Acheson, Order out of Chaos

8/7/2019 Acheson, Order out of Chaos

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/ UNIVERSITY OF MAINEUNIVERSITY OF MAINE

Twentieth century science will be remembered for justthree things:relativity, quantummechanics and chaos.-James Gleick,Chaos:Makinga New Science

THE PAST THREE DECADES have seen the decline ofsome of the world's most important fisheries. In theUnited States, every major fishery in the Atlantic, Pa-cific, and Gulf of Mexico has witnessed stock depletionand reduced catches.' The fact that these stocks havebeen under management for decades means that we arewitnessing a failure not only of stocks but of policy aswell.While there is general agreement that current man-agement practices are not working well, there is noagreement about the cause of the problem. Most admin-istrators and scientists employed in fisheries manage-ment agencies tend to believe that the science is soundand that the problems are political in nature. That is,they believe the management plans are well conceivedbut are not implemented due to the self-serving activi-ties of the fishing industry (Sullivan 1987:2). Others arenot so sanguine. There is a growing conviction, whichwe share, that the science itself is seriously flawed andis leading to ineffective policies.In this essay, we bring together the ethnography ofmany fishing societies around the world and the theoryof chaos to propose another way to manage fisheries.Essentially we argue that fisheries management in theindustrial West would be well advised to emulate man-agement practices of a large number of peasant andtribal societies, which are more consistent with fisher-ies biology and the chaotic nature of marine resources.Since its inception in the 1960s, the theory of chaoshas progressed from a preoccupation of a small group

of physical scientists and mathematicians to a flourish-ing academic enterprise involving literally thousands ofpeople in mathematics, the sciences, and increasinglyin the social sciences. While most anthropologists arevaguely familiar with the ideas of chaos and complexity,these notions have not been used extensively in anthro-pology. There are some notable exceptions includingPaul Friedrich's (1988:435-444) review of JamesGleick's 1987 book, Thomas Park's (1992) use of chaostheory to analyze floods and the development of strati-fication in early civilization, and P. Philippe's (1993)application of chaos to epidemiology. More to the point,a number of articles appeared in Maritime Anthropo-logical Studies linking chaos and complexity withchanges in fish stocks, the behavior of fishers, and thenature of maritime communities.2

Among maritime anthropologists it is axiomaticthat fisheries scientists and those who use those re-sources hold different views about the way oceanswork and thus have different ideas about how to man-age them. Estellie Smith cogently phrases these differ-ent perceptions by saying that population dynamiciststend to see the factors controlling the size of fish stocksas "ordered, balanced and in dynamic equilibrium"(Smith 1990:5). People in the fishing industry, she says,see them as far more "unpredictable" and even "cha-otic." These observations are mirrored by Palsson(1994:918-921), who points out that folk knowledge offishermen assumes the oceans are "complex" and in"flux."

Between 1989 and 1991, those involved in the Uni-versity of Maine Chaos Project developed a model offish stocks in the Gulf of Maine. This model stronglybuttresses the idea that the size of fish stocks changeschaotically (Wilson et al. 1991a, 1991b). Managing suchsystems, we argue, calls for a different approach-in-fluencing the ecological variables and fishing practicesthat are parameters in our model. We call this the para-metric approach.3

JAMESM.ACHESONis Professor,DepartmentofAnthropology,Universityof Maine,Orono,ME04469.JAMESA.WILSONis Professor,DepartmentofResourceEconomics,Universityof Maine,Orono,ME04469.

AmericanAnthropologist98(3):579-594.Copyright? 1996,AmericanAnthropologicalAssociation.

JAMESM. ACHESONJAMESA. WILSON/

Order Bit lf ChalsThe Case for Parametric Fisheries Management


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580 AMERICANANTHROPOLOGIST* VOL. 98, No. 3 * SEPTEMBER1996

In this essay, we first review the scientific under-pinning of the approach to management advocated bymost fisheries biologists, which we call the numericalapproach. Then we describe the ways in which societiesin third-world countries manage their fisheries. We nextdiscuss aspects of the theory of chaos and argue thatthe kinds of regulatory practices needed to managechaotically fluctuating fish stocks are exactly thoseseen in the fishing communities in third-world coun-tries. Finally, we assess the effectiveness of parametricmanagement using observations of anthropologistswho have studied local-level or folk management sys-tems and data from the Maine lobster industry.

