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- Charles R.
Menzies
- Dept. of
Anthropology and Sociology
- University of
British Columbia
- 6303 NW
Marine Dr.
- Vancouver,
BC, V6T 1Z1
The Nexus of Misfortune
and Conflict: Witchcraft, folk beliefs and the modern
management of British Columbia's Coho Salmon
Crisis
David Anderson, Canada's Minister
of Fisheries and Oceans, changed BC commercial salmon
fishing forever on May 21, 1998. Anderson's public
proclamation of the Coho crisis was accompanied with an
announcement of plans to completely restructure BC's salmon
fishing industry. The plan was based on the 'best scientific
advice available.' All directed fisheries of Coho salmon
were to be stopped in critical zones and restricted in all
others. Fishers were told that they would have to change to
'selective' fishing techniques or be prohibited from
fishing. At a subsequent press conference, the minister
announced a fund of 400 million dollars (nearly half of
which consisted of moneys already allocated) to assist in
the transition of the fishery. Following on the heels of
several decades of crisis and intervention, Anderson's plan
has gone the furthest to redefine the social field within
which the salmon fishery operates.
Commercial fishers argued that the
scientific knowledge backing the plan was flawed. Fishers,
especially those based in the north of the province, argued
that rather than being a low run year, the 1998 Coho runs
were peak runs. Based on local knowledge of the fishing
grounds northern fishers argued that a serious mistake was
being made, a mistake that would ultimately end in the
complete destruction of their livelihood. They first
scoffed, then as the realization that the minister was not
joking, many northern fishers cashed in their licenses for
the season. Poor fish prices and the severest fisheries
regulations ever made the fishery nearly impossible for most
family-operated vessels.
This paper draws on interviews with
northern BC fishers conducted during the salmon season of
1998. Many of the men I interviewed, I know personally. I am
a native son of Prince Rupert: born and raised, practically
on the deck of a fishboat. I have written of this experience
in other contests (most notably concerning the conflict
between Euro-Canadian and Aboriginal fishers, see Menzies
1994). In this paper I am concerned with how locally
developed sets of knowledge are often at odds with dominant
forms of knowledge. I am not just concerned with ecological
knowledge in a limited sense (i.e., understandings of fish
and fish movements), but rather with wider, more holistic
understandings of the entire system. These of forms of
knowledge important not just in terms of locating and
catching fish, but also in terms of how to deal with, adapt
to, or struggle against, against (such as the state) which
have the power to enforce their will upon the subaltern. In
this paper I explore the implications of contested social
explanations and knowledges for the actually achieving
called 'sustainability.'
Witchcraft accusations and the
laying of blame
Following my appointment to the
University of British Columbia in 1996 I had retired my
gumboots for good: at least, that is what I thought. I
continued to follow the policy developments within the BC
fishery, but now for 'professional' interests rather than
directly economic. When then Fisheries Minister Mifflin
imposed area licensing I heard from friends and family
firsthand the devastating impact the area licensing and
fleet reduction plan was having on small communities and
family-based fishers. During the 1997 blockade of the
Alaskan Ferry boat in Prince Rupert, I contributed a radio
commentary in support of the northern fishers to CBC which
was broadcast nationally. When Anderson took over and
pronounced the Coho Crisis, I realized that the fishery I
knew as a child in the 1970s had ceased to exist. But why?
What was really going on here? Why was the fishery really
collapsing? In this section I will summarize some of the
basic explanations. This is not designed to be a detailed
analysis of each explanation. But, rather lay down the basic
parameters within which the Coho debate was set.
For more than a decade, accusations
have flown back and forth between industry participants,
government, and outsiders about how is 'really to blame' for
the problems in the fishery. Scapegoats have included
offshore driftnetters, aboriginal fishers, 'industrial'
seine fleets, sports fishermen, loggers, and Department of
Fisheries and Oceans officials, to name just the most
prominent. These accusations have the tone of witchcraft
accusations (see, Lewis 19 :pp-pp). My reference to this
body of anthropological literature is not to trivialize the
accusations, but rather, to highlight an important feature
of them that relates to conflicts over fisheries crises.
