most fishers. Fishers who fish from smaller sized vessels, in particular, worry that ITQs will result in corporate in-roads into fishing and speed the process of "proletarianization" in the fishery, converting owner-operators into hired captains or pushing them out of the fishery altogether. "These give the resource away to private ownership," said one. A few respondents included these systems in piles with the restrictions in groups 4, 5, and 6 and simply stated that these kinds of regulations restricted a fisher's flexibility, were bureaucratic attempts to regulate fisheries, and simply, "won't work."

Comments about the items in group 4 ranged from those who considered these sensible to those who considered them foolish. One fisher said, "These regulations make me see red!" (i.e., make him angry), but another characterized these as "Good if you can enforce them," perhaps referring to the difficulties one state has controlling landings in a port in another state (for example, Maine fishers landing lobster in Boston caught in dragger nets). In general, however, they were seen as ways to protect stocks and limit fishing effort that were difficult to enforce.

Items in groups 5 and 6, all associated with confining fishers to specific fisheries, "boxing" them in, and limiting their flexibility, were the most despised by those we interviewed. Those in group 5 were associated with Amendments 5 and 7, of course, and those in group 6 were seen primarily as attempts to limit fishing through licensing requirements. The two groups are not that distinct, related to one another at the .4723 level, and they all elicited a range of extremely negative and often heated comments, such as:

Overall, the clusters and their associated comments suggest that fishers care primarily about conserving the resource, but do not believe that many of the regulations designed to conserve resources will actually accomplish this.



The MDS output (Figure 4) complements the clustering analysis by, first, showing that fishers regard the rules and policies of private firms (IP, BNK, AI) as quite distinct from government regulations. Thus, one dimension along with which fishers organize their thinking about regulations is the Public-Private dimension, indicated by the vertical arrow on Figure 4. The horizontal arrow is somewhat more difficult to interpret. This indicates a transition from those regulations fishers considered actual conservation measures, protecting the resource, even if sometimes they saw them as overly protective (MM, PC, NU, SC, AC; bottom of the chart) to those highly politicized regulations that are seen as mechanisms, disguised as conservation measures, that will further privatize or turn the fisheries over to corporate entities.

Figure 4: Multidimensional Scaling of Regulations as Perceived by New England Groundfishers

Several issues surfaced again and again in our interviews with fishers and others in the MGF communities. These indicate dependence, provide hints about probable responses to the crisis by groundfishers, and isolate other concerns raised during the course of field work. They are particularly important in considering the potential impacts of new and future regulations. These include:

1. Past adaptations to crises, whether ecological, economic, political, etc. Most fishers agree that they will respond to the current crises in ways similar to their responses of the past. Through an historical analysis, covering recent history, we could enumerate some of the common methods fishers respond to crises. Primary among those we encountered in the field are: first, moving to other fishing grounds or territories (e.g., migration), which is a particularly common approach among those, such as the Portuguese, who are already involved in a transnational community; and, second, experimenting with alternative fisheries. In addition, fishers and fishers' wives have responded to past and current crises by organizing for more effective political participation, have challenged laws either formally (through law suits and injunctions) or informally (by ignoring or discovering ways to circumvent regulations), and have moved between fishing and nonfishing employment, generally in construction and manufacturing. From those whom we interviewed who have moved between shore-based occupations and fishing, we elicited occupations primarily attached to the marine environment (e.g., shipping, working on research vessels, longshoremen, working for marine repair services).

2. Specific participation in other fisheries. Many of the fishers we interviewed had the sense that the regulations were confining them or "boxing them in" to one fishery at the expense of allowing them to take advantage of developments in other fisheries. This reduces the flexibility that is a hallmark particularly of smaller and medium-sized vessels, as well as contradicts current government and private efforts to promote underutilized or newly developed fisheries. At the same time, the wholesale promotion of new fisheries is often considered suspiciously by fishers, such as promoting dogfishing without having a sound knowledge base about the fishery's potential to reproduce itself.

3. Fishers' perceptions of the current crisis and of regulations in general. From fishers' points of view, there exists a severe crisis of legitimacy within those governing bodies and agencies that currently regulate the fisheries. Nearly universally, fishers complain about a lack of communication between fishery biologists and fishers, about the inaccuracies of fishery biology, about the concentration on economic efficiency of the fisheries without considering social impacts of regulations, and about the failure of institutional responses to crises. Enforcement, fishers believe, will become increasingly difficult without active involvement of fishers in the decision-making process. One of the primary complaints centered on logbooks. Fishers complained that the new logbooks were designed for statistical reporting more than in terms of the realities of life aboard fishing vessels, yet they fear that, despite this, the logbooks are not being utilized. Fisheries biology is thus falling further and further behind as the data accumulate.

