Study Shows Lack of Resilience Among Maine Fishermen

With last year’s lobster landings down from the previous year by 16%, there is a lot of discussion about the future of the lobster fishery in Maine and what would happen if the fishery declines in the coming years. One way to think about this is through the lens of resilience, or the capacity for individuals and groups to withstand disturbances without fundamentally changing. Colleagues at Princeton University and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and I have been studying resilience in Maine’s commercial fishing sector with an eye toward understanding how well positioned fishermen are to withstand socioeconomic and ecological disturbances, such as a decline in lobster catch. There are many overlapping factors that influence resilience, which makes the subject both interesting and difficult to study. Resilience can differ between individuals and groups —high resiliency at a group level might not translate into high resiliency at individual level, and vice versa. Our research focuses specifically on the role that the different fisheries which fishermen rely on plays in enhancing (or conversely, limiting) resilience at the individual level. To do this, we compiled state and federal licensing/permit data for marine resource users across Maine. We then analyzed the different combinations of licenses that individuals hold to determine the different fishing “strategies” used. Someone who holds a state-issued license for lobster and elvers, for example, has different economic opportunities than someone with a lobster and scallop license or only a lobster license. Through this process, we identified 620 unique combinations of licenses held by Maine fishermen, including individuals who only target one species as well as others who have more than a dozen licenses and participate in both state and federal fisheries. The range of these fishing strategies highlights the heterogeneity, or diversity, within Maine’s fishing fleet. The key point here is that Maine fishermen earn income from fishing in a lot of different ways. From a resilience perspective, this is important because it suggests that if something were to happen in one particular fishery (like the lobster fishery), individuals would be affected differently. To begin to understand this more specifically, we examined each unique combination of licenses and assessed the extent to which they position a fisherman to adapt to changes. We used a set of measures identified by thirteen fisheries experts with backgrounds in commercial fishing, research, management, and community development. We first interviewed each expert individually to ask him or her what factors they think enable fishermen to be adaptive, then shared everyone’s input with the group for further refinement. In total, six factors were identified and used to assess each fishery and the different fishing strategies in combination: 1) stability of the market in a given fishery; 2) status of the fishery; 3) value of the fishery; 4) existence of a local governance structure and/or industry association or advocacy group; 5) geographic area where fishing occurs; and 6) gear used in the fishery. We then developed a set of quantitative measures for each factor and created an adaptive capacity index to compare the different fishing strategies used in Maine. Our results suggest that the adaptive capacity and therefore resilience of individual fishermen is highly variable, but only 12% are considered highly adaptive based on our methods of evaluation. Part of the reason for this is that Maine’s commercial fishing industry has become increasingly specialized. In an earlier paper on the licensing history in Maine, colleagues at the University of Maine and I found that fishermen are more specialized than they have been since at least 1990 and possibly longer. Such specialization has advantages, but when it comes to being resilient, it is a negative because it means a person does not have alternatives, which is risky. The takeaway from this research is not to raise alarm. Indeed, Maine’s fishing industry has a long history of adapting to change and has repeatedly demonstrated its aptitude for innovation. Furthermore, our analysis only captures one dimension of resilience and does not consider other important factors, such as alternative employment outside fishing. Instead, this research aims to contribute to the ongoing discussion about the future of the lobster fishery and other fisheries in the face of environmental and socioeconomic changes by making explicit the heterogeneity among Maine fishermen (even within the lobster fishery itself) and showing how it affects adaptive capacity. We feel this is important because it suggests that any strategies that are devised to provide support to the fishing industry in Maine should be sensitive to the diverse range of participants in the industry. You can read the published paper at http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0178266.