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Selected review of Social Research Literature

The following annotation regards characteristics of methods employed by social science researchers for the collection of Fish Harvester Ecological Knowledge. The first goal of this research team is to construct a reliable instrument for the collection of this type of local knowledge. Properly collected and integrated with scientific knowledge, Fish Harvester Ecological Knowledge may give insight into the St. Georges' Bay ecosystem previously unknown. The following was compiled by Ray MacIsaac, an ISAR student of social science, under the guidance of Dr. Anthony Davis and Dr. Daniel MacInnes.

 

Impacts of the Fishing Moratorium on the Newfoundland Outport Communities Betts, Patricia _ from Rural Resources Rural Development Conference Proceedings, 1997

The methodology listed for the author's ongoing study is quite involved. Some of the key points useful in the context of the St. Georges' Bay study are listed:

  • In-depth, semi-structured interviews carried out around the kitchen table, on wharves, in fishing sheds, and on the water.
  • Interviews conducted by teams consisting of one natural scientist and one social scientist.
  • Retrospective monitoring paired researchers, TEK interview teams often 3 or 4 researchers.
  • Variety of techniques used to gather data known as Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) and Rural Rapid Appraisal (RRA).
  • Features of PRA and RRA include; Spending time scoping out the community, talking to the residents informally, participating in community activities when invited, the use of formal and informal maps in addition to questionnaires.
  • TEK group used tape recorders.
  • TEK interviews concentrated on fish morphology, development of different fishing technologies, fishing grounds, fishing strategies, fish stocks and assemblages, and fish declines both inshore and offshore.
  • Interviews usually completed in one sitting.
  • Extensive questionnaire included over 300 hundred questions developed from the retrospective monitoring. Included were questions of establishment of family in community, development and change in inheritance patterns, land use and tenure, sea use and tenure, agriculture practices, forestry practices, berrying, fishing techniques. Semi-structured over two or three sessions.
  • Key informants identified as those who could trace back four generations, very often the key informants were senior citizens, some over the age of 80 years.

 

Common in Custom, Uncommon in Advantage: Common Property, Local Elites, and Alternative Approaches to Fisheries Management Davis, A and Bailey, C from Society and Natural Resources May-June 1996

This paper begins with conflict between Limited Entry License (LEL) holders and non license holders of the snow crab fishery of Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. A management regime of Individual Transferable Quotas (ITQ) was introduced for this fishery in the early 1990's and is the source of conflict.

In a critique of this form of regime the authors cite a lack of expression from, or consideration of, small-boat livelihoods rooted in the community in which the fishing activity is based.

ITQ regime appears to embrace obvious economic and property designation factors, while overlooking the idea that fishing and ocean resource harvesting is also an expression of social relations between kin and familiars. Inequities greater than what already exist may become prevalent in such management regimes.

Marginalization (factory workers, boat crew, women) may become more prevalent in such a management regime, with entry limited by capital investment, marginalized segments of the community are unlikely to become boat owners and license holders.

Traditional Use Rights Fishery (TURF) or Customary Access Rights (CAR) themes are discussed in paper. TURF being the traditional unwritten laws observed by fishers in a community regulating who fishes where, based on tradition and generational antiquity. Violators of TURF are sanctioned in ways that local custom dictates

Governments for the most part have shown resistance in empowering coastal communities with management of shared management for control and access to coastal aquatic resources. Notably excepted is the case of Japan, where coastal rights have empowered communities, with co-operative efforts and co-management regimes.

The authors warn of possible inherent risks involved in a TURF based management regime, namely that tradition is often the basis for marginalization of women and ethnic groups. The Issue of power should not be ignored.

 

Folk management in the oyster fishery of the U.S. gulf of Mexico: Dyer and Leard From: Folk Management in the World's Fishery ed. McGoodwin

Not apparently relevant to our study.

Emphasis on the concept of natural resource communities (NRC) and whether Nrc's are open access or closed access.

