The Future of Fishing, by Don Orth

A recent essay in the Wall Street Journal asked “Does fishing have a future?”  It narrowly focused only on one type of fishing—sport fishing.  Participation in fishing continues to grow but not as fast as the costs to provide access to fishing opportunities.  Recent initiatives have marketing recreational fishing to newcomers because new participants to fishing are offset by similar loss of fishing participants (RBFF 2019).   There is no question that fishing has a future.   However, there are many futures to consider.

Fish and fishing support human livelihoods, food security, recreation, ecosystem functions, and human health and well-being in many ways. However, conservation is complicated because there are so many types of fishing and their distribution overlaps with so many types of human settlements and human activities.   None of these activities has as profound an effect on fish than fishing.  Humans have been capturing fish for tens of thousands of years. Stone Age burial heaps in Africa contained harpoons, spears, fish bones, and a wide range of terrestrial animals dated from 90,000 to 75,000 years BP, but it’s only in the last 1,000 years that humans have developed a pervasive culture around fishing for profit. Today, there are many types of fishing. To manage fishing, one must first understand the types of fishing, fishers, and communities, in order to consider from a diverse array of management actions.  By definition, fisheries are based on the capture of fish or shellfish, even if there is the possibility of their release after capture.  Even though we’ve been fishing for a long time, we still can improve how we manage fishing.

 

George's Bank Cod fishery.

Source Freshwater and Marine Image bank

Commercial fishing is the activity of catching fish or other seafood for commercial profit.  Fisheries employ 260 million people and fish are the primary protein source for ~ 40% of the world’s population (FAO 2016).  Over the past 50 years, annual global consumption of seafood products per capita has more than doubled, from almost 10 kg in 1960 to over 20 kg in 2014 (FAO 2016).  Many nations rely on imports to meet national demands for seafood products, which complicates the management of commercial fishing at national level.   Much of the fish harvested for fish meal or fish oil enters international trade markets rather than local markets. Paul Greenberg in Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food (2011) describes commercial fishing as the last wild harvest of wild food, focusing on four fish (bass, tuna, cod, and salmon) that are most commercialized.

 

Global trends in capture fisheries and aquaculture FAO (2016).

Recreational fishing uses a variety of gear types including rod and line to catch fish for fun and or food.  Recreational fishing is defined as the fishing of aquatic animals (mainly fish) using one or more of several possible techniques in which aquatic animals do not constitute the individual’s primary resource to meet basic nutritional needs and are not sold or otherwise traded on export, domestic or black markets. The objective of recreational fishing is the overall recreational experience, and catch is only one important component. The propensity to harvest or to engage in voluntary catch-and-release varies among cultures, locations, species, and fisheries.  Outdoor recreation in general and sport fishing in particular are growing enterprises that contribute greatly to the overall economy.   Licenses and boat registration, taxes on boat motor fuel, and fishing equipment provide the funding for recreational fisheries management programs.  Recreational angler motivations change over time from catch any, to catch many, to catch big fish, and finally to catch no fish but pass on knowledge and passion for fishing. At some point many successful anglers wish to help others catch fish or to help researchers better assure that the fish and fishing experiences enjoyed in the past will still be around well into the future.

Recreational angler fishing a dusk.  Source Max Pixel

Traditional small-scale fisheries are prominent in many parts of the world. These artisanal and subsistence fisheries generate about one-third to one-half of the global catch that is used for direct human consumption (Pauly and Zeller 2016) and employ more than 99% of the worlds 51 million fishers (Jones et al. 2018).   Small-scale fisheries may also be described as (1) subsistence; (2) aboriginal, or (3) artisanal fisheries.  Subsistence fisheries are local, non-commercial fisheries, oriented not primarily for recreation but for the procurement of fish for consumption of the fishers, their families and community.” (Berkes 1988).  Subsistence fishers may forever be the ‘‘forgotten step-child’’ in fisheries management and are adversely affected by the attention lavished on the commercial and recreational sectors.  

Salmon and char are caught in gill nets by subsistence fishers in northwest Alaska Photo NPS  source

The diversity of fishing practices and take complicates conservation and management strategies.  We don’t often appreciate the diversity of fishing practices and behaviors.  While we know there is no such thing as the average angler or the average boat or typical fishing day, we often assume as much to simplify analyses.   Regulations on fishing must be compatible with the type of fishing.   Effective management and conservation require that we know our fishers well because the diversity of perceptions and fishing styles influence how they will comply with fishing regulations. 

