Field Notes: Making the invisible visible

Sitting over a chart and a couple of beers at the Black Bull, a fisherman explains to me, "When I can line up Grey Rock and this point of land, I know I am at the western edge of my territory; from there it goes to this corner and runs out to the fifty- fathom curve... this is my family's bottom, and it is part of the community's bottom."

In this discussion, lines are being drawn on a seemingly unbound ocean. A family fishing territory and a larger community at sea is defined. Countless unseen boundaries carve up Maine and federal waters into a mosaic of fishing territories. They are complicated places. Different fisheries overlap seasonally; as lobstermen move out of an area over the winter, shrimpers might move in. Boundaries are defended.  And, while governing bodies may not give legal standing to community fishing territories, coastal residents understand.

The Obama administration's commitment to marine spatial planning, and pending legislation in the state of Maine focused on commercial-scale ocean energy siting in state waters, rests uncomfortably against fishermen's experiential knowledge of community fishing territories. I say "uncomfortable" because fishermen's knowledge of their community uses of the ocean have not been recorded in a way that will enable them to make quantifiable contributions to these debates. Yet these debates could impact their livelihoods.

When talking about ocean planning or ocean energy, there are many organizations with professional staff lined up to speak for birds, open space, worms, bats, whales, insects, you name it. Scientists on staff with these organizations and at universities work to provide the best data they can to inform these discussions. Much of this information has been and is being mapped in anticipation of ocean planning and energy.

Without solid data on community uses of the ocean, individual fishermen and others with similar concerns will be relegated to the typical experience of a "stakeholder." Let me reflect quickly on the stakeholder experience and where it comes from.

The International Development Research Center notes that "the word stakeholder was first recorded in 1708 as a person who holds the stake or stakes in a bet; the current definition is a person with an interest or concern in something. In the context of natural resource management, "Stakeholders are ... natural resource users and managers" (www.idrc.ca). These definitions assume that we act as individuals, a belief promoted by natural resource economists and adopted by resource management agencies, suggesting that we act in our own self-interest, as rational economic beings, rather than in the interest of communities or the greater good. There are many examples that contradict these assumptions of how we behave, including the defense of community fishing territories.

So, we become stakeholders, and as such we get to speak for ourselves in front of a microphone, in front of panels of experts, with the best data we can muster from our favorite Web site search engine. When talking specifically about fishing community uses, there are no data to speak of (that have been written down). As a result, community uses of the ocean run the risk of being silenced, disempowered, and potentially erased from ocean planning and energy discussions.

How do we overcome this problem? A great deal of work has been done in the field of participatory mapping to give voice to land-based communities in stakeholder processes while making sure that the control of a community's data stays with the community. For example, when the Island Institute mapped the state's working- waterfront access points, we worked with harbormasters and town officials to developed data-sharing agreements. These agreements state that anyone who approaches the Island Institute for access to community working-waterfront data will be directed to the harbormaster or selectmen in a given community for permission to view the data.  Easy enough; there are elected officials who can speak for a community's data in land-based examples.

Translating this method of controlling data access to community fishing territories remains less clear and is something that must be resolved if fishing communities are to have a greater voice in ocean planning and ocean energy discussions. The state, energy developers and others involved in ocean planning and energy want to understand community fishing territory boundaries, the density of fishing effort and gear movement. It doesn't take much to imagine how this kind of data could be used for or against fishing communities. However, I think the benefits of recording the data outweigh the risks.

Fishermen could get left out when decision-makers divide up the ocean, if information on community fishing grounds is not provided. In order to protect fishermen who are willing to share fishing territory data, we must come up with ways to ensure that the final decision about who has access to this data rests with the fishermen who help produce it. Determining how this should happen is critical. We should listen carefully to fishing communities.  For these processes to work, their voices must lead these debates.

Robert Snyder is the vice-president of programs at the Island Institute.