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;
- An expanded scientific
effort and a closer fusion of science and management
as found in such innovative approaches as adaptive
management
- Privatization of fishing
rights allowing the market to allocate fisheries
resources and perhaps provide incentive for
conservation
- 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.
- With the 200 mile
declaration there is a huge influx of non-native
Newfoundlanders into science branch of DFO St.
John's.
- Proliferation of rules and
regulations upon harvesting practices
- 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:
- Contribute to knowledge of
cod behavior, ecology, and stock structure
- Help in understanding trends
in catchability
- Inform future scientific
research (i.e.. tagging studies)
- Increase awareness of
current stock abundance in nearshore areas where data
is limited
- 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:
- What do you think are the
main threats to the oceans environment?
- Do you think it is important
to protect marine ecosystems?
- Do fishers of your community
do things to protect the environment?
- Do you think fishers from
other communities are a threat to the oceans
environment?
- How do fishers from your
community limit those from other communities from
fishing in your territory?
- 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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.