Back to the question “does fishing have a future?”   The answer is yes, fishing has many futures.

First, marine commercial fisheries are frequently assessed  because catching capacity increases and new catch information is constructed (Branch 2011; Pauly and Zeller 2016). Big data, electronic monitoring, and artificial intelligence will influence future commercial fishing. Large valuable commercial fisheries are better managed via catch shares, and consumers are beginning to demand ecolabelled seafood (Lim et al. 2018).   The future of commercial fisheries will persist due to an ever rising demand for seafood, in particular tuna, but it will be harder for newcomers to enter into commercial fishing.

Second, the future of subsistence fishing is most uncertain because of a lack of monitoring. Consequently, food security for millions is at risk in the small-scale fisheries where the dominant protein sources is from locally caught seafood.  The long-term future of many subsistence fisheries will depend on our global efforts to address effects of global climate change on many islands. For example, consider the Atafu atoll in Tokelau (below) where all households participate in fishing and local reef fishes are a vital component of diet and tradition (White et al. 2018).  Effects of warming on reefs will have a substantial influence on subsistence fishing here and many similar islands.

An aerial view of Atafu atoll in Tokelau. It is the smallest of Tokelau’s three atolls with a land area of only 2.5 square kilometers. Photo:NASA

Finally, recreational fisheries on traditional species, such as trout, walleye, and bass, can be better evaluated. Avid anglers adapt and switch fishing locations depending on their perceived success. With a few exceptions, the general public is unaware of the status of fish that support recreational benefits, especially in urbanized regions where a minority of residents fish. And there’s the dilemma. Better monitoring and management will happen only if people show political will and desire to demand it. If the majority of the population does not fish then there’s insufficient support for fishing. The future of recreational fishing is expanding to non-traditional species.  For example, microfishing targeting many species as opposed to many fish are on the rise. In Mark Miller’s Fishing Through the Apocalypse, he provides a number of vignettes that illustrate how fishing in unusual places in our increasingly human-dominated world can provide new experiences.  

References

Berkes F. 1988.  Subsistence fishing in Canada: a note on terminology. Arctic 41(4):319–20.

Branch, T.A., O. P. Jensen, D. Ricard, Y. Ye and R. Hilborn, 2011 Contrasting global trends in marine fishery status obtained from catches and from stock assessments Conservation Biology 25:777– 786, DOI: 10.1111/j.1523‐1739.2011.01687.x.

Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO)  2016. The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture

Jones, B.L., RK.F. Unsworth, S. Udagedara, and L. C. Cullen-Unswrorth. 2018.  Conservation concerns of small-scale fisheries: by-catch impacts of a shrimp and finfish fishery in a Sri Lankan lagoon.  Frontiers in Marine Science  https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2018.00052

Lim, K.H., W. Hu, and R.M. Nayga, Jr. 2018.  Is Marine Stewardship Council’s ecolabel a rising tide for all?  Consumers’ willingness to pay for origin-differentiated ecolabeled tuna. Marine Policy 96:18-26.

Pauly, D., and D. Zeller. 2016. Catch reconstructions reveal that global marine fisheries catches are higher than reported and declining.  Nature Communications 7, 10244.

Recreational Boating and Fishing Foundation (RBFF). 2019.  2019 Special Report on Fishing.  75 pp.  Available at https://tinyurl.com/RBFF2019SpecialReport

  White, R., A.R. Coghlan, A. Coulter, M.L.D. Palomares, D. Pauly, and D. Zeller. 2018. Future of fishing for a vulnerable atoll: Trends in catch and catch-per-unit-effort in Tokelau’s domestic marine fisheries 1950-2016.  Frontiers in Marine Science 5:476.  doi: 10.3389/fmars.2018.00476

Women and Fishing, by Don Orth

Men and women use natural resources in different ways and may be differentially influenced by fisheries management policies.  Preferences and resource dependencies lead to some gender stereotypes about fishing.  In subsistence and commercial fisheries, catching of fish is often male dominated whereas the processing and marketing sectors are female dominated (Harper et al. 2017).  Yet, even these generalizations are misleading given the lack of attention to gender roles in fisheries science.  Few studies have been done comparing male and female motivations and preferences in recreational angling (Toth and Brown 1997; Schroeder et al. 2006). In the US, approximately 27% of anglers are female which is unchanged over twenty years (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service 2012).  Marketing and fisheries management in the US has focused more on male motivations and preferences.  One failed attempt to market pink fishing reels failed to “Know Your Customer” (Merwin 2010).  The gender gap in participation in recreational fishing is likely tied to inappropriate avenues for socialization into male dominated sports (Carini and Weber 2017). 