That is, witchcraft is invoked as a causal explanation of
irregularities. In the fishery, the irregularities
have been steadily declining fish stocks.
The first explanation is simply
this: Too many boats, not enough fish. Yet, this sort of
formulation is more cliché than explanation. To be
generous, I suppose that it really means: with the current
level of technology, gear, and expertise, we are able to
fish down the biomass to such a level that it cannot easily
recover to support an economically viable fishery.
Therefore, we need to prune a certain number of participants
so that the fishery can be operated at a more acceptable
level of economic rent. With few exceptions (I' shall return
to the exceptions later) the proponents of this formulation
are not forced to answer the question: :what got us here in
the first place?' The evidence presented to justify the 'too
many/too few' explanation always makes reference to numbers
of vessels which is linked to notions of catching capacity.
This model also includes several assumptions concerning
rational optimization of capital and labour (i.e., trying to
keep capital moving as continuously as possible while
simultaneously using less and less labour). This explanatory
model is usually backed up by detailed quantitative data and
presented (when it is presented) to groups of fishermen as
'fact.'
The fishermen base their
explanatory models upon their ability to catch fish.
Throughout the 1980s an extensive debate raged amongst
maritime anthropologist over something called the skipper
effect. Essentially, the argument centered on whether or not
the actions/knowledge of the fishing skipper made any
difference in the quantity of catch. Several writers (most
notably Pálsson and Durenberger) argued that the
skipper effect was a folk myth; an ideology rotted in a
particular social formation. In his 1991 book, Coastal
Economies, Cultural Accounts: Human ecology and Icelandic
discourse, Pálsson develops this point and
outlines three successive folk models (peasant; capitalist,
scientific/rational) of fisheries success. Without diverting
to the extensive debate on the skipper effect, suffice to
say that the knowledge-base of fishers is rooted in a
particular social context which involves family-based
systems of labour recruitment while being simultaneously
integrated into a highly advanced market economy. The
knowledge of fishing they accumulate includes information on
fish which is in some sense an ethnoscience and a social
knowledge based on systems of cooperation and information
gathering. From the fishermen's point of view there was a
minimal crisis. The fact was that there was more Coho caught
(and released) than is normally the case in the north during
the 1998 season. For the 'old-timers,' this confirmed their
belief that the 1998 run was not just a strong year run, but
was in fact a the peak of a 20 year cycle. Estimates of the
Coho kill from an interception sports fishery in the north
coast also seems to support the local understandings of Coho
abundance.
The Making of a
crisis
The Coho Crisis pulled me out of
fishing retirement and on to the deck of my father's salmon
seine boat once again. Nearing the end of his fishing
career, my father decided against buying a half million
dollar license to fish for 3-12 days in the south of the
province. He choose to stay with one license and to fish in
the north where he had fished for most of his nearly 50
years of fishing. The changes introduced by Anderson so
restricted his ability to fish that his regular crew decided
to stay ashore for the season in the hopes of finding
construction jobs. So, protected by a university salary, I
went north to join my fathers' crew. I was thus able to see
and hear first hand the direct impact of the Anderson plan
on the family based fishing crews and small coastal
communities of BC.
Anderson's stated intentions are
laudable and have met with approval amongst the mainstream
environmentalist movement. According to the Minister, his
plan would have profound implications for the way the salmon
fisheries are conducted. The key feature entailed halting
all directed Coho fisheries. The implications of Anderson's
'zero mortality' plan were sever. To understand this, one
needs to have a certain understanding of the shape of the BC
salmon fishery.
Five species of salmon are
harvested commercially in BC waters, sockeye, pink, dog
(chum), Coho, and spring (Chinook). There are two major
river systems, the Fraser in the south and the Skeena in the
north, and a myriad of smaller streams and creeks in
between. Each system typically has more than one run of
salmon, each run of varying strength and species. In the
commercial fishery, the salmon are intercepted prior to
entering their respective river systems and the various runs
mingle together. This has been one of the underlying problem
of effective management of BC salmon. Weaker or less
commercially important runs/species will be caught by boats
targeting stronger or more commercially important species.