Numerical Management of FisheriesStock-RecruitmentModels

The basis of "scientific" management efforts isstock-recruitment models, which are essentially con-cerned with population sizes of fish stocks. Such mod-els are based on the presupposition that marine ecologi-cal systems tend toward equilibrium. That is, it isassumed that there is a normal population size for anyspecies or set of stocks in marine ecosystems (Holling1994). If a consistent level of fishing effort is put on afish stock, there will be a tendency toward a predictablepopulation size.4The central idea of such models is that the long-term abundance or sustainability of a species is stronglylinked to the amount of exploitative effort on that stock.The relationship between stock size and fishing effortcan be described mathematically. The theory assumesthat when stocks are low due to overfishing, the largerthe parent stock, the larger the number of future addi-tions to the population (recruitment). These models

lead unerringly to policies designed to regulate thequantity of fish that can be taken.5In the past several decades a good deal of work hasbeen done to refme this model. The essential idea canbe explained in terms of one simple graph, which is amodification of the famous Schaeffer curve for fisher-ies.

At low levels, effort tends to reduce population sizeonly slightly. Increasing amounts progressively reducethe population. At high levels of effort, which typicallyoccur in open access fisheries, populations will be low,and the reproductive ability of the stock will be low aswell. If fishing mortality exceeds this stock's reproduc-tive ability, populations will fall further. The objectiveof management then is to limit effort to the point wheremaximum economic yield (MEY)occurs or where maxi-mum sustainable yield (MSY) results (Wieland 1992).(See Figure 1.) In either case, effort can be limited byrules designed to lower mortality on fish, or directly bya quota (Cushing 1988:276). At present, administrators,economists, and scientists are much taken with the ideaof ITQs, individual transferable quotas, which promisenot only to control the amount of fishing but also toachieve economic efficiency (Anderson 1992). It is criti-cal to note that the objective of numerical managementis to control the tonnage of fish caught. There is noconcern for the effects of fishing on the broader envi-ronment and indirectly on the sustainability of the fishpopulations.Empirical research has been unable to demon-strate that these stock-recruitment relationships existin most cases.6 There have been cases where largeyear-classes of fish came out of small parent stocks. Inother cases, increases in effort have apparently hadlittle effect on recruitment, such as in the Maine lobsterfishery. As the biologist Nils Daan states, "The recruit-ment problem has not been solved" (1990:382).Despite the ambiguity of the evidence mentionedabove, fisheries managers have steadfastly maintainedtheir faith in stock-recruitment models and have basedtheir management efforts on this body of theory. Arecent article in Science quotes one fisheries biologistas saying, "Fish stocks collapse because of plain simpleoverfishing" (Barinaga 1995:1043). He speaks for themajority of those in the profession.Top-DownManagement

In virtually all modern industrialized countries,controls on fishing effort are managed by centralizedgovernments in very large units or even the entire rangeof the species. Reliance on top-down management tech-niques stems in part from the assumption that thoseusing natural resources are strongly motivated to over-exploit them and cannot generate institutions to man-

Yield/Recruitment

typical openL access result

highpopulation low Fishing Effortpopulation

Figure1Relationshipbetween fishing effort, fishment. population,and recruit-


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PARAMETRIC FISHERIES MANAGEMENT / JAMES M. ACHESON AND JAMES A. WILSON 581

age them effectively. Management must be in the handsof government.7 These assumptions are part of the the-ory of "common property" resources, which is perhapsthe most influential body of theory guiding efforts tomanage resources in modern Western countries.8

For those trained in scientific management, it isanathema to manage a species over only part of itsrange. It makes no sense, from a scientist's point ofview, to protect a species in one zone only to have itmigrate into another area where it can be taken by otherpeople due to a difference in regulations. As a result,the units to be managed must be large (Sherman andLaughlin 1992).