Globally, women comprise about 47 per cent of the 120 million people who work in the capture fisheries and post-harvest sectors (Montfort 2015).   While women are involved in the fishing, farming, processing, trading and selling of fish, their role is often overlooked in decision making for cultural reasons. For example, many cultural constructions in rural Bangladesh undermine the capacity of women to aspire to leadership roles and raise their voice to male power (Deb et al. 2015).  However, the temporary departure of men creates more socio-political space for fisherwomen to take on additional roles and responsibilities.  In West African regions, women control the marketing and processing sectors and have taken on larger roles as owners of boats, nets, and fishing equipment (Bennett 2005; Walker 2010). In some countries, women are not allowed to go to sea, or own a fishing business; women are often the invisible fishing fleet.  The Beijing Declaration and the Platform for Action, adopted unanimously by 189 countries, is an agenda for empowerment of women.

Today in many small-scale fisheries, women are important fishery workers, but invisible and often underpaid (Montfort 2015). In Bangladesh, girls and women are a very cheap labor source for shrimp processing factories (Deb et al. 2015).   Fisheries management policies are set by governance bodies that exclude women (Baker-Médard 2016). The organization, Gender in Aquaculture and Fisheries, is devoted to giving “greater visibility to and increase awareness of the importance of incorporating gender and more particularly women in fisheries and aquaculture interventions.”

 

Rana Tharu women go fishing in southwest Nepal.  CC-BY-NC-SA   Source.

Timucua women fishing1562.  Drawing by Jacques Le Moyne.  CC-BY-NC-SA.  Source.

Women net fishing Madagascar by Rod Waddington  CC-BY-SA.  Source.

Commercial fishing fleets are overwhelmingly male dominated with fewer than 4% of commercial fishing licenses issued to women in Oregon and Washington states.  Yet women contribute to resilient communities by caring for family and maritime household and increasingly women play a significant role in science, fisheries management, policy, and decision making (Calhoun et al. 2016).  The following quote is from participant in an oral history project.

“I used to go to groundfish management team meetings 25 years ago, and if there was one woman scientist in the groundfish management team it was a big deal. And now you see women are the chairs of the groundfish management team. So seeing changes, growth of women in both management and in science. Although I know those areas are still a challenge too. And then the rise of women participating in the decision-making process.”

Though sometimes invisible, women are slowly changing the world of fishing by breaking the stereotypes. Here I share a few examples on women making a substantial impact through their passion toward fishing.  These examples demonstrate women who loved and valued what they did.  If the paucity of female role models discourages females from seeing the relevance of fishing to them, these examples should inspire.

Georgina Ballantine with 64 pound Atlantic Salmon from River Tay, Scotland.  Photo from Glendelvine. 

Joan Wulff was introduced to flyfishing by her father when she was ten.  She won several flyfishing accuracy championships before winning the 1951 Fishermen’s Distance competition against all-male competitors. She became the first female spokesperson for Garcia Corporation in 1959 and advocated for women anglers in her writings for Outdoor Life and Rod & Reel.    Today many females are engaged in the sport of fly fishing. Joan Wulff participated in many distance casting events and also did trick casting.   She snapped a cigarette from the mouth of Johnny Carson on the TV show “Who Do You Trust?” (Fogt 2017).  Watch this video narrated by Joan Wulff to learn more about her technique. Starting in 1978, Joan Wulff opened a fly casting school on the Upper Beaverkill River in New York.  Joan Wulff’s Fly-Casting Techniques, published in 1987, and Joan Wulff’s New Fly-Casting Techniques, published in 2012, are classic guides to learning her techniques. When asked about her favorite fish, she would respond “whatever I’m fishing for“ and her favorite place to fish  was “wherever I am.”

Photo of Eugenie Clark spearfishing.   Photo from Mote Marine Lab.

