By Heidi Glaesel Frontani

From 1995-1996, I engaged in 13 months of field research on nearshore, indigenous marine resource management in Kenya and Tanzania (11 and 2 months respectively) using semi-structured interviews (most in Swahili) and participant-observation. I was based at a marine conservation office, but spent many weeks visiting and living with fishers and their relatives. My research involved determining the nature and extent of an indigenous marine management system and fledgling co-management initiatives near marine protected areas, as well as documenting changes in catch and fishing method over time. The main groups involved in marine fisheries were Swahili (Bajuni, Wapemba, and others) and Mijikenda (Giriama, Digo, and others) men. A small number of women were involved in fishing in the southern most portions of Kenya and in Tanzania. While in East Africa I was questioned by several fishers about the state of marine fisheries management in the United States. I had to admit that I knew little. When I returned to the U.S., I wanted to find out not only for myself but also for those who had so generously offered their assistance with my work in East Africa.

Fishers, fisheries officer, and the author near Mombasa, Kenya, 1996.

I have spent the last several summers learning about marine fisheries management in North America. I have focused my studies on the eastern shores of the U.S. and Canada— specifically, the major ports of New England in the U.S. and Nova Scotia, Canada as well as a few sites in the Florida Keys and coastal North Carolina. As in East Africa, I used library research, interviews with fishers and fisheries officials, attendance at fisheries management meetings, and going to sea with researchers and fishers as my means of data collection. By March 2004, I had conducted more than 60 semi-structured interviews at fisheries management meetings, in people’s offices, homes, and at sea. Interviews varied from 30 minutes to more than three hours, averaging 45 to 90 minutes. I took notes during but did not tape interviews.

There were many differences between the North American and East African fisher communities. Most obvious, perhaps, was the infrastructure of the locales under consideration (i.e., roads, marine structures, regulatory oversight, etc.). However, I was surprised in many ways at just how much the fishing communities in the U.S. and Canada resembled those in Kenya and Tanzania. Fishers in one area often know others working hundreds of miles away; I could be sent to a community with just a name and be welcomed into strangers’ homes (yes, even in the U.S.!). Fishers on both continents were very willing to share information, take me to sea, and felt angered, frustrated, and betrayed by the fisheries management system.

The fishing communities in East Africa and eastern North America share many concerns about fisheries management even though they differ considerably in terms of annual income, standard of living, and volume of fish captured. Key among these shared concerns are:  

a)                data collection and use (namely the accuracy of data; degree to which qualitative, anecdotal, fisher-generated data is valued; and the interpretation of data to be used for marine policy),

b)                the level of respect shown towards fishers by managing bodies and their perceived fairness in dealing with sub-groups of fishers, and

c)                the degree to which fishers can meaningfully participate in “bottom-up” management initiatives and the amount of time that regulators are willing to spend at sea.

Data Collection and Interpretation of Data for Marine Policy Making

There are serious and persistent points of contention regarding data for marine fisheries. In the case of Kenya, data accuracy is a severe problem. “Scouts” working for Kenya’s Fisheries Department are responsible for recording catch data by kilogram, per month, per fish landing. Few scouts indicate species in their catch data, but generally do differentiate between finfish and shellfish. The scouts severely underreport catches. My studies revealed that only 15 percent of the small-scale marine fisheries catch was recorded (Glaesel 1997). This gross underreporting had several causes, namely:

--Lack of incentives for scouts to record catch data properly. There were no pay raises for good work or demerits for poorly filled out reports. One fish scout turned in a report of “10,000 kilograms” for his landing site each and every month—but he checked in at best once a month at the landing and was widely known to be a fulltime farmer.)

--Underpayment of fish scouts, such that most had two or more other income earning ventures that kept them from working at reporting the catch. At the main landing at which I worked, the fish scout sold second-hand clothing on the side.

--Fish scouts were not trained to calculate catch estimates for times they were not physically present at the landing, such as weekends, nights, or days they were absent.