While the strong stocks appear to be able to withstand the
fishing effort expended, the weaker stocks do not.
Anderson's plan was designed to fish to the level of the
weakest stock.
Three basic gear types in the
commercial interception fishery: troll, gillnet, seine. The
aboriginal fisheries are predominantly by gillnet, though
some use dipnets and gaffs, and a growing number have begun
experiments with fish wheels and beach seines. The
commercial sport fishery targets Coho and spring (Chinook)
and puts thousands of small boats on the water a year (their
alleged Coho kill rate in one zone was over 25,000). Yet,
for the bulk of the family operated seine, troll, and
gillnet fleet his Coho crisis plan has simply doubled or
tripled the burden of making a living without any obvious or
clear benefits.
For B.C. fishers, the Anderson Coho
Plan couldn't have come at a worse time. Already reeling
under the impact of new area licensing plan that forced boat
owners to buy additional permits to remain competitive and
the lowest real prices for fish in decades, the plan
requires changes in the fishing techniques which decreases a
vessel's effective catching capacity and efficiency. While I
am not personally opposed to regulations that limit catching
capacity, the way in which Anderson introduced these
measures has resulted in hundreds of independent, family
fishers deserting the fishery this year. Those who have
decided to stay are having a tough time making a go of it.
The sector hit hardest by the new
changes are the northern area gillnetters based in coastal
communities such as Prince Rupert, Bella Bella, or Port
Hardy. According to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans
(DFO), nearly one third of the gillnet fleet took the
one-time buyout of $6,500. During a visit to Prince Rupert
in early July, gillnetters I spoke with expressed
resignation and desperation. An ill-advised comment in front
of a journalist about blockading the Alaska Highway elicited
volumes of news coverage but little else: "We don't even
have the money for gas to drive there," the fisher said
after the hubbub had died down.
Another fisher said: "I had been
thinking about retirement. I'm almost 60 and I've had a good
life from fishing. But now I'm being forced out: I don't
have a dignified way out. If I fish, I'll starve. I'm closed
out of the areas where I know I can catch fish. I'm going to
take the buyout for this year, but $6,500 will barely pay
for the new gear DFO wanted or for my preseason expenses.
But if I go out, I'll end up in the hole."
While the picture is a little
better for seiners, they too are having a tough go of it
this year. The Anderson Plan has radically altered seining
in B.C. Hydraulic stern ramps are now prohibited. All fish
must be brailed into live sorting areas. The Coho, spring
salmon, and steelhead are then picked out and only then can
the rest of the fish be put into the hold. I saw the direct
impact of Anderson's regulations from the deck of my
father's seine boat. In addition to our crew of four, we had
an independent observer contracted by DFO to observe and
record the vessels compliance with the new regulations.
The biggest impact was the slowdown
caused by having to brail each set irrespective of the
quantity of fish. A drum seiner typically can complete a set
within 45-60 minutes under normal operating conditions.
Using a stern ramp allows large sets to be hauled on board
and pushed into the fish hold without a noticeable
disruption to the fishing rhythm. Having to brail, however,
changes the entire picture. Completing a set under the new
regulations takes at least 30 minutes longer than under the
standard practices. The increased work due to brailing is
compounded by the necessity to sort the fish. All Coho,
spring salmon, and steelhead were carefully picked out of
the sorting tank and if necessary placed into a large
reviving tank on deck. Before a second brailer could be
unloaded all of the fish had to be cleared away.
Despite the high level of
compliance and general willingness to cooperate with DFO,
many fishers were confused by the conflicting signs.
Anecdotal evidence from trollers suggest that the 1998 Coho
run was in fact one of the largest in recent memory. And,
according to DFO statistics Alaska fishers just north of
Prince Rupert were catching Coho at a rate 30- to 50-percent
higher than the previous 10-year averages. The Skeena test
fishery Coho index sat a level higher than the average for
1990. The North coast fishers I interviewed and spoke with
believed they were being sacrificed for issues which may in
reality have nothing to do with Coho.