Study of Oyster fishery comparisons of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. With the contrast of Louisiana and Mississippi similar to Florida and Alabama. The oyster fishery in Louisiana and Florida are closed access, yields are substantially higher than the open access regimes of the other two states, also there is more stability in the yearly yields. Alabama and Mississippi see more mobility in their fishery with new entrant and exit fishers. Florida and Louisiana differ in that the regulation of entry to the fishery in Florida is informal yet effective, Louisiana has government legislated fishing rights vis a vis lease agreements with fishers.

 

Two Tales of a Fish: Social Construction of Indigenous Knowledge Among Atlantic Canadian Salmon Fishers Felt, Lawrence _ from Folk Management In The World's Fisheries Dyer & McGoodwin, Eds. 1994

Cited from Nakashima explanation of folk knowledge of TEK ' Isolated people relying heavily on a marine resource for subsistence develop intimate knowledge of the resource'

Methodology
"To collect information, semistructured interviews were completed with seventy one commercial salmon fishers. The interviews were typically done on stages or in fishers homes. A similiar format was utilized in which opinions were gathered on the status of the stocks, reasons for any decline, indicators fishers used to detect decline, and strategies necessary to rebuild stocks if they were thought to be in decline . The interviews invariably expanded to include a wide range of subjects and opinions ranging from changing lifestyles in the communities to frustrations with government. On many occasions, interviews occurred in the form of a directed discussion between the researcher and two of three fishers simultaneously. This approach was utilized particularly when fishers were returning from hauling nets. The majority of the interviews were completed between November 1989 and November 1991.
In addition to the interviews, observations were carried out at several resource workshops convened by the Canadian national and Newfoundland provincial governments between December 1984 and March 1992. These workshops included one sponsored by the Atlantic Salmon Advisory Board (ASAB), the Canadian government's primary consulting mechanism for users of the salmon resource, as well as numerous less formal workshops on salmon management. Government materials including reports, media releases, and scientific assessments were made available to the researcher. In addition, interviews were completed with union personnel representing salmon fishers, as well as with representatives of recreational salmon fishing associations." (1994:258,259)

This is the breadth of the methodology listed, there is not mention of how the seventy-one fishers were selected or from where they were selected.

 

Comanagement Felt, Neis, McCay From: Northwest Atlantic Groundfish: Management Alternatives for Sustainable Fisheries, Wilson, J., Ed.

Comanagement regimes that incorporate resource users into management of resource could help to prevent the spiral of ineffectual management, stock decline, increased capital costs, and heightened cynicism by harvesters and processors that currently characterizes many fisheries.

Three types of reform proposed in response to current regimes;
  1. An expanded scientific effort and a closer fusion of science and management as found in such innovative approaches as adaptive management
  2. Privatization of fishing rights allowing the market to allocate fisheries resources and perhaps provide incentive for conservation
  3. Organizational and political change that bring resource users and dependent communities more directly into the management and science process

The authors of this paper suggest the third option as the best option, admitting that all three types are neither diametrically opposed or independent of the others.

Comanagement seemingly is not simply about more advisory power, but in a stricter sense refers to the sharing of power to make decisions, as well as accountability for the consequences of those decisions, with a government agency.

The most significant benefit noted of co-management is the heightened acceptance and compliance towards management rules. Meaningful participation in the formulation and revision of these rules by stakeholders may result. Generally referred to as legitimacy.

 

Fisheries Science and Local Ecological Knowledge in the Northwest Atlantic: Building Bridges, Felt, Lawrence & Neis, Barbara _ Paper prepared for the Japan-Canada fisheries conference, STFXU September 18-22, 1995

Traditional ecological knowledge and local ecological knowledge (TEK and LEK) are compared and contrasted in this paper. With TEK leaning towards a meaning of understanding indigenous peoples collective knowledge system the authors feel the LEK term better suited for knowledge system gathering for Newfoundland study.

