The NSF project now under way is linked to the fisheries management research that Acheson has been doing since the 1970s. He also has done extensive work in forest management. Although it’s most often biologists who control natural resource management, Acheson says there’s a direct tie to anthropology.
“Regulations and rules are made by people (and) it’s people who obey them,” he says. “It isn’t the lobsters and the clams who obey them.”
In addition to Acheson, colleagues Roy Gardner at Indiana University, Dmytro Zhosan at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, and Ann Acheson of UMaine’s Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center are collaborating on the NSF project. The researchers are using multiple methods to collect information, including key informant interviews, historical research, participant observation, and a large-scale mail survey of nearly 600 people who held groundfishing licenses in Maine in the 1970s.
In the survey, Acheson poses important questions about management practices, hoping to shed light on what regulations those in the industry believe are effective. Questions range from industry inquiries, such as the target species, fishing locations and boat size to more personal queries about levels of education and reasons for leaving the industry.
“Groundfishing management was kind of convoluted and hard to understand, and no one to this date that we know of has compiled a history of it,” says recent anthropology graduate Michelle Martin who, along with junior Sarah Niemic, worked on the survey and archival portions of the project. “We got a lot of different answers.”
Acheson is now compiling the data from the approximately 100 surveys returned; Martin used the preliminary findings for her honors thesis.
In the coming year, Acheson and the other researchers will continue to gather and analyze the surveys and historical data. Acheson hopes industry officials and policymakers will use the study to make more well-informed decisions that will revive the groundfishing industry before it’s too late.
“We hope it’s not too late for this study to have an impact on a dying industry that’s such a large part of Maine’s history,” says Acheson. “If we are going to improve management, we must know what has worked and what hasn’t.”