Scientific Management:CaseStudiesAlthough there are common threads running

through attempts to manage marine fisheries in modernindustrial countries, actual regulations vary consider-ably from fishery to fishery. They have met with varyingdegrees of success. Between 1977 and 1980, the ground-fish of the Gulf of Maine were managed by the federalgovernment of the United States working through theNew England Regional Fisheries Management Council.A mesh size regulation was established, but the primarymanagement tools were trip quotas and three-monthquotas. That is, a quota was established for three size-classes of vessels and a total quota on each of themanaged species was established for each three-monthperiod. When the total allowable catch (TAC) wasreached, fishing was banned for the remainder of thethree-month period (Acheson 1984:321; Dewar1983:176-177). This effort failed due to massive politi-cal agitation and the fact that the self-reporting systemled to widespread cheating and misreporting of catches(see Figure 2, Case 1).9In New Zealand fisheries (see Figure 2, Case 2)reliance is placed on individual transferable quotas. Atotal allowable catch is set for each species to be man-aged. Then rights to fish for a portion of the catch areallocated to firms established in the fishery. These ITQscan be sold to other firms, a design that should ensurethat ownership will "eventually rest with the most effi-cient harvesters" (Sissenwine and Mace 1991:149). Inaddition, licenses are limited, and a vessel buy-backprogram has been established to reduce the number ofboats in many fisheries. Although the program is so newthat it cannot be adequately assessed, Michael Sissen-wine and Pamela Mace conclude it has led to no im-provement in the fishery, from a biological or an eco-nomic standpoint (1991:152-153).Not all efforts to manage fisheries using "scientificmethods" have ended in failure. One such fishery is thesalmon fishery of Alaska (Figure 2, Case 3). In the early

decades of the century, salmon fishing was uncon-trolled, and such a high percentage of the fish weretaken that low catches were experienced in the 1940sto 1960s. In an effort to improve catches, the number ofsalmon traps was reduced substantially, and in the1970s a limited entry program was enacted, placingstrict controls on the number of people and vesselsallowed in the fishery (Royce 1989:8-12). Althoughthere was considerable opposition from those excludedfrom the fishery, Alaskan salmon catches have im-proved, and the management plan remains in effect.

Fisheries ManagementTechniques in FolkSocietiesManagement of marine fisheries is found through-out the world in a large number of industrial and more

traditional societies (Acheson 1981;Berkes 1989). How-ever, there can be little question that the managementpractices in modern Western societies where scientificmanagement is the rule are different from those used inpeasant and tribal societies. Those differences can beclearly seen by comparing the data on the combinationsof techniques used in societies summarized in Figures2 and 3.10

Figure 2 contains information on seven societies inwhich fisheries management regulations are strongly orcompletely influenced by the scientific establishment,and management is in the hands of a central govern-ment. Most of these are modern industrial countries.Figure 3 contains information on the fishery regulationsused in 29 societies (Cases 8 to 36) where traditional orfolk management techniques are employed and scien-tists have had little if any influence.11 Most of thesesystems of rules have been developed on the local level,usually by the users of the resources themselves. Insuch societies rules are enforced by informal commu-nity pressure or religious sanctions rather than by offi-cials of a formally constituted government.For our purposes there are two important insightsoffered by the data in Figures 2 and 3. First, in virtuallyall of the societies studied, resources are managed bypolitical entities that have riparian rights over coastalareas. We believe that some kind of riparian controlover territoriality is a necessary precondition for anyother kind of resource management regulation.12 A ruleor regulation cannot apply generally. It can apply onlywithin the territory of a group willing and able to en-force the rule.The size of the units to be managed varies consid-erably. The management areas employed by the socie-ties in Figure 2 are generally much larger than those inFigure 3. The large size of the units to be managedgenerally reflects the penchant of governments and


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o _ 6

CASE# SOCIETY REFERENCE RESOURCE o * 25 o g

((/ E 0 U U -Ci Z UZ C4 MEXICO MGOODWIN987SHRII-P-X- X.-.

5 NEWENGLAD ACHESON198 93 GROUNFISH X X X X2 NEWZEALAND SlSSENWINEAND MACE1991 FINFISH XX3 ALASKA ROYCE1989 SALMON X X X4 MEXICO MCGOODWlN1987 SHRIMP X X X X X5 MAINE ACHESON1988 LOBSTER X X X X X X6 LOFOTENISLANDS JENTOFTAND KRISTOFERSEN1989 COD XX X7 ICELAND DURRENBERGERAND PALSSON1995 FISH X X X X XX X

Figure2Managementtechniques used in societies underscientific management.

582 AMERICANANTHROPOLOGIST* VOL. 98, No. 3 . SEPTEMBER1996

scientists to manage large areas or even the entire rangeof a species using top-down management techniques.The small size of the management units of the societiesin Figure 3 is consistent with the fact that most are tribalgroups or peasant societies, which typically have con-trol over relatively small areas people know intimately(Johannes 1981:11-84; Murton 1980:75; Klee 1980:255ff.). The fisheries management rules are consistent withthe local culture and social structure.