Authors contend in paper marginalization of LEK has occurred in the emergence of technological fisheries science. This situation, the authors relate, appears to coincide with the 1977 federal government decision to extend Canada's ocean boundary to 200 miles. Three major factors are listed as factors towards this marginalization.
  1. With the 200 mile declaration there is a huge influx of non-native Newfoundlanders into science branch of DFO St. John's.
  2. Proliferation of rules and regulations upon harvesting practices
  3. Emergence of quantitative population estimates in stock assessment methodology

Paper summarizes advances in relations between fishers and scientists in recent years. The sentinel fishery is cited as a co-operative effort among the two groups. Skepticism to the project is related in the following quotes: from a fisher "would you hold a lottery to hire someone for a job" from a scientist "research design insufficiently controls gear placement and various measures of effort so as to make it difficult to relate one years catch with those of another".

 

Fishing for Truth: Ch.6 Fishermen in Fishery Science Finlayson, A. 1994 ISER

Methods for gaining and integrating folk knowledge into fisheries studies not addressed in this publication "The relative merits of this argument (although worth detailed study) are outside this work" (1994, pg.103). What is quickly gleaned from this volume is the apparent lack of interest on the part of DFO scientists to consider folk knowledge as worthy of imparting any value to assessment models. The following passage from former director of science branch in St. John's, Dr. Edward Sandeman:
"For the most part the majority of them (fishermen) have a litany of mumbo-jumbo which they bring forward every time you talk to them. About where the fish are and why they're not here. They relate it to berries on the trees. Sometimes observations of that sort have some value such as 'when the wind is such and such a way you get catches' that's acceptable".
This may be the most telling.
"When I was going around trying to understand a bit more about Newfoundland and the fishery, I just got completely turned off by inshore fishermen and their views". (1994, pg.110)
 
In an interview with another scientist with perhaps a different attitude about fishers and their role to play Henry Lear states:
"You don't have to give every fisherman a logbook. You take half a dozen from LaScie and a half a dozen from St. Anthony's and a sample from other major fishery centers. That will pretty well give you a fix. That will tell you what's going on." (1994, pg.112). Lear is a native of Newfoundland.

 

Integrating Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Management with Environmental Impact Assessment Johannes, R.E., _ from Traditional Ecological Knowledge: Cases and Concepts, Inglis, Julian Ed. 1993 IDRC

Johannes gives four perspectives for systematically obtaining and organizing TEK. These perspectives or frames of reference should be the focus of research in the Environmental Impact Assessment.

These frames of reference are: (1) Taxonomic (2) Spatial (3) Temporal (4) Social

Taxonomic: Many indigenous people know only local names for most of the localized flora and fauna, researchers must become aware of what these species are and familiar with the local names. The local significance of plant and animal as well as rock/soil taxon should be determined, researchers may overlook the importance of some sources of food, medicine, structural material, tools, soil-improvers, totems or other sacred entities.

Spatial: Local knowledge may make it possible to survey and map in a few days what would otherwise take months. Indigenous knowledge of the distribution and characteristics of different soil types and the plants and animals associated with each can provide effective shortcuts for researchers investigating the local resource base.

Temporal: Indigenous people are usually well versed in the timing of significant biological events, both plant and animal. These events may occur over a short period of time thus the researcher may not witness the event without the guidance and knowledge of local people.

Social: Included in this frame of reference pertains to the way locals perceive, use, allocate, transfer, and manage local resources. TEK cannot be used properly in isolation from the social and political structure in which it is embedded.

Methods: Johannes includes a section on methods, it speaks more as a warning and guideline suggestion than a hard and fast methodology. Researchers not well informed on environmental subjects pose a problem. Indigenous experts in TEK are usually proud of this knowledge and are not likely to be enthusiastic about imparting it to investigators who obviously do not appreciate the finer points. Biologically unsophisticated researchers are not equipped to determine what portions of the information they obtain are new, important, already well known or implausible. They cannot ask appropriate questions to pursue promising biological leads opened up by the local expert.

Such knowledge, he suggests, should be recorded and evaluated by people who possess an appropriate background in biology, ecology, and resource management, and in the social sciences, which provide the appropriate skills for translating information from one culture to another for addressing the social frame of reference.

