Social Impacts of Fishing (NEE 0902)
Inshore fishing is a diverse sector involving a wide range of people from those who actually catch wild fish through to those who retail and process the catch, those who supply the equipment and those who depend on the special ambience that fishing creates. The purpose of this project, funded by Defra, in dialogue with the other research initiatives by the Sustainable Access to Inshore Fisheries (SAIF) project, is to understand the impacts of fishing on both those people and communities who are directly dependent on it and those who are indirectly involved with it. These impacts may be very direct, such as employment, products or equipment or less tangible in the form of a sense of place or community that makes an area distinctive.
In order to discern how these impacts happen, to whom and where this project will consider the tangible and intangible impacts of fishing and the channels through which it is able to influence society more broadly. It will then consider how different possible management scenarios will impact on the social and cultural elements of fishing and in turn how they might relate to those management scenarios. This will be achieved through a two-stage research process building from the experience of those who fish and the sector around them through to the wider community.
The first phase of the project will examine the social impacts of fishing in six diverse communities, through a combination of interviews and stakeholder groups that will examine the tangible and intangible social impacts. The information gathered at through this research will be in part based on questions gathered about communities and quality of life at a national level, to allow for comparison. Other questions will relate to the subjective experience of living in a particular place, with its unique traditions and community.
The second phase will bring together those who have a stake in fishing, either as participants or representing organisations, as well as those who market tourist destinations or concern with the development of those communities. This phase will use the evidence of the first phase and management options from the SAIF project to construct scenarios to which the stakeholders will be asked to apply their experience. The results of this process will be combined with the insights of the first phase to produce an overview of the social impacts of fishing.
Matt Reed is the Project Leader.
