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- Rejeanne
Camirand
- Maurice-Lamontagne
Institute
- Department of
Fisheries and Oceans
- Monto-Joli,
Quebec
The Fisher's knowledge : an other source of
information for a better understanding of the
fisheries
Introduction
The difficult situation in Atlantic Canada's fishing
industry since the late 1980s has created a climate of
mistrust where scientific assessment of fish stocks and
advice on resource management have come under increasing
criticism. The lack of confidence exhibited by the industry,
which wants to have a say in issues of concern to it, made
it imperative to devise new approaches for stock assessment
and management. At the Maurice Lamontagne Institute (MLI), a
marine science research facility of the Department of
Fisheries and Oceans, collaborative research has been
undertaken since 1991 between biologists and fishers from
Quebec and the Atlantic provinces and brought the industry
to get more involved in research activities related to
resource assessment. This co-operation gave rise to a number
of projects in which the industry's involvement goes from a
strictly advisory approach to a broader sharing of
responsibilities.
One of the projects involving industry relied on an
ethnoscientific approach, the objective was to harness and
analyse the fishers' knowledge and the study was done on the
lobster fishery of Magdalen Islands (Quebec). The project
was undertaken jointly by Louise Gendron, Réjeanne
Camirand et Renée Morneau, marine scientists from MLI
and Yvan Breton and Josée Archambault,
anthropologists from Laval University.
Application of Traditional ecological knowledge to
fisheries science at MLI : the exemple of the lobster
fishery of Magdalen Islands
The project was undertaken on an experimental basis
between 1995 and 1997 with lobster fishers from the Magdalen
Islands. The principal objectives were to built a data base
of information provided by lobster fishers, to make this
information available to biologists and to evaluate the
possibility of integrating this type of knowledge to stock
status assessments. An ethnoscientific approach was used in
the project to incorporate contextual information on
fishers' background, and on their social organization as
well as on their goals and concerns towards the lobster
fishery. The research focused on four main themes :1) their
fishing practices and how these had evolved from the time
they began fishing, up until now, 2) their emperical
knowledge of lobster biology including their knowledge of
the spatial distribution of lobsters, their behavior, their
life cycle, their habitat, their relations with other
species 3) the social organization of their fishing
activities, the sharing of the fishing grounds, the local
initiatives for conservation of this resource and the
internal rules of the fishing activities, and 4) the
observations and the interpretations of fishers of changes
that had occured in the environment.
The interviews were semi-structured. The interview
schedule was made of closed questions requiring precise
answers and open questions that invited a narration of
events as perceived by the fishers. Interviews were
conducted by two people : a marine scientist from MLI and an
anthropologist. Each interview, which lasted two hours on
average, was recorded and then transcribed. The information
was processed in an Microsoft Access database. Information
was classified into 220 variables. This database was made
available to the biologists, who then used the data in the
assessment of lobster stock status in 1996. This knowledge
serves as a complement to the other databases currently in
use by scientists.
Among the informations gathered from lobster fishers,
those related to their fishing practices (50 different
variables) were taken into account in the stock assessment
process. These informations allowed to document more
precisely the nature of the changes that were brought in the
equipment and the fishing strategies in the past 20 years,
occured in keeping with the phenomenon of the increase in
landings and catch rates observed between 1975 and 1995 and
finally to determine the causes and scope of changes in the
community of lobster fishers of the Magdalen Islands.
The results of this study has shown three important
points :
1. An increase in the fishing capacity of the
fleet. The modifications made to vessels since the
early 1980s have enhanced their power, speed, stability,
and trap transportation capacity. In addition, the use of
electronic navigation systems has enabled fishers to move
farther from the coast and reduce the time it takes to
retrieve traps. Fishers have become less dependent on
weather conditions and now lose fewer days of fishing.
With the advent of colour sounders around the mid-1980s,
new fishing grounds were discovered and fishers gained
access to fine-scale topographic information, which also
revealed the type of seabed. All these changes served to
expand the area harvested. According to the fishers, it
appears that today, all lobster grounds have been
discovered and now being exploited.