Second, all of the rules and practices used in the 29tribal and peasant societies in Figure 3 regulate "how"fishing is done. That is, they limit location, time, stageof life of the target species, or technology. None limitthe amount of various species that can be caught. Useof quotas-the single most important concept and toolof scientific management-is conspicuous by its ab-sence.13 In the tribal societies on which we have data,there is only one instance where a quota is mentionedat all, and this was imposed by the Hudson's Bay Com-pany in an attempt to regulate Cree exploitation ofbeaver after 1820 (Brightman 1987:122-123).As is indicated by Figure 3, the rules and techniquesused to manage fisheries in third-world societies (Cases8 to 36) can be described in the same terms as thoseused in modern industrialized societies. However, thesemanagement techniques are the product of differentcultures, and they are employed in a variety of combi-nations. This gives these management regimes a flavornot seen in traditional texts on fisheries management.A few examples will suffice to illustrate this point.

In Tokugawa Japan (Case 9), both land and seawere part of the fiefs of feudal lords. The people offishing villages were allowed to fish in coastal watersonly if they paid the lord. After a time village fishingterritories evolved, but ownership still resided with the

lord (Kalland 1984:11-12). Permission to use fish didnot give unlimited rights of exploitation. Fishing wasoften restricted to certain seasons. Licenses needed tobe obtained from the feudal authorities to take abaloneand whales and to use large nets (Kalland 1984:22-24).Fisheries sanctuaries were also recognized and pro-tected. However, no effort was made to limit the num-ber of boats or the number of people involved in thefishery (Kalland 1984:23). Many of the latter techniquesare in use in Japan today.In Oceania, conservation efforts were rooted in thereef and lagoon tenure system. Inshore fishing groundswere considered the property of local villages, and ac-cess to them was allocated by the local village chief.Individuals from other communities were generally al-lowed to fish in these waters for a fee. In addition, therewere rules that protected certain species. On one islandin the Palau group (Case 10), fishers were prohibitedfrom catching one predator fish that drives other spe-cies onto the shore, so that it could continue its goodwork in the service of humans. R. E. Johannes (1981:64-67) also reports that turtles were thought to be ownedby God, and neither the adult turtles nor turtle eggscould be taken. Throughout Oceania, fish considered anemergency food supply could not be caught in goodweather when other species were available. There wasalso a strong conservation ethic on these islands. Peo-ple were expected not to take more fish than they couldconsume. Ideally one had enough skill to be able to findfish whenever the need arose.

In India another combination of practices andnorms was used to manage the fishery and other naturalresources (Case 29). There was a system of caste fishingterritories, which lasted until recent times (Gadgil1985:139). In addition, the Hindu month of Sravana


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y Oo _ z

CASE r SOCIETY REFERENCE RESOURCE u) u c ? l 5

O _ o > o ? p? 3 o9 JAPANITOKUGAWAPRIOD)KALLAN-18- FSX-- X- -S - < o o lM Q :

8 CAYECALKER,BELIZE SUTHERLAND1986 SPINYLOBSTER X X X X9 JAPAN{TOKUGAWAPERIOD) KALLAND1984 FISH X X X

10 PALAU JOHANNES 1981 FISH X X X X11 SRI LANKA ALEXANDER1980 FINFISH X X X12 OKINAWA AKIMICHIAND RUDDLE1984 FISH X X X X X13 CREE BERKES1987 FISH X X X X14 OCEANIA BAINES 1989/JOHANNES 1978 FISH X X X X X X15 NEWFOUNDLAND MARTIN1979 FINFISH XX X16 COASTALJAPAN RUDDLE1989 FIN FISH X X X17 EQUADOR SOUTHON 1989 FISH X18 KOYUKON NELSON 1982 FISH X X19 OJIBWA BISHOP1970 GAME AND FISH X X20 TITICACA LEVEILAND ORLOVE1990 GAMEAND TOTORA X X21 YOLUNGU(AUST.) WILLIAMS1982 FISH, TURTLES,SHELLFISH,EMU X X22 POHNPEI FOSTERAND POGGIE1993 FISH X X X X X23 KIRIBAH-TUVALU ZANN 1985 FISH X X X X X X24 ROCKCREE BRIGHTMAN1987 FISH AND BEAVERS X X X X25 PONAM,NEW GUINEA CARRIER1987 FISH X X26 BORNEO VONDAL 1987 FISH,DUCKS, SNAILS X X27 BRAZIL ROBBEN1994a, 1994b FIN FISH X X X28 ZEELAND VAN GINKEL1989 OYSTERS X X29 INDIA GADGIL1985 FISH, ANIMALS,PLANTS X X X30 MALAITA AKIMICHI1981 FISH X X X31 TURKEY BERKES1986 FISH X X X X X32 TORRESSTRAIT NIETSCHMANN1985 FISH X X X33 NILEDELTA ROWNTREEet al. 1984 FISH X X X34 KOREA HAN 1972 MYOK X X35 MEXICO MILLER1989 LOBSTER X X36 HARAPA,PAKISTAN BELCHER1993 FISH X X


