Adaptations and well-being: Gulf of Alaska fishing families in a changing landscape

Abstract

Over the last three decades, fishing families in the Gulf of Alaska have adapted to numerous multifaceted conditions in response to near constant flux in stocks, markets, governance regimes, and broader sociocultural and environmental changes. Based on an analysis of seven focus groups held across Gulf of Alaska fishing communities, this study explores the variety of strategies that families across the Gulf have employed to adapt to changing conditions from the 1980s to the present day. Furthermore, the study examines how those strategies have evolved over time to accommodate cumulative effects and synergisms. While families continue to employ long-standing adaptation strategies of fisheries portfolio diversification and increasing effort, they are also integrating new adaptations into their framework as changing management systems, demographics, and technologies shift how choices about adaptations are made. This study also demonstrates how adaptations have implicit intra- and inter-personal well-being tradeoffs within families that, while potentially allowing for sustained livelihoods, may undermine other values that individuals and families derive from fishing.

A Conceptual Framework for Incorporating Human Dimensions Into Integrated Ecosystem Assessments

“…Within fisheries there is a vibrant body of literature documenting the multifaceted dimensions of well-being that people derive from fisheries, which are summarized in Table 2. Researchers have shown that fishing is associated with, amongst others, a connection to the water, family heritage, a sense of community, and identity (Hall-Arber et al, 2009;Holland et al, 2019;Szymkowiak, 2020a). Indeed fishing is often described as a way of life rather than an occupation by both fishers and their families, embedded with a sense of pride associated with their resilience (Britton, 2012;Szymkowiak, 2020a).…”

“…Researchers have shown that fishing is associated with, amongst others, a connection to the water, family heritage, a sense of community, and identity (Hall-Arber et al, 2009;Holland et al, 2019;Szymkowiak, 2020a). Indeed fishing is often described as a way of life rather than an occupation by both fishers and their families, embedded with a sense of pride associated with their resilience (Britton, 2012;Szymkowiak, 2020a). Despite evidence of the diversity of well-being that people derive from fisheries, ecosystem assessments have largely focused on economic benefits, or at most a highly condensed subset of well-being components including equity measured with respect to gear conflicts, livelihood measured with respect to employment and revenues, family connection and physical safety measured with respect to time at sea (Fulton et al, 2014(Fulton et al, , 2018DePiper et al, 2017;Zador et al, 2017;Gaichas et al, 2018;Okamoto et al, 2020).…”

“…Fishermen employ diverse adaptation strategies over varying time frames in response to fisheries perturbations (Cinti et al, 2010;Abbott and Haynie, 2012;Szymkowiak, 2020a). For example, short-term adaptations to changes in stock composition may include behavioral changes on the water like targeting different areas, which evolve into cooperative arrangements between fishermen targeted at reducing fishing costs and ultimately into developing niche markets or custom processing arrangements intended to increase the value generated from each fish (Szymkowiak, 2020a;Szymkowiak and Rhodes-Reese, 2020).…”

“…Fishermen employ diverse adaptation strategies over varying time frames in response to fisheries perturbations (Cinti et al, 2010;Abbott and Haynie, 2012;Szymkowiak, 2020a). For example, short-term adaptations to changes in stock composition may include behavioral changes on the water like targeting different areas, which evolve into cooperative arrangements between fishermen targeted at reducing fishing costs and ultimately into developing niche markets or custom processing arrangements intended to increase the value generated from each fish (Szymkowiak, 2020a;Szymkowiak and Rhodes-Reese, 2020). Incorporating these responses into ecosystem assessments is critical for accurate predictions, with examples in the literature of how misunderstood or unacknowledged fisher responses to changing conditions have led to unintended, negative consequences like increased bycatch due to the displacement of fishing effort following area closures or resource overuse associated with license permitting systems (Cinti et al, 2010;Abbott and Haynie, 2012).…”

“…Adaptive strategies can also have varied implications for overall well-being due to inter-and intra-personal tradeoffs (Coulthard, 2012;Szymkowiak, 2020a). Whereas adaptations are often employed to buffer against income losses, the chosen strategy may imply, for example, greater time away from family or increasing shoreside employment, which alter other well-being components (Coulthard, 2012;Coulthard and Britton, 2015;Szymkowiak, 2020a). Therefore, adaptive behavior mediates not just human interactions with and impacts on fisheries systems but has profound implications for how these choices affect overall human well-being, which need to be incorporated into ecosystem assessments (Kittinger et al, 2012).…”