Recent years have been hard for
commercial salmon fishers. Everyone understands changes need
to be made. What fishers don't understand is why are these
changes being done in a way that forces the family-owned,
community-based fishers out and, ultimately, transfers the
resource into the hands of one or two multinational firms.
Models from
science
The dominant model of fisheries
management is commonly referred to as a bio-economic model,
in that it combines biological concerns (i.e. stock size)
and economic demands (the need to accumulate capital and
produce a surplus). Under this model stocks have tended to
be managed on a species by species basis, though recent
efforts at managing ensembles of species are being
introduced in certain jurisdictions. The goal of a
bio-economic model is to maximize economic benefits without
too severely harming a particular species. Unfortunately,
bio-economic models tend to be blinkered by the economy and
tend to restrict their focus to economically viable species.
A host of multi-word concepts and
an alphabet soup of acronyms have emerged out of the
conjoining of biologists and economists over the course of
the last century. For our purposes three concepts are of
particular concern in examining the problematic aspects of
the bio-economic model. These concepts are: the tragedy of
the commons; maximum sustainable yield, and; optimum yield.
I will address each in turn.
Essentially, the tragedy of the
commons thesis states, that as long as a fishery is
profitable, new fishers and/or boats continue to enter.
Total costs increase until resource rents (i.e. profits) are
destroyed by competition. Since no one owns the fish until
they are caught, there is no incentive to reduce harvest
levels to protect the resource, nor does anyone have the
authority to allocate the resource. The inevitable result is
the destruction of the fishery.
According to proponents, the
'tragedy' of the commons can only be diverted by introducing
property rights into the fishery. The assumption is that as
owners, fishers will be guided by enlightened self-interest
and self-regulate their fishing effort in a sustainable
manner. However, this model manages to completely ignore the
drive toward expanded exploitation extant within a
capitalist social formation.
Obtaining maximum sustainable yield
(MSY) has been the primary goal of fisheries managers for
most of the 20th century. MSY is operationalized thus: "what
is the most fish we can allow to be caught without reducing
the fish stock to below a commercially viable level?"
According to Rettig, Berkes, and Pinkerton, "MSY resulted in
the development of harvest objectives for one stock at a
time, as if stocks of fish existed independently of their
ecosystems" (1989:275). While MSY came to be replaced by the
idea of "optimal yield" as an objective that incorporated
social concerns, the underlying economic impact of the
market economy on fishers was still ignored.
Critics of the bio-economic model
have identified a variety of folk-systems in which a host of
local systems of ownership and socio-cultural restraint,
premised upon belief systems and/or peasant leveling
mechanisms, seem to allow for the sustainable harvesting of
the resource. According to Dyer and McGoodwin, "folk
management in the fisheries is management by and for fishing
people themselves. It naturally arises as an inevitable
outcome of resource utilization by fishing peoples. Formally
defined, it is any localized behavior originating outside
state control that facilitates the sustainable utilization
of renewable natural resources" (1994:1).
Aboriginal North American systems
of resource management are often held up as examples to
follow. In a paper on co-management (essentially, management
based on co-operation between communities and governments),
Rettig, Berkes, and Pinkerton argue that aboriginal
approaches to resource management provide an important
counter model to contemporary practices of resource
management. They raise a perceptive question in a comment on
pre-industrial fisheries customary practices on the
Northwest Coast: "It is less clear how long and under what
conditions aboriginal conservation practices can survive in
the industrialized world" (1989:281). Unfortunately, they
drop the issue after a vague reference to the power of
'native authority' and 'spiritual beliefs'.
As Pálsson reminds us,
"contemporary folk models are the result of an historical
process and not simply the works of the present" (1991:59).