Figure3Managementtechniquesusedin 29 folksocieties.

(August) was a closed season when no fish or meatcould be harvested, and the use of fish poisons waslimited to a few days coinciding with a communal festi-val. There were prohibitions on fishing during matingseason to protect the breeding stock. Sacred pondswere protected, providing a sanctuary (Gadgil1985:143). All resources, including fish, were consid-ered the property of the gods and not of the caste, andthe gods' permission was needed before they could beharvested. Madhav Gadgil (1985:135) argues that thesepractices maintained populations at sustainable levels.

Managing Chaotic FisheriesWhy have so many societies managed fisheries byessentially regulating how people fish? We argue thatthis type of management is congruent with the natureof fish populations, which is probably highly chaotic. In

addition, this type of management involves moderateinformation and enforcement costs, resulting in thedevelopment of effective institutions. In stark contrastto what most fisheries biologists believe, we believe itis the only kind of management regime that is likely tobe effective in the long run, a principle that people innon-Western societies have discovered.Recent work by our research group strongly sug-gests that even simple communities of fish exhibit cha-otic population patterns; the population level of individ-ual species varies unpredictably within limits eventhough it is bounded within a range. These conclusionsare the result of work with a simulation model reportedin James A. Wilson et al. (1991a, 1991b), which approxi-mates the conditions (spawning, growth, and mortalityfigures) seen in a typical groundfish population in tem-perate waters. The model has an age-structured com-munity of five species with a large amount of niche


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584 AMERICANANTHROPOLOGIST. VOL.98, NO. 3 . SEPTEMBER1996

overlap. It is assumed that the size of the community asa whole is limited by food constraints that set an overallcarrying capacity. Interactions among the five speciesare marked by what Sissenwine (1984, 1986) calls com-munity predation-big fish eat little fish indiscrimi-nately. This is the primary cause of the chaotic swingsin population. In short, as the community approachesits carrying capacity, the scarcity of food results inmore small fish being eaten by larger fish. D. H. Cushing(1977) has demonstrated that cannibalism producesswings in the population of a single species. Our modelis a multiple-species version of the same phenomenon.The result is chaotic variation in stock sizes.This model exhibits several characteristics thatcan be observed among marine systems. The totalbiomass of the community of fish is relatively stable,but the biomass of individual species can vary in unpre-dictable ways. In addition, there is compensationamong species so that when the population of one de-clines, another increases to take its place. Last, in thismodel, as in observed fisheries, there is no relationshipbetween the size of the spawning stock and recruit-ment.14The model approximates the qualitative charac-teristics of fish and ocean ecosystems using parameterstypical of ocean and fisheries systems. The output ofour model mirrors the kind of unpredictable populationchanges observed in actual populations of fish overtime. Others, such as Alan Hastings and Kevin Higgins(1994), also argue that marine systems are chaotic.However, there is certainly no consensus on this matteryet, and none will probably arise for aperiod of years.15Under these conditions, the key question is, If fish-eries are chaotic, how should they be managed? An-swering this question necessitates some understandingof the nature of chaotic systems. Chaotic systems arenot marked by a complete lack of order. Rather, physi-cists point out that chaotic systems are characterizedby clear cause-and-effect relationships, but the com-plexity and nonlinearity of these relationships makesoutput of these systems highly unpredictable. Theseoutcomes, however, take place within well-defined lim-its or ranges set by the parameters of the model. Usuallyin modeling-our efforts included-the parameters ofthe model are assumed constant. In models of biologi-cal systems, these parameters represent such things asspawning potential, growth rates, habitat, and migra-tion. In the real world, these basic input factors (pa-rameters) remain relatively stable over the course oftime. Their stability is the reason that fish populationscan be expected to vary within certain limits, eventhough population changes will remain unpredictable.This implies that if the parameters of the system remainrelatively constant, the variation of fish populations willremain within normal or historic limits.