 Underreporting caused both the government and outside agencies, such as the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), to underestimate the value of the marine fisheries sector (Glaesel 1997). The government seemed most interested in having catch data to, “have something to show the donors…they like numbers,” in the words of one official. Indeed, user participation is increasingly one of the conditionalities for development aid (Hauk and Sowman 2003).

Like scouts, officials were generally bored with their jobs. Though the officials were certainly financially more secure than scouts, they also sought means to supplement their income when possible. The most reliable and detailed fisheries data was collected by successful fishmongers and independent scientists but, given a lack of incentives or institutional structures through which to share such information, this data never made its way into the official fisheries reports.

In the U.S. and Canada, as in the Kenya and Tanzania, data collection is undertaken by regional (state, provincial) officials and varies in quality. Data collection and interpretation is highly contested and is rarely informed in any meaningful way by fishers’ knowledge (Finlayson 1994). In Canada, harbor agents collect catch data that is cross-checked with data collected at sea by official observers, and is also cross-checked with data contained in fishers’ logbooks. Vessel trip reports in the U.S. are cross-checked in a similar fashion. Fishers’ logbooks are widely recognized as unreliable sources of data. Fishers provide required information to officials, but fear reporting accurately will lead to closings of their favored fishing grounds. Fishers in the U.S. and Canada “high grade,” or throw overboard dead and dying catch comprised of less desirable species and/or undersized target species, in order to land only the largest, highest value fish for the catch limits set (Dobbs 2000). None of this information makes it into logbooks. Fishery observers who collect catch and by-catch data are generally present on no more than 10 percent of commercial fishing vessels, often only 5 percent or less. Observers keep dishonest fishers in line, but only to an extremely limited extent (Dobbs 2000).

Scientists and staff survey fish stocks off the east coast of the U.S.  

In the U.S., marine fish surveys are generally undertaken at the state level for a few days twice a year to determine changes in stocks. For consistency in sampling, trawls similar in design to those used when trawl surveys were first started are used. These trawls (#36 Yankee Otter Trawls) generally catch far fewer fish than could be captured using modern techniques (Smith 1994). Fishermen view the survey trawls as a way of intentionally underreporting stocks, meant to drive small fishers out of business by justifying the setting of days at sea (DAS) and total allowable catch (TAC) at artificially low levels (Dobbs 2000).

In East Africa, fishers are often told that they will benefit from the establishment of marine protected areas because these closed areas will serve as breeding grounds for fish that will then “spillover” into waters that can be legally fished. The “spillover effect” was first noted in Southeast Asia (Alcala and Russ 1990, Rowley 1994 ), but then was not successfully replicated for years. Although studies in and around Mombasa Marine Park in Kenya have recently confirmed the effect (McClanahan and Mangi 2000), in the opinion of most East African fishers, this effect does not compensate for the permanent loss of prime fishing grounds, and they don’t feel that it is genuine on the part of scientists to claim that marine parks benefit fishers.

Fishers have had a hard time getting data they collect (or information they believe to be true based on their experience of countless days at sea) considered and included in official reports and management plans. In all four countries, fishers believe that regulators undervalue their knowledge of marine life and the sea. Perhaps the classic case of the danger of ignoring anecdotal fisher knowledge was the 1992 collapse of the Canadian cod fishery. Scientists in Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) calculated a total allowable catch for a disputed North Atlantic fishing zone, the accuracy of which was challenged by inshore fishers based on their observations at sea. In the end, the fishers’ informal data would have served as a better predictor of the unfortunate fate of the cod stocks (Matthews 1995). The problem of failure to incorporate qualitative data into management plans goes well beyond the four countries considered in this paper and was the topic of both a special issue of Ecological Applications published in 2000, and an international conference, “Putting Fishers’ Knowledge to Work,” held at the University of British Columbia in 2001.

The prevailing attitude among commercial fishers in the U.S. is that the government is doing all it can to drive the majority of fishers out of business in order to have a more manageable small fleet of large vessels rather than the present mix of large and small boats. As evidence of the government’s intentions, fisher leaders in the northeastern U.S. point to the recent discussions of the US Senate Sub-Committee on Oceans and Fisheries on whether to lift the moratorium on individual transferable quotas (ITQs) which fishers believe would give small quotas to small-boat fishers, forcing them to sell out to big business (Parker 2000). While some scientists (Pauley and Maclean 2003) and green groups, including Greenpeace, agree with the small-boat fishers on the issue of ITQs (King 1996), environmentalists in the U.S. tend to view the fisheries management system as harmful to the natural world and primarily serving the interests of commercial fishers (National Academy of Public Administration 2002).

