Field Notes: Fishing for community

A fisherman and an economist walk into the bar, sit down and… actually it was a swanky meeting room, but at least you are still reading.

I had the opportunity to observe a fisherman and an economist volley back and forth for a few rounds over the definition of the community this past week. The fisherman was the only non-NGO, academic, or government person at the table. It was the end of the day and the fisherman was frustrated at questions from an economist pushing him for how he would define community. The fisherman response was perceptive for what he anticipated: “Now you are going to make me define what community means in order to go fishing.”

The economist continued to push for a clear definition-what is the definition of community? His question came from a place of wanting to figure out what it was so that he could think about how to protect fishing communities. For the fisherman, the idea that yet another bureaucratic box called community might need to be built in order to justify his access to the sea was too much.

A Canadian community-based fisheries organizer in the room pointed out that the only way to receive the privilege to go fishing in Canada is to join an association. Could it be that the only way for small-boat fishermen to fish in the future will be to cooperate as part of a community? The answer may well be yes. Then how is community to be defined in a way that does not become excusive to the point that it marginalizes some of the very people that community-based approaches to management are meant to support? What are the costs and benefits of having it defined at all?

To be clear, a definition of fishing community already exists in federal fisheries management. Taken from the language of National Standard 8 of the Magnuson Stevens Act, the US Government defines fishing community as, “a community that is substantially dependent on or substantially engaged in the harvest or processing of fishery resources to meet social and economic needs, and includes fishing vessel owners, operators, and crew, and fish processors that are based in such communities. A fishing community is a social or economic group whose members reside in a specific location and share a common dependency on commercial, recreational, or subsistence fishing or on directly related fisheries-dependent services and industries (for example, boatyards, ice suppliers, tackle shops).”

Useful? Maybe, but just for starters the idea that members of a community must reside in a specific location demonstrates the limitations of this thinking. Are groups of fishermen who are not groundfishing (but are still lobstering) or who live in places no longer “substantially dependent” on fishing still considered part of a fishing community?

I suggest avoiding any attempt to build a box called “fishing community.” Instead, we should get comfortable with the idea of having to remain responsive to the multitude of ways that groups organize over time to achieve a collective vision for the future.

Here is how it can work. Seek out people who have ideas about the future. Who is forward looking, yet has a sense of the continuity of their place however broadly defined? Spend time getting educated about the group of people they are working with to achieve a common vision. Consider this person, and the people they work with as a self-defined community.

Here are some of the island and remote coastal communities I have come to know. There are occupational communities-for example, fishermen, teachers; communities of people who fish a particular way-draggers, pot haulers, gill netters, long liners; communities of people who fish a particular geographic area-Iselsford lobstermen; communities of interest-historical society members; people who live in close proximity-Long Islanders; and communities who share a common goal across a broad geography based on a set of experiences-Maine islanders. Community may take many, many forms that are impossible to predict. All of these communities can overlap and may be functioning at the same time.

This approach contains assumptions that are important to talk about: it does not privilege purely nostalgic communities-looking only to celebrate what used to be; it recognizes the importance of working with leaders who move groups of people forward; it suggests that one person is not a community; it recognizes that people can participate in multiple communities at the same time and even shift how they associate with communities based on the goals that they seek to achieve. For example, when is it best to emphasize the uniqueness of one Maine island (ask Chebeague islanders when they worked to secede from Cumberland) or to align with other islands as a community of Maine islanders (to fight school consolidation)?

The role of organizations that work to support the survival of fishing communities is to develop as many relationships as possible on the coast and islands, to figure out who the formal and informal leaders are, and then to understand the makeup of the communities they participate in. The next step is to listen to find out what is holding back a self-defined community from achieving their vision. Is it an extra set of hands? Access to capital? Access to fish? Access to markets? An amplified voice in political decision making? There are endless ways that support can be provided if we listen closely. 

Rather than working to legislate something called a fishing community into a more restrictive or less accurate box than already exists, perhaps the role of organizations working to assist fishing communities and/or advise the government on how to ensure the survival of fishing communities might develop a process for acknowledging the diversity of fishing communities that exist today and that may emerge in the future.

Rob Snyder is vice-president of programs at the Island Institute.