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Obstacles to Mapping Fisher KnowledgeAnita Maurstad Norwegian College of Fishery Science University
of Tromso Together with a stock assessment biologist, Jan H. Sundet, I have been involved in a project aiming at gathering fisher knowledge for the purpose of enhancing the knowledge pool for managing the fisheries. We have interviewed around 70 fishers in Finnmark, the northernmost county of Norway during the mid-1990s and I have since performed interviews on my own. The local sea space used by the fishers has been the point of departure for the interviews and focusing on local resources and fisher activities we basically asked: what species are fished; when does the fishery take place; with what gears; who uses the area; and are there any important changes the latest years? In other words - we have sought general information on the fishery. A convenient way to store such territorial information is to draw it on sea charts. The chart pictures the territory well and between the numbers indicating sea level depths, the lighthouse sectors and the islands, we can fill in quite detailed information on the presence of local resources and their use. There are, however, problems concerning the publication of such maps. Fisher knowledge is more than purely information relevant for stock assessment. What is more important is that fisher knowledge has special functions for fishers, use areas that are different to those of science. Understanding this is one aspect, how to deal with it is a quite different topic and in the following I will share some concerns on how our scientific use may come to disturb fisher use and as such point to important consequences of publicizing fisher knowledge. Such knowledge has so far been orally transmitted and when we enter this culture with pen and paper and make our books of good fishing sites it is no longer only locals that can access knowledge on local territories. In a short time frame the implications of this depend on the interest our publications would generate. I will skip the discussion of such practicalities in this essay. What I will do is draw attention to some more principal issues concerning our meeting with the fisher knowledge systems. Barth (1990)1 provides perspectives that I find relevant for discussing crucial differences between science and fisher knowledge. Barth discusses how cultures' different distribution and form can be understood by looking at the way knowledge about them is transmitted. He idealises to types of teachers of knowledge, the guru and the conjurer. The guru's task is to teach as many as possible. Teaching many enhances the knowledge the guru carries. The guru therefore travels and instructs a wide audience. His luggage is light - he carries words, abstract products that can be used in many contexts. In cultures where the conjurers are teachers, the situation is different. For the conjurer's culture the value of knowledge increases when it is protected and shared by only a few. It is transmitted to novices by special rituals. The conjurer's knowledge is thus more than the pure words. To keep its position as conjurer type knowledge, the rituals protecting this knowledge has to be transmitted along with the knowledge. Barth explains the distribution of important world religions with reference to gurus and conjurers. Because taught by gurus, Buddhism and Hinduism, as well as the cultures they are embedded in, can travel over wide distances. The transmission does not need the direct contact between teacher and apprentice, as the conjurer type knowledge is dependent on. Conjurers in the local fishery The lesson relevant for our discussion on mapping is that fisher knowledge is a form of conjurer knowledge. Fishers compete with one another and they do not broadcast information widely. Holding more information than others is a competitive advantage and the information that is passed on to others is limited. Distribution of knowledge is therefore dependent on relationships between people. What knowledge recruits, for instance, will learn depend on their relationships to other fishers, which in turn often depend on how well they perform as fishers. Being a newcomer and asking the fishers - where is the fish - seldom produce answers. It takes skills to acquire skills. only after proving one's ability in the fishery will one earn other fishers' respect and this respect seems central for fishers' will to mediate knowledge to one another. When it comes to knowledge on where the fish is, good fishing grounds, most local fishers know the local waters, however. The lesson most important to recruits is therefore often not the actual facts about where the fish is, but rather the local social rules and regulations that restrict how knowledge is to be used. The local fishers do not fish everywhere they like, rather they fish according to rules and regulations developed over time within the local fishing community. The shaping of the rules may differ from place to place as well as for gear types. In Norway, gillnetting in the fjords seems to be very territorial while longlining is less and even lesser is jigging. The mobility of gears as well as the local presence of fish both affects the degree of territoriality in a specified setting. For local fishers then, publicising a map of their fishing grounds would probably not surprise many. However, there are other types of information that we access through the interviews which local fishers would not want revealed. Information on where the fish is, is only one aspect of the fishery. of perhaps more importance is how to fish, what time the currents run strong, which directions and depths to put the gear etc. This type of information is the one fisher's competitive advantage over the other and having it all written down by the scientist to be read by all would transfer it out of its conjurer type state and into a guru type. If so, fishers will loose control over the transmission of knowledge. As for now it is fishers themselves who decide on who to teach and who should not have access to their knowledge. our publications will change this power relation. Foreign fishers do not know the local area and for these a little book of maps together with explanations on how to use it will be valuable. I could sell my newly acquired knowledge to for instance the tourist industry. Adventure holidays pay well these days. I could also sell it to other commercial fisher interests. In Norway there are ongoing debates about foreign automatic longliners' use of the coastal zone and how this interferes with local fishers' use. Local fishers tell that they loose an area, not only while the longliners are fishing but also after. It takes time - a period of two to four weeks - before the fish again returns to the grounds. Locals argue that the large scale longliners should leave inshore waters to the smaller vessels and in stead use offshore waters. Formally, local fishers have no means by which they can object to the tourist industry's or to longliners' use, but they see talking to me as a way to improve their situation. Surely, I must be on their side - since I am interested in the local fish and the management of it - telling me of sites and how the longliners use influences the local stocks becomes important. Giving us this information does not, however, imply that they want this knowledge publicised on a map. In an interview where we had put quite details records of local matters on the map, I was impressed with all the information and expressed how useful it would be to present this as a way of telling of the importance of local use. The fisher looked at me, hesitantly, and I asked if I could use it this way. His