In Kenya and Tanzania, as in the U.S., the national-level fisheries institutions are viewed by small scale and subsistence fishers as hostile towards their socio-economic interests and in favor of other stakeholder groups such as recreational fishers, environmental groups, and the hotel and tourism industries (Glaesel 2000). This perception holds true in Asia as well (Nichols 1999).

Interpretation of data for policy making is highly contested in all four countries. In the U.S. fisher groups as well as green organizations have resorted to suing the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS). NMFS is currently bogged down in dozens of lawsuits. Whereas an average of one or two lawsuits were brought against NMFS annually throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the number rose to 10 by the mid-1990s, and to the mid 20s by the turn of the century (National Academy of Public Administration 2002). Lawsuits have bred anger and contempt toward commercial fishers, who along with recreational fishers have brought more than half of all cases against NMFS, and reduced the chances for meaningful dialogue and the productive exchange of ideas among groups (National Academy of Public Administration 2002). Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans has similarly experienced fisheries lawsuits though not to the extent of its more litigious neighbor to the south.

Respect towards Fishers and Fairness in Dealing with Fisher Sub-Groups

In the U.S. and Canada, as in Kenya and Tanzania, fishers using similar methods in given locations are frequently from a similar ethnic background. For example, net fishers in Provincetown, Massachussetts are largely of Portuguese heritage, and most shellfishers in New Bedford, Mass. are so-called “square heads” of Norwegian heritage. Every group can be critical of others.

Fishing regulations generally impact fisher groups by method, making ethnicity an issue in marine fisheries in the U.S., Canada, Kenya, and Tanzania. In Kenya, Somali refugees and Tanzanians from the island of Pemba are viewed as having unfair advantages over local Swahili and Mijikenda fishers, because Somali shark net fishers have larger, motorized boats and Pemba beach seine fishers can effectively bribe local police, who themselves are mostly ethnically Kamba (Glaesel 2000). In Canada, many disputes focus on traditional fishing techniques employed by First Nations and perceived “unfair advantages” over fishers of European descent.

In the U.S., Canada, Kenya, and Tanzania, it is not too difficult to find a government official who views fishers as potentially untrustworthy, having relatively little formal education , stereotypically drug-addicted, and typically engaged in criminal activities. Especially in East Africa, environmental education is often seen as a solution to ending the destructive practices of “ignorant” fishers at sea. In reality, environmental education may be an appropriate resource for fishers, but in many cases it is the resource managers who truly need to be better informed. There is a notable lack of knowledge among managers as to the realities of life at sea and the feasiblity of regulations. Too often, managers focus primarily on a product to “prove their accomplishments,” or only seek a way to channel development funds. For example, in the 1990s, the World Wildlife Fund, the United Nations Environmental Program, and other well-respected environmental organizations designed and distributed glossy posters in Swahili and English to fishers and government offices in Kenya, highlighting the plight of sea turtles and dugong in coastal Kenya. However, these programs failed to meaningfully address the predicament facing subsistence fishers whose highly-valued nets have been fouled by marine turtles. To protect their nets and livelihoods, fishers often resort to killing the struggling animals.

Fisher organizations exist, but are often difficult to maintain and may be given little respect by fisheries managers. The groups are often subject to in-fighting based on fishing methods and boat size. Some “fisher groups” (such as the Bamburi-Nyali-Shanzu Fisherman’s Association in the Mombasa Marine Park and Reserve area) may be formed at the request of the government in order to have an acceptable means to channel donor monies. Such organizations are not fully accepted by fishers themselves, who note that the time and effort required by these organizations is frequently in direct contrast to the minor funding provided for their functioning.

