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Assessing
American Eel Stock Assessments through the Use of
Focus Groups in a Controlled Comparison Setting
Thomas
McGuire
Bureau
of Applied Anthropology
University of Arizona
Tuscon, Arizona
Despite a relatively
rich database on eel landings maintained by the Department of Fisheries
and Oceans, attempts to assess stock trends are befuddled by (1) the lack
of effort measurements, (2) variations in reporting rates and practices,
and (3) the susceptibility of eel stocks to large-scale environmental
perturbations (e.g., variations in Gulf Stream characteristics).While
Chaput et al. analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the data sets, they
appear to have made little effort to "ground-truth" their interpretations.
Given the multidimensional nature of the eel fishery (multiple gears,
several targeted ages), it is unlikely that a rigorous "catch per unit
effort" metric could be devised. Nevertheless, a pilot project using controlled
"focus groups" may yield significant insights into the dynamics of the
fishery.
1. The Database
The DFO database,
as analyzed by Chaput and colleagues, included landings by date, community,
statistical district, and gear type. The database is complied from purchase
slips submitted by local buyers and monthly estimates by DFO staff of
landings for locally-sold or consumed species. In general, the trend they
read is this: the beginning of high landings in the 1960s, attributed
by fishermen to the introduction of fyke nets; peaks were followed by
precipitous declines in the 1970s. But there is substantial variation
across the statistical districts. Two districts show anomalously increasing
trends, 12 and 13, the northern coastline of Nova Scotia from New Glasgow
through St. Georges Bay. The analysts attribute this to an artifact of
reporting:
"Increased landings
from NS were the result of an increase in reports from these districts.
The lower number of eels reported sold on NB and PEI could be a reflection
of reduced catch rates. Eels are generally purchased in live condition
and fishers retain the eels alive until there are sufficient quantities
for collection. Buyers may undertake fewer trips to purchase eels because
of lower catches which would result in a reduced number of slips relative
to periods of high catch rates. Unfortunately, in the absence of effort
data, no definitive conclusions can be drawn."
There is an asymmetry
to this logic: increased landings in NS are explained by increased reportings;
decreased reportings in PEI and NB are explained by decreased landings.
Local actors - fishers and buyers - should be able to shed some light
on this discrepancy.
2. Procedures
A comparative approach
to the problem is suggested. Utilizing DFO data on trends, compare the
two districts in NS with apparent increasing landing with the two districts
in PEI with statistically significant decreasing trends, District 88 (East
Point) and District 92 (North Cape). Available socioeconomic and ecological
data from these districts would be assembled, including license data,
community demographics, economic profiles, and eel-relevant ecosystem
indicators (e.g., river systems, water parameters, etc.). DFO data from
1995 to the present would be incorporated into the existing time-series,
and landing-trend charts (following Fig. 9 in Chabut et al.) for each
of the districts would be produced. These would be the primary visual
aids for eliciting discussion from fishers in each district regarding
local understandings/explanations of trends. As a comparable visual for
buyers, an updated "reporting" graphic could be produced, showing changes
through time in the number of communities and number of purchase reports,
either district-specific (if dealers tend to be district or locally oriented)
or province-wide.
Focus groups of fishers
and buyers would then be convened (separately) in each of the districts
in the comparison. Focus groups of 6-10 experts and 2-3 facilitators/recorders
can be effective tools for eliciting local knowledge. Fishers would be
asked to discuss, amongst themselves, prompted by facilitators, their
understanding of changes through time in the eel fishery, e.g., changes
in gear use, fishing locations, target age-classes, perceived environmental
fluctuations/changes, marketing and home-consumption practices, and relative
changes, individually and community-wide, in fishing effort. Buyers would,
in turn, make observations on changes in purchasing, marketing, and reporting
behaviors over time. Facilitators, working across groups, would pursue
"iterations," e.g., "the fishers report this, what do you buyers think?"
etc. If appropriate, focus-group meetings should be tape recorded, given
the typical dynamic of several people talking simultaneously or in quick
succession, with little interruption for direct questioning/responding.
3. Rationale: The
Issue of Scale
David Griffith, in
his recent book, The Estuary's Gift: An Atlantic Coast Cultural Biography
(1999), addresses the relation between local and scientific knowledge:
"The irony of the
Chowan fishers and other fishers in the state [North Carolina] is that
their love of home, and the very feelings of attachment to the estuary
that encourage stewardship and resource conservation, are the qualities
of their livelihoods that prevent the emergence of effective coalitions
of fishers. Too often their knowledge of fish, shellfish, substrates,
and water quality is too rooted in a local ecosystem to marshal an effective
challenge to conventional authority based on the more general principles
of biology or fishery science. The detailed, rooted nature of the environmental
knowledge of fishers allows fishery biologists and economists in the state
to discount that knowledge, in whole or in part, as not based on the tried-and-true
methods of science: repeated observation, experimentation, controlled
settings, and so forth" (p. 177).
Griffith thus raises
some conundrums of scale. Local fishers' knowledge may be fine-tuned;
fisheries science knowledge may be meso-scaled. Thus, for example, to
assess stocks of American ell in Atlantic Canada, DFO collects time-series
fishery-dependent data throughout the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. Ironically,
the complexity of these data induce Chabut and colleagues to recommend
a very local management strategy: adjust fishing effort to the size of
the river/estuary systems. Such a cartographic exercise could further
disenfranchise local knowledge, knowledge that some watersheds are ecologically
better endowed/less damaged than others. Or the meso-scaling technologies
available (GIS, imagery) could support the contention that eel stocks
are a function of Gulf Stream/global climatic conditions; local knowledge
is thus quite irrelevant to fisheries management.
The research design
suggested here is an interim step to address scale across "local" and
"science" knowledge. In short, ground-truth what might actually
be generating the statistics on the DFO's paper grid.
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