Fisheries Management and Social Context: The Case of the Maine Lobster Fishery

Abstract

Fisheries management agencies have traditionally promoted regulations with the resource in mind. All too often, the regulations proposed have conflicted so strongly with basic social and cultural features of fishing communities that they have been massively resisted. Here, it is argued that opposition to fisheries regulations will be minimized if such regulations are congruent with the existing social and economic system. Five kinds of management proposals, designed to decrease fishing effort in the Maine lobster industry, are discussed against the background of certain key institutional features of coastal communities. Our data suggest that any attempt to decrease fishing effort by a moratorium on fishing, by taxation, or by the imposition of many biological controls (e.g., raising the legal carapace size) would be strongly resisted. On the other hand, a trap limit and limited entry scheme are consistent enough with some institutional features-especially the system of fishing territories-that they would receive substantial political support. However, the lobster industry in Maine is so heterogeneous that no managerial proposal would be universally supported.