Generally, fisheries managers in all countries did not want to work closely with fisher communities or their aging fleets. There were some exceptions, but success was limited. These included some fine programs, such as collaborative research among fishers, university and state scientists in New England, and now-defunct community liaison programs in Nova Scotia and Kenya (both terminated due to budgetary constraints). A Community Wildlife Officer program in some of  Kenya’s marine protected areas also offered hope for bridging the cultural gap between fishers and officials, but ended when the World Bank’s Protected Areas Wildlife Project (PAWS) funds expired (Snelson 1993).

Authenticity in Participation

Although expressions of dissatisfaction varied from North America to East Africa, fishers in all four countries voiced widespread discontent with the participatory process currently in place in marine management. Fishers in the U.S. and Canada have a long history of freedom of speech and assembly, unlike Kenya and Tanzania. In North America, fishers are much more likely to hold public protests such as marches, taking over public office buildings, or actively engaging in letter-writing campaigns. By contrast, for much of the 20th century it was illegal in Kenya to say anything negative against the president of the country, or to go on strike. For some years, Kenya also had a “shoot to kill” policy for fish and wildlife poachers and wardens were given authority to execute poachers to protect the country’s natural treasures.

Literacy is a factor in fisheries management. Kenya and Tanzania have far lower literacy rates than the U.S. and Canada, and coastal East Africa lags behind mainland Kenya and Tanzania in educational attainment. North American fishers commonly hold a high school degree—many have college educations and some even hold university degrees from Harvard, Duke, and other highly regarded institutions of higher learning. The number of fishers with advanced degrees is relatively small, and these people often serve as leaders of local fisher organizations, expending great effort to attend regional fisheries conferences,  to express their position on fish stocks to regional council members or seek seats on regional councils or advisory boards. They work tirelessly among fisheries officials to raise awareness of the plight of small-scale commercial fishers, but often wonder if their efforts are in vain. They are challenged to “Fish or Cut Bait” with respect to the fisheries management system but find limited access for public input at council meetings, and often find the process intimidating (McCay and Creed 1999). In addition, fishers must take off from work and pay their own way to the council meeting site (generally, an expensive hotel in a large city). Unless comments are in the form of a well-prepared statement representing the work of entire groups of fishers, they are very unlikely to have any impact.

Fishers in the U.S. describe the fisheries management system as “broken.”  After emerging from several hours of council meetings in the summer of 2001, some fishers from Cape Cod had the following thoughts to offer on the council system:

 Regional councils are 100 percent unresponsive to the fishing community and have absolutely no connection to bottom-up management,

and

Fishers leave each meeting with fisheries managers dispirited, disconnected, dejected, demoralized, and distressed that they have not been understood.

Fishers would like a participation role that is more empowering in terms of what Barrow and Murphree (2001) refer to as the co-management spectrum.

East African fishers tend to have much less confidence in dealing with fisheries officials. Men who are outgoing and confident at sea become deferential and meek before officials, reinforcing the officials’ notion that the fishers are not useful sources of marine environmental data.

Fishers in all four countries find it difficult to get fisheries officials to come to sea to investigate disputed official stock assessments. In the mid-1990s, Canadian research vessel (RV) data showed a notable decline in fish populations while commercial fishing databases showed a considerable increase in population. Similar data mismatches occurred in New England waters. In each case, commercial fishers expressed extreme frustration with the slow response of officials in investigating the large discrepancies.

When questioned as to their hesitance to go to sea, officials in all countries expressed concerns for safety, as well as with comfort of travel. They recognized that fishers had relatively high mortality rates and very few officials were interested in engaging in such activities.

Often, fisher-official contact has been mandated, involved a degree of coercion, or been viewed as the lesser evil among existing options. Two U.S. fishers recently became involved, with some trepidation, with the well-funded, multi-year, Pew Oceans Commission national review of ocean policies. If they refused to serve as commissioners there might be no commercial fisher representatives on the commission or others with less experience might be chosen.