Eugenie Clark (1922-2015) was zoologist at a time when the field was male dominated. In her first book, Lady with a Spear, she wrote of her expeditions to the West Indies, Hawaii, Guam, Palaus, and the Red Sea, and early research trials on vision and behavior in gobies, puffers, triggerfishes, and sharks. Eugenie Clark became a self-taught expert in the art of throwing a cast net, and catching fish with both wooden handled harpoons and spear guns. She pioneered research on behavior of sharks and conducted numerous submersible dives around the world and founded the Mote Marine Lab before becoming a professor at the University of Maryland.  A timeline of her accomplishments appeared in the Herald Tribune.

 

Betty Bauman is the founder and CEO of Ladies, Let’s Go Fishing!(R). Betty created “The No-Yelling School of Fishing.”  Most avid bass anglers can identify Roland Martin, Bill Dance, and Jimmy Houston, who dominated competitive bass fishing in the first decade of B.A.S.S. and have had TV fishing shows for decades.    But most females won’t identify with the three male legends. Kim Bain-Moore began competing in bass tournaments at age 19 and in 2009 became the first woman to compete in the Bassmaster Classic tournament.  But female participation in competitive bass fishing never took off as expected.  Fewer that 1 in 5 readers of Field & Stream, Outdoor Life and Bassmaster magazines are female (Carini and Weber 2017).  Yet the future growth of sport fishing will rely on female anglers, instructors, and guides.  There are signs of change since Betty Baumann started offering Ladies Let’s Go Fishing! to expose women to a non-intimidating atmosphere where they could learn fishing techniques.  Since the first program in 1997, over 8,000 participants have graduated from the Ladies, Let’s Go Fishing! Training.  In 2018,  the Lady Bass Anglers Association was formed to promote the Women’s Pro Bass Tour.   Wild River Press released Fifty Women Who Fish by Steve Kantner.  Today we see many more female fishing guides, fishing resources for female anglers, and female anglers on social media. Consider young writer and fishing guide, Ashley Rae, who operates She Loves To Fish, a fishing guide service focused on teaching women to fish.  

Today we are re-gendering many types of work and leisure activities.  The significant challenges that we face in freshwater and marine conservation at home and abroad will require input from all.  Rather than propagating stereotypes of fishing activities, we need to explore the participation across gender and other differences so we can do a better job evaluating outcomes of conservation for the well-being of all humans. 

References

Bennett, E. 2005.  Gender, fisheries and development.  Marine Policy 29:451-459. 

Buller, F. 2013. A list of large Atlantic Salmon landed by the ladies.  American Fly Fisher 39(4):2-21.

Calhoun, S., F. Conway, and S. Russell.  2016.  Acknowledging the voice of women: implications for fisheries management and policy.  Marine Policy 74:292-299.

Carini, R.M., and J.D. Weber. 2017. Female anglers in a predominantly male sport: portrayals in five popular fishing-related magazines.  International Review for the Sociology of Sport 52(1):45-60.

Clark, E. 1951.  Lady with a spear.  Harper Brothers. New York.  243 pp. 

Deb, A.K., C.E. Haque, and S. Thompson. 2015. ‘Man can’t give birth, woman can’t fish’: gender dynamics in the small-scale fisheries of Bangladesh.  Gender, Place & Culture 22(3):305-324. 

Fogt, J. 2017. Virtuoso.  Anglers Journal. 12 May.   Accessed at https://www.anglersjournal.com/freshwater/virtuoso on 21 June, 2019.

Harper, S., C. Grubb, M. Stiles, and U.R. Sumaila. 2017 Contributions by women to fisheries economies: Insights from five maritime countries. Coastal Management 45(2):91-106.

Klieber, D., L.M. Harris, and A.C.J. Vincent. 2014. Gender and small-scale fisheries: a case for counting women and beyond.   Fish and Fisheries 16(4):547-562.

Merwin, J. 2010.  Merwin:  Study says most women don’t like pink fishing gear.  Field & Stream, 24 May.   Available at https://www.fieldandstream.com/blogs/bass-fishing/2010/05/merwin-study-says-most-women-dont-pink-fishing-gear/  Accessed 20 June 2019.

Montfort, M.C. 2015. The role of women in the seafood industry.  Globefish Research Program Volume 119, FAO, Rome. 67 pp.  http://www.fao.org/3/a-bc014e.pdf

Baker-Médard, M. 2017. Gendering marine conservation: The politics of marine protected areas and fisheries access. Society & Natural Resources 30(6):723-737.

