Finding Our Sea Legs : Linking Fishery People and Their Knowledge with Science and Management

Interdisciplinary research addresses the global fisheries crisis by fusing experimental approaches with fishers’ firsthand insights from the North Atlantic. It critiques standard stock assessments and calls for institutional reform while exploring fresh methods and tech shifts to enhance resource management.

The global fisheries crisis has prompted widespread debate about the origins of overfishing in managed fisheries. Criticisms of existing systems of science and management have led to experimental approaches involving access to fishery workers and their knowledge. Finding Our Sea Legs is an edited collection of theoretical discussions and case studies of such experiments, with a particular focus on the North Atlantic. Significant institutional changes are required to involve fishery workers and their knowledge in fisheries science and management. Fundamental differences between stock assessment science and fishers' knowledge require new methods for combining and interpreting information. Management structures, industrial and resource management strategies and technological change could affect the nature and quality of information derived from fishery workers. Such impacts need to be assessed. This extensive interdisciplinary overview will be useful to students, fishers, community leaders, social and natural scientists, managers and environmentalists with an interest in fisheries science and management.