La recherche halieutique entre science et action : réflexions sur fond de crise

Abstract

Fisheries research at the crossroads of science and action: reflection in a context of crisis. The fisheries world is at a crossroads with widespread concern about fishery regulatory systems and a wave of questions about research relating to sucri systems. The moment is right both for debate and for a concerted effort by those concerned. An important question Is: why have action and research been brought together in this way? Which factors operate to bring together social goals and scientific knowledge and move them away from one another, perhaps to a point of mutual Ignorance. The explanation developed here concerns the nature of the close relationship between research and decision that has characterised the fishery sector and which adds to the spécial features of the resource (invisible, renewable, mobile). This partly explains the importance of biological aspects in the decision process. It is from this basis that other views are added, rather than Integrated, maybe even substituted for one another, as alies develop in the productive sector. These views themselves come from fragmented visions of research relating to fishery systems and their regulation. Decisionmakers, researchers and producers each simplify the systems relating the natural and social processes, either according to time or space (ecological, biological, social, institutora!, political), which in fact can only be explained after the event once the nature of the crisis Is clear. The response suggested In this paper is to adopt a systemic approach confronted by either an effective multi-dlscipllnarlty orthe results of research-action. Drawing on a research workshop concerning the dynamics of fishery systems, an exprimental representative framework Is proposed, which focuses on the dynamics of the interaction between the productive and regulatory systems.