Folk models (whether they be rationalist-scientific,
aboriginal or locally developed) are contingent and are
parts of larger social processes. This is not to deny the
ability of local fishers or research scientists to
accumulate ecologically based understandings. It is however,
to suggest that the knowledge accumulated cannot be
separated out from the social formation that engendered it.
To do otherwise is to run the risk of misunderstanding the
real cause of fisheries crises. The political economic
context within which a fishery operates is critical:
"Initiatives to conserve the natural world require a viable
social context in which to manifest themselves. In turn,
economic globalization is not a social context that offers
any hope for conservation" (Rogers 1995:154). Rogers may be
overstating his case, but the fundamental point remains: the
only future for conservation is through "resisting the
forces of economic globalization" (1995:154).
Reconciling models, or where do
we go from here?
BC fishers have experienced a
socio-economic crisis that is at the same time a classic
problem of over-capacity and stock depletion and a problem
arising out of the welfare state. The first aspect of the
crisis is a common feature of many of the world's commercial
fisheries. The trajectory is simple: a process of
technological innovation, competition, and enclosure of the
resource propels fishers to increase their capital
investment beyond the point of profitability. The resultant
crisis is resolved either by complete collapse or
re-deployment into other fisheries. The second aspect is
somewhat different and I would suggest perhaps a more
fundamental causal factor. That is, we are coming to
understand that the resource is far more fragile than once
thought (especially under the brunt of highly efficient
capturing techniques). Thus, state-driven programs of
modernization expansion and regulatory intervention, plus
market imperatives combine with the fragility of the
resource to create crisis.
The dilemma is, that under a market
regime sustainable resource extraction is not feasible in
the long run. Market mechanisms propel catching capacity to
such a point that ultimately returns do not warrant the
investment (that is, the catch per unit effort declines to a
point at which the stock is commercially extinct, if not
actually so). The former Soviet Block countries may at first
appear to be an obvious contradiction of this proposition.
However, the error lies in a common misconception as to the
nature of the soviet-style economies. Once one cuts through
the rhetoric of Left and Right, the Soviet and the Western
welfare-state economies exhibit a striking similarity in
form and function.1
With respect to the specific form of management and
operation of the Soviet fishing industry, there is in fact
very little that was distinctive. According to an official
Soviet fishing management text, the goal of "socialist
management" in the fishery is to run the business of
catching fish efficiently and "increasing the productivity
of labor" (Sysoev 1974: xiii). Fishers on the former Soviet
vessels were paid on a piece rate system because: "it makes
workers materially interested in raising the productivity of
their labor" (Sysoey 1977:306) That is, it forces fishers to
work harder and to catch more, irrespective of the weather
conditions, for example.
A market driven economy, by its
inherent logic, propels actors to continually reinvest and
expand to maintain profit levels (this certainly seems to
also be the case for the Soviet fisheries, see Sysoev,
1974). Unlimited expansion, however, is not possible in the
context of finite limits. Fisheries resources, especially
wild stocks, exist in a context of finite limits; the
example of the northern cod stocks and the 50,000 people out
of work in Newfoundland is a cruel but clear example of this
(see also: Rogers 1995; Berril 1997).
In the context of welfare state
policies, fisheries (primarily fishing corporations and boat
owners) have been fed a seemingly unending flow of
investment to spur on the development of new fisheries,
gear, and a constant modernization of fishing boats. This
flow of money has been directed more at maintaining domestic
industries (ship building, for example) and quelling social
protest: ultimately the policy has been an employment and
industry development policy, not a fisheries policy.
From a resource management
perspective, the typical responses have been: (1) to create
vessel limitations in terms of size, power, or capacity; (2)
to decommission vessels; (3) to restrict fishing effort
through regulating fishing gear or limiting the number of
days at sea; or (4) to introduce of individual transferable
or vessel quotas (ITQs or IVQs). Each and every one of these
solutions results in displacing yet more workers and in a
further concentration of ownership -- not an obviously
distasteful end product if one's only intent is in the
general rate of profit and the smooth functioning of a
market economy. It is, however, a problem if you begin with
the premise that the quality of life of working people is to
be privileged over the profits of a few.