While fishers welcome these uncomfortable interactions with commissions and fishery councils (U.S.), and in stakeholder meetings (all countries), they recognize that such interactions have their limitations. In the highly contested matters of marine protected areas, stakeholder meetings must be held in a timely fashion and before an area is designated for protection. However, even after the mid-1980s, when co-management was widely embraced, many marine protected areas were established without active community participation, leading to disasterous results. Mombasa National Marine Park and Reserve (Kenya, gazetted in 1988), the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary (U.S., established in 1990), and the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale Sanctuary (U.S., established in 1992) were all created using a passive participatory process that simply informed people of what to do, and in the end, each required years of negotiation to gain greater community acceptance. In the Florida and Hawaiian cases, Congress mandated the creation of the sanctuaries in response to pressure from environmental groups, circumventing the normal channels for creating marine protected areas. Subsequently, each sanctuary required a period of six to seven years to work out conflicts among user groups with a stake in the sanctuary waters (Cicin-Sain and Knecht 2000). The Mombasa National Marine Park and Reserve complex drawn up by the Kenya Wildlife Service, met with resistance from fishers that ranged from infrequent newspaper editorials to poaching and a violent attack on a ranger. Fishers sought for years to have the marine protected area reduced in size. Despite some unfortunate violence, fishers have had some success in achieving their goals of reduction in size of protected areas (Glaesel 1997).

Stakeholder meetings or compensation for lost access to areas of the sea may not generate a vested interest for fishers in a marine protected area if the meetings are perceived to be for the benefit of others, such as managers who simply need to report that they held meetings, or if compensation is untimely or perceived as unjust. In the Kenyan case, fishers were asked at a 1994 stakeholder meeting to present their most urgent material needs for possible compensation. The fishers asked for one larger boat that could be shared among the community members to fish beyond the reef, ice facilities to help preserve their catch, a shelter to keep their gear and clothing (which was increasingly being lost to theft), and a marketing platform. The fishers were informed that a boat was too costly, but that their other requests would be considered. Two years later the community received a small number of mangrove poles to build a shelter with the marketing platform they had requested. Building materials arrived so slowly that in mid-1999, five years after the stakeholder meeting, the shelter still stood incomplete (personal communication with Dr. Tim McClanahan, Director of the Coral Reef Conservation Project, Kenya). During the same period, fishers saw a boardwalk, watchtower, and other amenities put in place in the same area to serve mainly tourists, the park service, and other stakeholders. It would be difficult to find a Kenyan fisher near the Mombasa Marine Park and Reserve who would not be happy to see the protected area degazetted tomorrow.

Watchtower at the Mombasa Marine Park and Reserve.

Conclusion

Major constraints to a more participatory system with meaningful dialogue across user groups are financial and cultural:

1. Fishers in all four countries tend to be most interested in helping their own group (generally defined in terms of fishing method and/or ethnicity), even when claiming to represent all small-scale fishers in the region. There is great mistrust among fishing subgroups. State agencies in all countries grossly underestimate the degree to which fishing communities are divided and often come up with management plans for one (non-existent) “fisher community.” Fishing organizations can be quite divisive and politically charged. The Cape Cod Commercial Hook Fishermen’s Association has promoted an image of hook and line fishers as environmentally sound but excluded net fishers, enraging draggermen, gillnetters, and others.
2. Current institutional structures and actual or perceived class differences work against meaningful collaboration. Fisheries officials in all four countries need incentives to engage in sensitivity training and work exchange programs. Too often, regulators show obvious disinterest in or even distaste for what fishers have to contribute throughout the stakeholder process. For example, raises and bonuses could be based in part on the number of fisher leaders who have been invited and come to give workshops for officials on the challenges and realities of life at sea. Additional pay incentives/disincentives could exist for officials who agree to (or don’t) to spend a day at sea to get first hand experience of fishers’ problems. Compensation should also be made to fishers as consultants for hosting the officials on their boats.
3. In the current systems, there are no formulas for transferring experiential hours at sea into the classroom hours leading to the advanced degrees generally required to hold various government and fisheries management posts, thus barring many highly qualified fishers from positions in which their anecdotal knowledge could be of great value.

Developing successful environmental policy often has less to do with the environment and more to do with people. Marine management is about managing fishers, NOT fish, though officials aspire to impact fish populations through the actions and activities of fishers. The search for solutions to correct ineffective management regimes will require learning from the past as well as creating a realignment of the relationships between regulators and resource users.