4. Failures of institutional/ governmental responses to crisis. Most fishers agree that the vessel buy-back* and the retraining programs were poorly designed, poorly administered, and are only helping those who had already been marginalized within the fishing community because of poor fishing performance. The buy-back program has, according to those we interviewed, benefitted individuals who have already left fishing. Active fishers, especially those with strong social attachments to their crews, have not sold out because they would be abandoning their employees. The retraining programs are not based on any past appreciation of the actual economic behaviors or skills of fishers, but too focused on aquaculture and other programs not necessarily relevant to fishers' skills. Portuguese and other fishers who have difficulty with the English language, in particular, found the retraining programs completely inadequate.

*Note by Clay: For information on current legislation regarding vessel buyback programs, return to the NEFSC homepage, choose "Information", then Magnuson-Stevens Act, then go to sec. 312 (b) and (c).

5. Safety issues. Many of the new regulations encourage unsafe behavior in the fisheries. In particular, regulations and economic developments resulting from regulations both promote reductions in crew sizes (because shares are dwindling, for example) and encourage fishers to remain at sea during rough weather (because of days-at-sea limitations*). Crew reductions, of course, result in more work aboard vessels per crew member and the neglect of certain activities associated with safety. Increased competition and conflicts between vessels and between fishers from other ports, due to the perceptions that fishers are having to divide up an ever shrinking pie, have decreased the extent to which fishers help one another out of trouble on the open seas. While nearly all fishers reported that they will assist vessels truly in danger, many said that those in marginally dangerous circumstances are more likely to be left alone.

*Note by Clay: One of the reasons for this was that, under Amendment # 5, vessels taking the fleet days-at-sea allocation limited their total days-at-sea by staying in port at the end of each trip for a period proportional to length of their trip. Thus, if you put in for rough weather, you were stuck in port. Under Amendment # 7 the fleet allocation became an actual number of days, just like the individual allocations. Thus, this particular bad incentive has been eliminated.

6. Origins of the current crisis. Nearly everyone agrees that the current crisis originated with the overcapitalization of the fleet during the 1970s and 1980s, in part driven by low-cost loans underwritten by the US government. Access was too open during that period, as well, with licensing restrictions far too loose to exclude anyone. Many see another crisis developing, as government efforts to promote underutilized species (such as dogfish) proceed without adequate biological knowledge about these species.

7. Uneven regulation of the fisheries. Related to the point just mentioned, fishers tend to agree that the government is overregulating some species (e.g., haddock) while underregulating others (e.g., monkfish and dogfish). They are not responsive to either the concerns or the observations of fishers regarding stock assessments, and cannot be predicted to respond to information about stocks in what fishers consider a rational manner. For example, the haddock stocks are seen to be so large that many pounds are being wasted because they cannot legally land them, yet fishers believed that reporting this waste would lead NMFS officials to close the fishery. These beliefs, widespread in the industry, lead fishers to conceal their information about stocks.

8. Competition within and between ports has reached epidemic proportions. There is a tendency for smaller-vessel fishers to blame large-vessels fishers, for different gear types to blame one another, and for fishers from one port to blame fishers from others for overfishing and damage to substrates or fish populations.

9. Failure of management to recognize the impacts of fisheries regulations on families and households. Fishers are embedded in households that represent a shoreside extension of fishing activity. Wives and families of fishers are often intimately involved in management of fishing operations, including tracking of finances, attending public hearings on new regulations, and providing political and public input on fishery issues. Management policies that do not recognize this can negatively impact the social, psychological, and economic well-being of the fisher household. Costs to fisher households can range from wives being forced to work multiple jobs outside the home to foreclosures on homes whose mortgages are tied to fishing vessel mortgages.

10. Lack of support for domestic fishery products by the government. Recent downturns in ex-vessel prices of groundfish have been brought about by unchecked influxes of foreign fishery product. Given the economic difficulties already faced by fishers, allowing foreign imports to drive domestic fishers out of business is perceived as an unfair government business practice.

11. Credit crisis. Perhaps the most devastating problem to develop in recent years is the drying up of institutional sources of credit and financial capital due in large part to the negative publicity surrounding the fisheries. Similar to farmers, who need credit to help them through bad crop years, fishers depend on creditors to cover trip expenses and weather poor fishing conditions that may last whole seasons or years. Yet suppliers and financial institutions alike have begun tightening the credit they extend toward fishers. More devastating to owner-operator family fishers, home mortgages and vessel mortgages are often tied together in loan agreements; as banks target vessels for foreclosure, they target fishers' homes as well. The deterioration of institutional or conventional forms of capital, then, has increased the importance of alternative forms of capital, which we discuss below.

We know, of course, that several suppliers of goods and services depend directly or indirectly on the MGF, yet the extinction of the MGF would not necessarily entail anything more than minor downturns in their own scale of operations. Fuel providers and boat builders and maintenance personnel could seek alternative customers in the shipping, recreational, ferrying, and other fleets. Municipal harbor masters would likely have little trouble renting precious dock space to pleasure and merchant crafts. Seafood markets and processing firms could pioneer relationships with imported and aquacultured fish or move to specialize in those local species that remain abundant and available. Perhaps only ice manufacturers and highly specialized marketing and service providers would suffer severely from a disappearing MGF.