A flagrant deficiency in much of the literature on TEK is the absence of any effort to determine its validity. The author suggests a series of relevant questions to which the researcher already knows the answer, plus a series of questions that sound plausible but to which the informant could not possibly know the answer, the hope is to be able to discern the expert from the embellisher.

Johannes also states that even an expert can sometimes be wrong in the information given, so it useful to differentiate between observation and interpretation. While observations of natural phenomena may be acute, the conclusions drawn may not be accurate. Being alert to this helps prevent accepting incorrect information. But by dismissing false interpretations of natural phenomena too quickly, the investigator risks overlooking the possible value of the underlying empirical knowledge.

 

Fishers' Ecological Knowledge and Stock Assessment Neis, Barbara, from How Deep is the Ocean, Ed. Candlow and Corbin, 1997

Essay format, not concerned with journal style methods section.
Some interesting insights and quotes from fishers typified by the following.

" I remember one time I was out there, they had a gill net in our waters and the handline fishery was over. I was just out hunting ducks and I see the gill net, a ballon there so I hauled it up it was mad alive with the biggest kind of fish, twenty- thirty pound fish and to put a cod jigger down there or even a bait at the same time you wouldn't catch one, there was no hope, the fishery was over. I believe that's what we call bottom fish, fish that don't really eat bait. There all just bottom fish moping around the bottom, you know, probably eating crab or whatever and the only way to catch those is with a dragger or gill net." (quote from fisher)

 

Northern Cod Stock Assessment: What can be Learned from Interviewing Users:
Neis, Barbara; Felt, Lawrence; Schneider, David; Haedrich, Richard; Hutchings, Jeffrey; Fischer, Johanne _ DFO Atlantic fisheries research document

Methodology relevant to our study.

Designate study area (in this case Princeton, Bonavista bay to Dildo, Trinity bay NFLD). Sampled from a list of fisheries union membership, 56 interview candidates selected. Stratified by age, vessel size, gear used, species harvested.
Some interviewees selected by snowball method.
Sampling guided by an attempt to cover full study area and most key fishing communities within study boundaries, also willingness of fishers to participate.
Semi-structured interviews lasting 1.5-4 hours.
Interviews guided by interview schedule and shorter questionnaire.
Interviews were tape-recorded and later transcribed.

Opening with demographic information the interviews then proceeded to gather data on the following: Training, effort, catch data from key points in fishers career, all licenses held, vessels operated in career, engine (size), all gear or equipment used in career.

Interviewers also asked of typical seasons, timing of species arrival, areas fished, gear used.

Data collected pertained mostly to cod and cod ecology.

Fishers were divided into three generations of entry into fishery 1) 1920-1939 2) 1940-1969 3) 1970-1989

  • Careers were averaged into start, mid, and end career.
  • Average horsepower and vessel capacity were calculated for each generation.
  • Average number of cod nets and/or traps per generation.
  • Average number of traps per crew per generation.
  • Total number of traps per generation.

Due to variables in career length between generations calculations were made for % change per year in the following: Boat length, boat capacity, engine size, cod nets, and traps. The intervals for the calculation were start career-mid career and mid career- end career.

Authors of this study felt it had the potential to result in more effective stock assessment, contending the following:

  1. Contribute to knowledge of cod behavior, ecology, and stock structure
  2. Help in understanding trends in catchability
  3. Inform future scientific research (i.e.. tagging studies)
  4. Increase awareness of current stock abundance in nearshore areas where data is limited
  5. Increase awareness of interfishery interactions; problems of bycatch from one fishery harming juveniles of another species.

 

Towards an Interdisciplinary Methodology for Collecting and Integrating Fishers Ecological Knowledge into Resource Management Neis, Barbara; Felt, Lawrence; Haedrich, Richard; Schneider, David _ Paper presented at 5th International Symposium on Society and Resource Management, June 7-9, 1994, Fort Collins, Colorado

Ecological knowledge (TEK or LEK) represents at the least a critical supplement to scientific understanding. TEK defined as "The sum of the data and ideas acquired by a human group on its environment as a result of that groups use and occupation of a region over many generations" also cited (A) Contains empirical and conceptual aspects (B) is cumulative over generations (C) dynamic in that it changes in response to socioeconomic, technological and other changes.