LITERATURE CITED

Alcala, A.C. and G.R. Russ 1990. A Direct Test of the Effects of Protective Management on Abundance and Yield of Tropical Marine Resources. Journal Consieul Internationale du Exploration de Mer. 46: 40-47.

Barrow, Edmund and Marshall Murphree. 2001. “Community Conservation:  From Concept to Practice. In Hulme, David and Marshall Murphree, Eds. African Wildlife and Livelihoods: The Promise and Performance of Community Conservation. Oxford: James Currey.  

Cicin-Sain Biliana and Robert W. Knecht 2000. The Future of U.S. Ocean Policy: Choices for the New Century. Washington: Island Press.  

Dobbs, David 2000. The Great Gulf: Fishermen, Scientists, and the Struggle to Revive the World’s Greatest Fisheries. Washington: Island Press/Shearwater Books. 

Finlayson, Alan Christopher 1994. Fishing for Truth: A Sociological Analysis of Northern Cod Stock Assessment from 1977-1990. St Johns: Institute of Sociological and Ecological Research, Memorial University, Newfoundland.  

Glaesel, Heidi 1997. Fishers, Parks, and Power: The Socio-Environmental Dimensions of Marine Resource Decline and Protection on the Kenya Coast. PhD dissertation, University of Wisconsin-Madison.  

Glaesel, Heidi 2000. State and Local Resistance to the Expansion of Two Environmentally Harmful Marine Fishing Techniques in Kenya, Society and Natural Resources 13: 321-338.  

Hauck, Maria and Merle Sowman 2003. Waves of Change: Coastal and Fisheries Co-Management in South Africa. University of Cape Town Press.  

King, Rob 1996. Sinking Fast: How Factory Trawlers are Destroying U.S. Fisheries and Marine Ecosystems. Greenpeace Report.  

Matthews, D.R. “Common versus Open Access,” The Ecologist, 25, March/April, May/June 1995, pp. 86-96. 

McCay, Bonnie J. and C.F. Creed 1999. Fish or Cut Bait: How to Participate in the Fisheries Management System. The New Jersey Sea Grant Program pamphlet. 

McClanahan, T.R. and S. Mangi 2000. Spillover of Exploitable Fishes from a Marine Park and its Effects on the Adjacent Fishery. Ecological Applications. 10(6): 1792-1805. 

McGoodwin, J.R. 1990. Crisis in the World's Fisheries: People, Problems, and Policies. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 

National Academy of Public Administration 2002. Courts, Congress, and Constituencies: Managing Fisheries by Default. A report for Congress and the U.S. Department of Commerce National Marine Fisheries Service.  

Nichols, Karen 1999. Coming to Terms with “Integrated Coastal Management”: Problems of Meaning and Method in a New Arena of Resource Regulation. The Professional Geographer, 51(3): 388-399. 

Parker, Paul 2000. “Let’s Not Sell the Ocean” Boston Globe, 5/5/2000, p. A23.  

Pauly, Daniel and Jay Maclean 2003. In a Perfect Ocean: The State of Fisheries and Ecosystems in the North Atlantic Ocean. Washington: Island Press.  

Rowley, R.J. 1994. Marine Reserves in Fisheries Management. Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems. 4: 233-254. 

Smith, Tim 1994. Scaling Fisheries: The Science of Measuring the Effects of Fishing, 1855-1955. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Snelson, Deborah 1993. Protected Area Conservation Strategy: Assessing the Training Needs of Protected Area Management in Africa. Country Report: Kenya. Washington: United States Agency for International Development, World Wide Fund for Nature, African Wildlife Foundation, and the Wildlife Conservation Society. 

Weber, Michael 2002. From Abundance to Scarcity: A History of U.S. Marine Fisheries Policy. Washington: Island Press.

Heidi Glaesel Frontani is Associate Professor of Geography and Environmental Studies at Elon University. This paper derives from her fieldwork in coastal Kenya in 1995-1996 and in the eastern USA and Canada in the summers of 2000-2003.