2. A change of fishing strategy, shifting from
interception to deliberate pursuit of the species.
During the 1980s, the lobster fleet became more mobile
and more efficient at seeking out and locating lobster.
The fishers are now able to go after lobster wherever
they are ; for example, they exploit offshore lobster
grounds early in the season rather than waiting for
lobster to reach traps set near the coast, and they
follow the lobsters' movements during the season. This
pursuit strategy is probably conducive to catching more
lobster than simple interception, given that not all
lobster would reach the interception site before the end
of the season.
3. An increase in fishing efficacy. Aside from
the increased mobility of the lobster fleet, which
gradually led to the pursuit strategy, fishers in the
1990s have become much more effective at exploiting the
resource. Modifications to traps (size, weight, entrance,
rings, proportions escape mechanisms) have made them more
efficient at catching lobster, and adjustments in the
method of operating traps (organization of traps on
lines, deployment of lines) have definitely helped to
increase the yield per trap.
The information obtained was very useful and helped to
give a new insight to the status of Magdalen Islands
lobster. It provided contextual information helping us to
refine our interpretations of changes in the catch rates and
exploitation rates. It appeared more obvious that the
Magdalen Islands lobster had been subject over the past 10
or 15 years to an increasing fishing pressure. The
improvement of the harvesting capacity and efficacity
brought in the last decades allow now fishers to remove a
much larger proportion of recruits than before. The
exploitation of zones that may have been refuges in the
past, adjustments made to traps to target the biggest
lobsters and the strategy of pursuit rather than
interception are all elements that have increased the rate
of exploitation of the lobster stock.
This project, which sought directly the input from the
fishers, highlighted the merits of establishing personal
contacts with them. Also, by favouring the ethnoscientific
approach we were able to gather information related to their
social organization and on their local management system of
common fishing grounds. It therefore brought to light much
additional information that improved our understanding of
the evolution of fishing practices. The significance of
competition and relationships between lobster fishers
revealed in the interviews clarified the changes that
occured and highlighted differences between localities.
Following the stock assessment exercice in 1997, results
were presented to the Magdalen Islands community of fishers.
The incorporation of the information given to us by fishers
increased the credibility of the scientific conclusions on
the level harvesting of lobster populations. It caused
fishers to be more concerned about the level of exploitation
of the Magdalen Islands lobster populations and about their
high fishing efficiency. They could better acknowledge the
fact that the high level of landings and catch rates was not
exclusively due to an increase in lobster biomass. The
exercice provided the opportunity for scientists and fishers
to adopt the same viewpoint about stock status, from which
both parties can build the future of lobster conservation.
This element certainly contributed to the success of the
recent implementation of stronger conservation measures to
which fishers were very receptive.
The actual context slows down the application of the
ethnoscience in the fisheries sciences.
The ethnoscience applied to fishery science allows
biologists to diversify the source of information related to
fisheries and take into account the knowledge of those that
have experience of several years on sea. In the lobster
project, it shed a new light and complementary information,
providing more precision to the different variables used in
the determination of stocks status.
In a more general sense, ethnoscience provides the
methodology necessary to plan, conduct and analyse the
interviews. It represents the only way to obtain and record
informations related to the past that only the fishers
behold; and also it helps establish direct contacts with
fishers and building an information exchange network. No
form, regardless of how complete, could ever hope to match
this kind of exchange.
However, many factors contribute to slow down application
of the ethnoscience in the fisheries sciences. First, there
is a lack of knowledge of this field of study and its
possible applications within the Department of Fisheries and
Oceans. This is felt at different levels of the organization
including fisheries scientists. Secondly, in the context of
budget restrictions, the projects related to this field of
study are strongly disadvantaged because they are considered
of low priority. Finally, the work of fisheries scientists
is more recognized within DFO and in the scientific
community if it is based on state-of-the-art technology (ex.
hydroacoustic) and mathematical models.
The projects related to ethnoscience need more
visibility, and actions to better inform the scientific
community on its potential are necessary.
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