answer was quite clear: "No, I do not want you to do that. Of course, coastal fishers are welcome, but you know, automatic longliners - when we have been careless and talked about a good catch over the radio, he's there immediately, the longliner." This fisher had experiences in loosing access to longliners. At one stage in the conflict, an informal agreement was made. The longliners should question whether or not the locals were using the area before they themselves started using it. This did not work well. Local fishers experienced that telling of their use, i.e. giving up the co-ordinates for the place of their gears, was the same as telling the longliners where to fish. When the weather made the much smaller coastal vessels go ashore, the longliners occupied the good fishing sites. Coastal fishers protested. Although hindered by weather they still saw themselves as users. Bad weather was only a short-term stop, and a stop for all coastal fishers. The different mode of production then in the small-scale coastal fleet and the large scale longlining fleet, were crucial as to why the informal arrangement did not work satisfactorily. The problem of documenting local use then is complex. The increased interests in the coastal zone and especially the increased territorial planning, coastal zone planning, make the issue of documenting existing use an important issue. It is for such reasons that some fishers tell of local fishing grounds. But their expectations may not come true. Maps of use are by no means sufficient to claim rights today. As for now, there are no Norwegian laws protecting territories for local fishers. There are territorial laws restricting gear use, but these laws do not discriminate between where fishers come from. As such, no laws accept that being a local give other rights than being a foreigner. It is informal rules that regulate these activities. Maps can be used as arguments, but while arguing the fish is fished. The interests in fisher knowledge We set out to gain information from fishers for certain purposes. We are interested in local use and how it has changed over time because such data holds information on the fish. Maps showing the local use of fishers, which grounds are heavily fished and which are lesser, tell about resources and the interviews have provided valuable biological information. They have, however, also given us information of a different character. We have met with a knowledge system different from science, a system where knowledge is in use for different purposes than enhancing the fish stocks. Knowledge is a competitive pre and passed on as fishers decide. But although conjured from other fishers, we have had access to some of it. Some of those who agree to be interviewed talk because of interests in documenting their use. Others see our management objective as interesting. Whatever reasons, the information we receive is conjurer information. It is information that many have not told each other. We operate in a conjurer relation in acquiring knowledge of the fisheries. By definition, however, we, the scientists are gurus and here is our dilemma. It is our job to mediate the knowledge we have gathered and especially to bring it forward to management bodies. That is our project idea and as scientists we can see information as a neutral entity by which revelation will increase the good of human kind. This is however, a too simple understanding of fisher knowledge. As I have tried to express in the above text; if publicising our newly drawn charts helps the human kind, it is fair to say that it helps some more than it helps others. It may help management to know more about local fish resources but I do not think we can take the stands of gods: using fisher knowledge to enhance knowledge is so important for improving management, and so be it. The information must out. The information will serve the interests of some fisher groups more than others. The most important question lies however, on another arena: fisher knowledge serves certain purposes today and transferring knowledge to our use areas has powers to change inherent characteristics in this knowledge system. Fishers do not allow us the role of revealing all information. They give us information, but faced with potential consequences they are sceptical to publicising the charts. Fishers tell because they believe it will help their case, their local fishing, and their documentation of local rights. The fisher I referred to above has such motives for telling me of his use of local waters. But he, and others, expects me to deal with this information from their perspective; they expect me to be a conjurer. And although our project idea is to gather information, as scientists we also have obligations to fishers. It would be unethical not to abide by the restrictions they put on us. Not all are sceptical to publications, however, but I do not think this gives us freer hands. If we suspect changes in fisher knowledge systems following our presentations of it we have responsibilities to handle this issue. But if our project is to enhance management through adding what fishers know to the knowledge pool, how do we solve this dilemma? Is the solution to be sought in how to perform interviews - is it the presentation of data that is the problem and can we solve the dilemma by avoiding presentations? For a long time, we thought so. We accommodated our project's obligations to provide information to enhance the knowledge pool for management as well as our obligations to fishers by not revealing information. But still, we used it for stock assessment purposes. Luckily, one of us was a stock assessment biologist, directly involved in ongoing scientific projects in which the fisher knowledge could be used. Sundet were able to put their knowledge into direct use without publicising it first. In the long run, however, this became methodological unsatisfactorily. It meant that one stock assessment biologist became very skilled in fisher knowledge. He became a conjurer and this is a position that science does not allow for. The biologist should be able to publicise and discuss the findings with other biologists. Fisher knowledge, as is science, should be subject to scrutiny. It might be that the dilemmas I discuss can be solved through designs. I look forward to discussions about this in the Working Group. I am, however, somewhat sceptical. I think it is hard to avoid the problem of publicising if we set out to gather fisher's biological information and I tend to think that the solutions lie beyond research designs - if by research design we mean to construct ways to gather information for the purpose of laying it out there in the pool of knowledge to be used in management. Perhaps the solution is more to be sought in the institutional shape of management. It would be tempting to ask if empowering fishers would help out. If fishers were really integrated in management, if they were partners and had responsibilities of local grounds, if local territories were theirs to manage, fishers would be in more power. The decisions to reveal knowledge or not would be theirs, they would have to deal with these questions themselves and could have more power as to consequences of spreading knowledge of their local territories widely. But even so, the dilemma of moving knowledge from conjurer to guru spheres, with all its consequences, would probably still be valid questions. Is moving the problem to the fisher' hands a good solution? Notes 1, Barth, Fredrik (1990): The guru and the conjurer - transactions in knowledge and the shaping of culture in Southeast-Asia and Melanesia. Man: the journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, New Series, 25(4):640-653. |