This paper relates to the shift away from knowledge based data in the 1970's mention (similiar to previous paper) the quantitative nature of stock assessment. Contend also that journal editors often see TEK studies as anecdotal and request authors of studies with TEK research remove those portions of research before publication of paper.

Methodology for collecting TEK/LEK :
Jose Mailhot is referenced as suggesting the following: "The field of TEK is enormous and no single methodology or study can expect to capture a populations entire TEK " and "TEK must be collected in the language of the population and linked to an entire understanding of the way that populations codifies and organizes its knowledge".
Existing TEK methodologies are listed as: (1) Formal eliciting (2) Triad testing (3) Tape-recorded semi-directed interviews

The authors related the following list of suggestion for incorporation into method.

  • Discourse analysis includes recording conversations between informants
  • Critical to realize difference in gender, age, region, fishing practices, and any other variable that will give differences to responses
  • Sampling strategies need to be sensitive to differences and interview schedules should include questions related to those elements of fishers lives
  • Start at community or regional level and keep interviewing until some saturation in terms of views has been reached
  • Questions should probe for clues as to how someone came to know something
  • Interview alone vs. group for more candid response
  • Organization associations may detract interviewees if perception by fisher of organization to which researcher is affiliated holding conflicting views to those of fisher
  • TEK research may be strengthened by interviewing on fishing grounds (I might add here that in work sheds and on wharves may also elicit similiar results) so to combine with firsthand observation
  • Central element to TEK research should be identification of types of information most appropriate to elicit from fishers as opposed to other sources
  • Precise information will vary due various methods used and technologies employed by individual fishers, useful in answering broad based range of questions e.g. predator-prey relations, spawning etc.

 

Scientific Debates, Lumpy Lumpfish and Slubby Nets: Fisher's Vernacular Knowledge and Adaptive Management Neis, Barbara; Hutchings, Jeffrey; Haedrich, Richard; Felt, Lawrence _ Paper Presented at American Fisheries Society Conference, August 27-31, 1995, Tampa, Florida

Distinction made between TEK and LEK. Whereas TEK associated with indigenous people and the use of resources, LEK has variables not commonly associated with TEK examples cited include gear used, mobility, technological change, formal education, influences of western science and management methods, external regulation by "experts" embedded in government or academia, environment (hence knowledge) mediated by state policies.

Adaptive policies involve the deliberate manipulation of management regimes so as to provide direct experimental tests of which regime is best (Walters et al., 1993: 253).

LEK (in this case fisher's ecological knowledge) not based on random sampling but past experience. Temporal and spatial scales differ from that of academic and government science. Trial and error method that comes from using past experience greatly differs from the often fragmented disciplinary boundaries based on random sampling over broad regions at single points in time.

Methods used in this study:

  • 65 in-depth interviews with fishers of small-scale inshore fishery and intermediate-scale nearshore fishery.
  • Data from interviews compared to and combined with data extracted from fishers logbooks, research vessel survey data, purchase slip data, and archival data.
  • Multi-species research in orientation.

Authors of this paper suggest that fisher ecological knowledge integrated with scientific knowledge may lead to the development of a more "sustainable knowledge".

 

Folk Management and Conservation among small-scale fishers in Buen Hombre Dominican Republic: Stoffle; Halmo; Stoffle; Burpee; from Folk Management in the World Fisheries , Dyer and McGoodwin, Eds. 1994

Focus of this paper is on how collaborative research with local people and government officials combined with satellite technology mapping to help empower natural resource communities.

Data obtained as a result of long term research, beginning in 1985. Researchers used survey interviews, key expert interviews, and focus group interviews that incorporated satellite imagery as a basis for generating discussion. This data integrated with extensive participant observation data and information derived from full access to fisher association records.

