Neoliberal and neo-communal herring fisheries in Southeast Alaska: Reframing sustainability in marine ecosystems

The transformation of Pacific herring (Clupea pallasii) fisheries from communal to commons to neoliberal regulation has had significant impacts on the health and sustainability of marine ecosystems on the Northwest Coast of North America. Due to their abundance, seasonality, and sensitivity in distu...

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Main Authors: Thornton, Thomas F., Hebert, Jamie
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:unknown
Subjects:
Online Access:http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308597X14003169
id ftrepec:oai:RePEc:eee:marpol:v:61:y:2015:i:c:p:366-375
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spelling ftrepec:oai:RePEc:eee:marpol:v:61:y:2015:i:c:p:366-375 2024-04-14T08:20:28+00:00 Neoliberal and neo-communal herring fisheries in Southeast Alaska: Reframing sustainability in marine ecosystems Thornton, Thomas F. Hebert, Jamie http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308597X14003169 unknown http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308597X14003169 article ftrepec 2024-03-19T10:27:52Z The transformation of Pacific herring (Clupea pallasii) fisheries from communal to commons to neoliberal regulation has had significant impacts on the health and sustainability of marine ecosystems on the Northwest Coast of North America. Due to their abundance, seasonality, and sensitivity in disturbance, herring were carefully cultivated and protected by coastal Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian communities. The early industrial fishing era undermined this communalist approach in favor of an unregulated commons for bait and reduction fisheries, attracting non-local fleets and leading to conflicts with local Natives and tragedy of the commons style overexploitation of herring stocks by the mid-twentieth century. Since the 1970s, a re-regulated neoliberal sac roe fishery for Japanese markets has provided new opportunities for limited commercial permit holders, but with further depredations on local spawning populations. This paper uses frame theory and historical and political ecology to show how this transformation was justified by three critical but dubious (re)framings of Southeast herring populations under modern scientific management: (1) a reductionist framing of single species productivity models, expressed as herring “biomass,” within space and time (baseline scale framing); (2) the selective framing and privileging of human industrial predation under maximum sustainable yield (MSY) within a dynamic ecosystem of multiple predator populations (actor relations framing); and (3) the strategic framing of spawning failure events and policy responses to those events by professional fisheries managers (event–response framing). Finally, the paper argues for a new social–ecological systems approach, based on aboriginal models of herring cultivation, to sustain a commercial, subsistence, and restoration economy for the fishery. Pacific herring; Historical ecology; Political ecology; Tlingit and Haida; Alaska; Social–ecological systems; Article in Journal/Newspaper tlingit Tsimshian Tsimshian* Alaska RePEc (Research Papers in Economics) Pacific
institution Open Polar
collection RePEc (Research Papers in Economics)
op_collection_id ftrepec
language unknown
description The transformation of Pacific herring (Clupea pallasii) fisheries from communal to commons to neoliberal regulation has had significant impacts on the health and sustainability of marine ecosystems on the Northwest Coast of North America. Due to their abundance, seasonality, and sensitivity in disturbance, herring were carefully cultivated and protected by coastal Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian communities. The early industrial fishing era undermined this communalist approach in favor of an unregulated commons for bait and reduction fisheries, attracting non-local fleets and leading to conflicts with local Natives and tragedy of the commons style overexploitation of herring stocks by the mid-twentieth century. Since the 1970s, a re-regulated neoliberal sac roe fishery for Japanese markets has provided new opportunities for limited commercial permit holders, but with further depredations on local spawning populations. This paper uses frame theory and historical and political ecology to show how this transformation was justified by three critical but dubious (re)framings of Southeast herring populations under modern scientific management: (1) a reductionist framing of single species productivity models, expressed as herring “biomass,” within space and time (baseline scale framing); (2) the selective framing and privileging of human industrial predation under maximum sustainable yield (MSY) within a dynamic ecosystem of multiple predator populations (actor relations framing); and (3) the strategic framing of spawning failure events and policy responses to those events by professional fisheries managers (event–response framing). Finally, the paper argues for a new social–ecological systems approach, based on aboriginal models of herring cultivation, to sustain a commercial, subsistence, and restoration economy for the fishery. Pacific herring; Historical ecology; Political ecology; Tlingit and Haida; Alaska; Social–ecological systems;
format Article in Journal/Newspaper
author Thornton, Thomas F.
Hebert, Jamie
spellingShingle Thornton, Thomas F.
Hebert, Jamie
Neoliberal and neo-communal herring fisheries in Southeast Alaska: Reframing sustainability in marine ecosystems
author_facet Thornton, Thomas F.
Hebert, Jamie
author_sort Thornton, Thomas F.
title Neoliberal and neo-communal herring fisheries in Southeast Alaska: Reframing sustainability in marine ecosystems
title_short Neoliberal and neo-communal herring fisheries in Southeast Alaska: Reframing sustainability in marine ecosystems
title_full Neoliberal and neo-communal herring fisheries in Southeast Alaska: Reframing sustainability in marine ecosystems
title_fullStr Neoliberal and neo-communal herring fisheries in Southeast Alaska: Reframing sustainability in marine ecosystems
title_full_unstemmed Neoliberal and neo-communal herring fisheries in Southeast Alaska: Reframing sustainability in marine ecosystems
title_sort neoliberal and neo-communal herring fisheries in southeast alaska: reframing sustainability in marine ecosystems
url http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308597X14003169
geographic Pacific
geographic_facet Pacific
genre tlingit
Tsimshian
Tsimshian*
Alaska
genre_facet tlingit
Tsimshian
Tsimshian*
Alaska
op_relation http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308597X14003169
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