Schroeder, S.A., D.C. Fulton, L. Currie, and T. Goeman. 2006. He said, she said: Gender and angling specialization, motivations, ethics, and behaviors. Human Dimensions of Wildlife 11(5):301-315.  

Toth, J.F., Jr., and R.B. Brown. 1997.  Racial and gender meanings of why people participate in recreational fishing.  Leisure Sciences 19:129-146.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. 2012.  2011 National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife-Associated Recreation. Available at: http://www.census.gov/prod/2012pubs/fhw11-nat.pdf (accessed 18 June 2019).

Walker, B.L.E. 2001.  Sisterhood, and seine-nets: engendering development and conservation in Ghana’s marine fishery. The Professional Geographer 53(2):160-177.

 

Carp Personality, by Hanna Moreland

In a study conducted by Klefoth et al. (2012) questioned whether boldness of specific carp increased capture rate through hook and line fishing.  They are not the only investigators studying personality in fish.  In this essay I explore three questions. What is boldness in carp?  How do we measure it? What are the implications of this research?  I will explore these questions in the context of the Klefoth et al. study in order to give a better understanding of why this research is so important.

Common Carp Cyprinus carpio.  Photo from Flickr.  CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Science would be easier if we could just ask animals their personality traits through a short quiz or verbal interaction. How can a carp have a personality? One way to measure personality in carp is to identify if the individual is bold or not bold. In this study carp boldness was measured by tracking fish movements within a small pond with transmitters. In the pond there were shelters the researchers placed which the carp used for safety. Some carp spent their time mostly in the shelter, some spent some time right outside the shelters, and others ventured far from the shelter. Those individuals who ventured far from the shelter site were considered bold and marked as so for later testing. Do these individuals have a higher production of a hormone or a genetic sequence that makes them more likely to be bold?  Klefoth et al. (2017) indicates that there is a genetic component to being bold as boldness was a repeatable measurement in this experiment as well as in other experiments studying fish.

Next, I’m going to explore why measuring boldness matters in the context of this article as well as in relation to angling. Klefoth et al. (2012) asked whether boldness and catchability were correlated. They hypothesized that the bold individuals, those who ventured far from the shelters in the pond, would be more likely to be caught by anglers because they were in open waters. The research indicates that a correlation exists! Those individuals marked as bold in the first part of the study, were the carp more likely to be caught in the second half of the study. This has great implications for management strategies in both threatened species and species intended for harvest. If boldness is truly genetic and moderately heritable these traits can be selected and bred for. In relation to threatened species, individuals who stay in the shelters would be most useful for breeding purposes because they are more cautious and less vulnerable to predation. On the other hand, for game fish purposes the bold fish would be the focus of breeding and stocking programs. In this study bolder fish were more likely to be caught which means happier anglers if bold fish are stocked in popular carp fishing ponds!

 

Carp breaching.  Photo by Stan Lupo.  CC BY-NC-NC 2.0.  Source.

Of course, there are still a lot of questions that need to be answered before breeding programs can be initiated. Further research can delve into what makes a carp bold, whether it be genetic or hormone related. Next studies could focus on if boldness is heritable from parent to offspring and by what magnitude as traits like length and size are only moderately heritable in fish (Garcia et al. 2007). If these continued research efforts yield positive results this could mean new management techniques that improve populations of threatened and game carp species. Finally, similar research could be conducted on other species of fish to see if the same results hold true and can be applied to their own management programs. Fish may not be as different from humans with regards to personality. This new finding opens new windows of opportunity for bold students willing to explore these implications through further research and management.

References

Garcia de Leaniz, C., and fourteen coauthors. (2007). A critical review of adaptive genetic variation in Atlantic salmon: Implications for conservation. Biological Reviews, 82, 173– 211.

Klefoth, T., Skov, C., Kuparinen, A., & Arlinghaus, R. (2017). Toward a mechanistic understanding of vulnerability to line fishing: Boldness as the basic target of angling‐induced selection. Evolutionary Applications, 10, 994– 1006.

Klefoth, T., Skov, C., Krause, J., & Arlinghaus, R. (2012). The role of ecological context and predation risk‐stimuli in revealing the true picture about the genetic basis of boldness evolution in fish. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 66, 547– 559. 

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