Sampling of questions asked expert fishers in key expert interviews:

  1. What do you think are the main threats to the oceans environment?
  2. Do you think it is important to protect marine ecosystems?
  3. Do fishers of your community do things to protect the environment?
  4. Do you think fishers from other communities are a threat to the oceans environment?
  5. How do fishers from your community limit those from other communities from fishing in your territory?
  6. Do you think there has been a change in the number of fish along the reef?

This study described how a small community of people (800), including 45 adult fishers, preserve exhaustible resources of a fragile coral reef ecosystem and the marine animals that live on or about the reef. The resources of the reef are the lifeblood of the community, reef destruction and overfishing could have dire consequences on the community's existence.

 

Canso Marine Environment Workshop Executive Study McCracken, F.D., Biological Station, St. Andrews, N.B., Fisheries and Environment Canada, Jan. 1979

The following is the abstract that leads this report:

" Canso Strait linking St. Georges Bay (north) and Chedabucto Bay (south) was closed by a causeway in 1954 without the preparation of an impact statement. The resulting ice-free, deep-water port and concurrent industrialization there provided great benefit to the region. Recently, concern about the fisheries in the region prompted documentation and a review of oceanography and biology of fish species there by a working group of scientists. From a fairly extensive data base, including a comprehensive bibliography, it was concluded that closing the strait had resulted in changes to water stratification, temperatures, salinities, and flow patterns within the strait. Changes in the adjacent bays and more distant regions were negligible.

Industrial pollution occurring post-causeway is mainly confined to the southern strait near the source of apparently there are no long-term, far-reaching closure effects. Most biological effects possibly attributable to closure have been confounded by subsequent significant unrelated ecological events.

No adverse changes identifiable with the causeway, except for occasional localized fisheries, could be determined for groundfish, mackerel, salmon, and invertebrates excluding lobster. For herring there was insufficient evidence to determine whether stocks or fisheries in the region were affected.

Recruitment failure was accepted as the cause of the dramatic decline of lobster fisheries in Chedabucto Bay, but the group was unable to attribute this failure to blocking a supply of larvae from St. Georges Bay, recruitment overfishing, non-causway environmental and marine climate effects or an admixture of these three.

Disbenefits of significantly modifying the causeway to allow increased transport could not be equated with any doubtful increase in lobster recruitment. Larval enhancement by artificial means and improved management are within man's control and were considered, but, lacking cost details on various options, the executive committee could only recommend that lobster specialists examine possible rehabilitation measures, develop options including potential cost/benefits and the likelihood of detecting and measuring results, these to be considered later by the Canadian Atlantic Fisheries Scientific Advisory Committee (CAFSAC).

 

Consideration of the Lobster (Homarus Americanus) Recruitment Overfishing Hypothesis; With Special Reference to the Canso Causeway, Robinson, D.G., Pp. 77-99 _ from Canso Marine Environment Workshop Executive Summary Part 3: McCracken, F.D., Ed., Biological Station, St. Andrews, N.B., Fisheries and Environment Canada

The following is the summary with respect to the Canso causeway that begins on the bottom of page 95:

" Lobster landings in the area around Chedabucto Bay have been demonstrated to be subject to a downward trend in production which predates the Canso Causeway, extending back toward the beginning of our data series in 1892. In fact, three periods of decline have been evident, interspersed with two relatively short periods of recovery. Peak landings of the last recovery period and the construction of the causeway were synchronous. The recent trend is not unique to this area or time. Current landings are unique in that they are the lowest ever experienced in the history of the fishery.

We have seen that the regulations setting the size of the first exposure to the fishery are such that virtually all animals are subjected to fishing mortality before maturity is expressed in the extrusion of eggs. It has been demonstrated that even under pre-collapse conditions, most female recruits to the fishery were captured before successful reproduction. This is inversely correlated with fishing effort. Synchronous with general increases in effective effort have been the decreases in landings over time.

It is suggested that overall the decline in landings is largely a function of fishing effort, which has increased in effectiveness with time. The two periods of recovery may reflect to some degree a relaxation of that effort, but the shortness of the periods suggests some other factor, such as good larval survival, plays a significant and perhaps dominant role.