A major problem encountered by most
primary food producers is the manner by which they are
linked into the retail market. Between the fisher and the
final consumer is more often than not a string of
intermediaries. Following the recent news of Jim Pattisons'
acquisition of BC Packers, close to 75% of the processing
capacity is held by one firm. More than 25% of the seine
fleet, representing close to 40% of the overall catch, is
owned by one company. For the family-based fishers, one
important solution lies in the creation of a fishermen-owned
processing-distribution network. In conjunction with strong
support in the maintenance of minimum prices and the
potential reduction of cost in a not-for-profit distribution
system, it is possible that the fleet could maintain its
current employment base and reduce its ecological
impact.
In terms of ecology, the classic
problem is one of over-capacity and extensive pressure on
the resource. In British Columbia, as in much of the rest of
the world, overall production has been falling since the mid
to late 1980s. The period since the late 1980s has been one
of readjustment to changes in market conditions in which the
price for salmon has fallen precipitously. The drop in fish
prices was the outcome of a series of factors which involved
liberalized trade policies, the growth of the farmed fish
market, and the flood onto the market of Russian fish
following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
One of the most pressing aspects of
the struggle to survive at the community level is that the
economic dynamic is located outside of the domain of the
local or even the regional. This process is often referred
to as the process of globalization. Globalization is nothing
more than the extension of the laws of the capitalist mode
of production on a global basis. As Teeple argues,
globalization is part of the continuing process of the
socialization of the means of production:
The
international exchange of commodities increasingly
became determined by the world average of socially
necessary labour time, which in turn was regulated by
factors such as the global supply and demand of labour
power, the outcome of the global struggle between the
capitalist and working classes, and the productivity
rates of the most advanced technology, wherever
located. The consequences of the law of value
operating on the global level are the same as the
previous consequences on the national level: a
pressure to equalize the conditions of production and
exchange and rates of profit, but now on the world
level; and a movement towards world prices and world
wages (Teeple, 1995:67-8).
The globalization of the market for
fish and fish products forces fisherfolk and fisheries
managers to grapple with the problems of resource management
in ways the have the potential to fundamentally alter our
thinking about resource management. Prior to the advent of
the industrial capitalist model of fisheries, the ecological
impact of fishing was relatively limited. However, the
advent of commercial fisheries based on an industrial
capitalist model has brought us to the brink of ecological
collapse of fish stocks and the social disruption of fishing
communities. Traditional fisheries management solutions to
this very real crisis typically echo the tired ideology of
the market economy: privatize, privatize, and privatize
again. Alternative solutions tend to be locked in a romantic
image of past (i.e. traditional) management practices or
seek to emphasize the enlightened self-interest of fishers
rooted in a local system. Underlying both standard and
alternative approaches is a fundamental refusal to question
the basic dynamic that drives the commercialization and the
contemporary reality of the fishery: the drive toward
accumulation inherent in a market economy.
This spring my father doesn't plan
to go salmon fishing. "It's no longer fun," he says. This is
a sentiment echoed by many of his friends and colleagues. I
suppose this means I don't have to worry about being called
to fish on his boat this summer. I'm not sure how I feel
about this. What I do know, is that the fisheries policies
being imposed by Anderson are every bit the product of a
folk model as are the explanations offered by men like my
father. The only difference is, the people who are setting
the agenda have an awful lot more power than my people do.
Understanding this fact is crucial is we wish to develop
methodologies to elicit ecological knowledge. Knowledge does
not simply float free from entanglement in social fields of
power. When we filter out the social context in which
knowledge is generated, we ultimately lose the opportunity
to achieve both sustainable fisheries and just resolutions
to the crises rocking coastal communities toady.
NOTES
1. According to Harmen: "The
merger of the state and capital had been a trend throughout
the world capitalist system between the 1930s and the 1970s,
of which what happened in the Eastern states was the most
extreme expression" (1990:77. See also, Harmen 1991; Haynes
1992).
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