Combining social network analysis and ethnography to better understand fishers’ organization and promote sustainable small-scale fisheries in St. Croix, US Virgin Islands

Abstract

Given the importance of coral reef ecosystems to not only the health, livelihoods, and well-being of individuals and communities throughout the world, but also to global biodiversity, it is critical to improve our understanding of coral reef small scale fisheries (SSF) as social-ecological systems (SES). When examined using a SES approach, SSF operate within coupled-feedbacks with their surrounding marine ecosystems, and environmental outcomes depend upon interactions among a variety of social, ecological, and institutional factors. In a SES context, social network analysis (SNA) can illuminate how structure and process contribute to governance successes or failures among actors and natural resource systems. To address gaps in understanding what factors impact community cohesion, the flow of information, and potential for collective action in SSF, SNA was combined with rich ethnographic data focused on fishers in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands. Results suggest that fishers in St. Croix are not organized into one cohesive group, and that demographic and fishing-related attributes influence group membership in non-uniform ways. These findings align with and build on recent work on SSF, but further demonstrate that the processes that influence the formation and maintenance of ties among fishers are complex and potentially site-specific. This makes it challenging to come to meaningful conclusions related to the potential for collective action based on SNA alone, but highlights the important role that in-depth ethnographic and other qualitative data can play.