Events and trends in the study area do not seem to be sufficiently synchronized with the events in the southern gulf, when differences in the appropriate parameters are considered, to suggest a high degree of interaction or dependence on "overall" conditions . Thus, lobsters in each may be considered as stocks largely separate from one another, both pre- and post-causeway.

Admittedly the data relating to stock and recruitment in the study area are inferential . They may be so only because of their general paucity and restriction in terms of time and aerial distribution. Thus, it is suggested that the recruitment overfishing is a phenomenon to which most Canadian Maritime lobster stocks are subject under the current lobster fishing regulations, and that the Chedabucto Bay and associated eastern Atlantic coast stock, due to its unique mix of parameters, appears to be the most vulnerable to overfishing." (1979; Pg.95,96)

 

A Review of the Decline in Lobster (Homarus Americanus) Landings in the Chedabucto Bay Between 1956 and 1977 With An Hypothesis for the Possible Effect by the Canso Causeway on the Recruitment Mechanism of the Eastern Shore Lobster Stocks Above noted executive summary part 3 pg. 113-144 Dadswell, M.J.

Dadswell conclusions were as follows:

" The collapse of the Chedabucto Bay lobster stock in 1962-1967 and its continued decline cannot be attributed to:

  1. Local Pollution- Discernible impact is negligible since the pollution startup was too late to be a factor in the lobster landings decline and the effluents are not carried beyond the southern end of the strait. Oil concentrations from the ARROW spill never exceeded sublethal limits but some effects from resuspension and bioaccumulation may now be affecting a small portion of stock.
  2. General Environmental Perturbation- Temperature perturbation may have lowered general yield rate by 20% but cannot be shown to have triggered the 80% decline between 1962-1967.
  3. Local Environmental Changes- Temperature changes due to the causeway should have been largely beneficial for lobster . Mean annual temperature in the surface 5m has increased and the annual subsurface temperatures are unchanged. The effect of a hypothesized general reduction of 10-20% in the annual primary production of the bay because of the cessation of the hypothesized entrainment mechanism is likely to be very small.
  4. Overexploitation- Exploitation rates prevailing in the Chedabucto region during 1955-1960 were not of sufficient magnitude to cause the abrupt decline nor the continued low level of production now that effort is reduced.

The collapse of the Chedabucto Bay lobster stock is attributed to:

1. Failure of a Recruitment Mechanism- Whereby the larval recruitment from the St. Georges Bay to Chedabucto Bay was stopped by the construction of the Canso Causeway and, since most larval production in the Chedabucto Bay was probably transported down the eastern Nova Scotia coast, the Chedabucto lobster population was not self-sustaining under fishing pressure. St. Georges Bay probably supplied 60% or more of the larvae settlement in Chedabucto Bay." (1979; pg.140)

The Editor's note that follows these reports mentions how both papers agree on recruitment failure as the cause of the collapse, differing obviously on why that happened. Mention is made of possible faults of both studies but it appears they are less willing to accept Dadswell paper. The Editor's note ends with the following:

"The consensus among Maritime lobster assessment biologists is that overfishing was the main factor leading to the reduced lobster landings in the Chedabucto Bay area, with the closure of the Canso Strait being a secondary contributing factor. If this viewpoint is correct, an increase in lobster production can be expected in the Chedabucto Bay area, providing fishing effort remains low. Reported landings for the Richmond and Guysborough Counties ( January through July in statistical districts 8, 9, 14, 15, 16, and 17) increased from 66 m.t. in 1978 to 105 m.t. in 1979. This short term increase does not yet confirm a trend." (1979; pg.145)

Data from 1979-1997 will be interesting to study, from such data we will be able to confirm the continued collapse or possible recovery of the lobster fishery in the area. This should confirm or deny the role the causeway has played in the regional collapse of the lobster fishery. St. Georges Bay and our study area do not appear to be affected by the closure of the Strait of Canso by the causeway.