Nevertheless, a complete collapse of the MGF would have far more devastating consequences than the simple listing of firms and numbers of fishers who would be mildly or severely dislocated. Most of the deepest problems derive from the loss to the local economy of local investment: specifically, investment that is rooted in local history and tradition and that remains tied to the community through economic downturns for reasons other than mere profit. A dynamic MGF provides a sector capable of promoting social and economic diversity in the communities we have been studying.

The importance of forms of capital that complement and at the same time supplement investment or financial capital of capitalist firms derives, in fact, from their abilities to recruit new members into the occupational hierarchies of businesses like the MGF and to provide an increasingly wider set of growth and meaningful economic opportunities for those who choose to enter the MGF. These alternative forms of capital include human, cultural, and social capital, with social capital particularly central to our understanding of the MGF.

The concept of social capital was recently explicitly articulated by the late James Coleman (1988, 1990), yet versions have appeared in sociological and anthropological theory in several forms. Coleman himself gives the economist Loury credit for coining the concept as an attempt to compensate for the bias toward individualism in economics (1990: 301). Drawing on several works in sociology and anthropology that demonstrate ways in which social ties influence and organize economic behavior, and using several illustrations, Coleman arrives at a definition of social capital that returns to his central themes of behavior as the product of self-interest and control (1990: 302):

In Coleman's sense, social capital enables individuals with reduced or no access to investment capital to accumulate the symbolic and material means to participate successfully in an economic activity such as groundfishing. Social capital depends, however, on the social field in which people give and receive jobs, information, low-interest or no-interest loans, and so forth. It is that social field which gives social capital life, transcending the individual without leaving her or him out of the equation, "both accounting for different outcomes at the level of individual actors and making the micro-to-macro transition without elaborating the social structural details through which this occurs" (1990: 305).

The social relations that engender social capital also assure its circulation through the group and its continual replenishment and reproduction. Drawing on social capital carries with it the obligation to replenish the fund, depending on trust, expectation, normative values, cultural rules, etc., and some means--authority, shame, gossip, force--to enforce the obligation.

Two other forms of capital--human and cultural--are key to understanding the depth of the current crisis in the MGF; these forms of capital are similar to social capital in that they depend on social ties that have meaning for the individuals who benefit from them. Human capital--simply, the skills and education levels one achieves through schooling, apprenticeship, experience, and other formal and informal training--is more well-known among economists than either social or cultural capital, and more recognized by the general public (including potential employers) as something, if not entirely tangible, certainly useful.

Cultural capital is both less well-known and less widely recognized by the general public, yet most potential employers consider one's cultural capital in selecting employees. Cultural capital consists of those subtle and overt characteristics we learn as parts of meaningful cultural groups, including our use of language and slang, our notions of personal space, how we dress and carry ourselves, and the myriad parts of our personalities that make us more or less comfortable and predictable to be around. The groups in which people acquire cultural capital include, for example, families, neighborhoods, special cultural centers such as bars or exclusive college campuses, churches or other voluntary associations.

The adjustments and difficulties we are currently witnessing in the MGF, particularly the difficulty it seems to be experiencing as it reproduces itself, are steps toward eroding the social, cultural, and human capital upon which an effective fishery depends. Unfortunately, this occurs at a time when the fishery can least afford it: that is, when conventional credit systems are deteriorating as well. Doeringer, Moss, and Terkla (1989: 79-80), in their discussion of the share systems that characterize payments to labor and capital in the groundfishing industry, recognize the importance of these alternative forms of capital without explicitly defining them as we have. Instead, here and elsewhere in their text, they differentiate between "kinship and capitalist vessels," and describe how "kinship vessels are better positions for investment than capitalist vessels." During boom periods in the fisheries, the share system results in some of the income that would return to capital--to the vessel--under a strict wage payment system instead returning to labor--the crew--whether the vessel is family owned and operated or part of a capitalist fleet. On kinship vessels, this capital is then held in reserve by crew and can be accessed again during years of reduced catches.

This is less liable to occur under current conditions. Not only is capital not likely to return to the vessel as it becomes more difficult to enforce the mobilization and use of alternative forms of capital within the fishery, but these alternative forms of capital are crucial in accessing other sectors that provide buffers to fishers and their families during downturns in fishing stocks, markets, or restrictions that force them to seek other opportunities to cover their expenses in the short term. We can visually portray how alternative forms of capital forge relationships between the MGF and other economic alternatives as follows:



This representation indicates the extent to which these alternative forms of capital are important in linking the groundfishing industry and groundfishers into wider economic sectors. It suggests that as long as a healthy MGF exists--one that continues to promote the generation, mobilization, and use of alternative forms of capital--individuals operating within the industry will be able to weather economic and ecological downturns and reproduce the fishery by means of their access to other sectors by drawing on various forms of capital. It is in this context we consider the future of the MGF, particularly its ability to reproduce itself, and the future ability of the United States to continue contributing to the GNP through its exploitation of the oceans.

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Go to Chapter Three, Section A (Portland)

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