In addition, chaotic systems are extremely sensi-tive to "initial conditions" (Gleick 1987:22-23). Thismeans that small changes in current circumstances canproduce huge changes in the future state of a chaoticsystem. Where groundfish are concerned, a largeamount of fishing on a concentration of spawning fishor a storm might result in a small year-class. On theother hand, a large amount of food, favorable watertemperatures, or favorable currents near a spawningarea might result in high recruitment several yearshence.Theoretically, one should be able to predict theeffects of such initial conditions on fish populations,given the deterministic nature of chaotic systems. Thenumber of relationships is so large and the feedbackmechanisms in the system are so complicated, how-ever, that a huge amount of accurate, fine-grained, con-tinuously updated data would be necessary to make

accurate prediction possible.16 Given how sensitivesuch models are to initial conditions, small variationsor inaccuracies in measurement would likely result inhuge errors in prediction. Under these conditions, ac-curate prediction is a practical impossibility.The difficulties of prediction are underscored bythe fact that in the model used by the researchers in ourgroup, all of the relationships, parameters, and initialconditions are known because they are defined by theprogrammer. Under these conditions, even a smallchange in the third or fourth decimal place of the initialvariables will produce results that quickly diverge frompredictions. In actual fisheries, we are fortunate to beable to assess stocks within 30 percent of their actualsize; we can only guess at community predation inter-relationships; and great variations exist in estimates offactors such as natural mortality.17Even if fisheries are not chaotic, they are certainlycomplex, as Donald Ludwig et al. (1993) have pointedout. In either case, fisheries are unpredictable. Theproblem is how to manage without the ability to predictoutcomes. Given our state of knowledge of interrela-tionships in fish communities and our real measure-ment capabilities, it is virtually impossible to predictthe size of future stocks of fish. This means that in thereal world, it is impossible to predict the outcomes, forexample, of regulations to achieve maximum sustain-able yield, or maximum economic yield, through mea-sures such as a quota.If stock-recruitment models cannot be used practi-cally, what approach should be taken? Our modelingexercise gives a clue. The fact that the populations offish vary within specifiable limits when the system pa-rameters are undisturbed suggests that fisheries can bemanaged by maintaining those parameters. If this ap-proach to management is taken, the goal of regulationwould be to maintain critical life processes such as


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spawning, to prohibit fishing during certain parts of thelife cycle, and to maintain areas essential for the well-being of these species (such as breeding grounds, mi-gration, and nursery areas). This can be accomplishedby rules concerning fishing locations, fishing areas, andtechniques. Of course, it is exactly this approach tomanagement that is taken in so many tribal and peasantsocieties listed in Figure 3 (Cases 8 to 36). In thesesocieties the emphasis is on maintaining the variablesthat affect fisheries systems--not the amount of fishtaken. We call this approach parametric management.The goal of parametric managagement is not to attemptto control yields of fish but to maintain the system in astate where the normal range of variability is preserved(Wilson and Dickie 1995).

Enforcement Costs and the Creation ofInstitutions

Controlling how people fish minimizes informationand enforcement costs, which makes it possible to gen-erate effective conservation institutions. Numericalmanagement, by way of contrast, tends to increase bothkinds of costs, with detrimental effects on institutionaldevelopment.People in fishing communities in tribal and peasantareas develop and support rules affecting how fishingis done, because such rules are based on the knowledgethey have about the resource and because they believethe rules are in their own best interests. Not only dothey have an opportunity to learn about regular biologi-cal processes of target species, but it is essential thatthey obtain this information. If they are to succeed infishing, they must know a great deal about the habits ofvarious species, including feeding patterns, predation,life cycle, and places where fish will be over the sea-sonal round (including their migration routes, spawningareas, and nursery areas) (Johannes 1978, 1981:32-58).The fact that they exploit species only in small zoneshas facilitated their ability to learn about these species.This knowledge is also an important ingredient ingenerating rules to conserve species. Those who exploitfish stocks for a number of years develop an excellentidea about what influences them. The conservationrules they develop are designed to maintain those bio-logical processes they know or believe are essential forthe well-being of the fish stocks on which their liveli-hood depends. They believe that rules designed to pro-tect fish and animals at certain life-cycle stages arecrucial, and they support them. The result is lowerenforcement costs. Conversely, they are apt to be op-posed to rules that are not based on biological realityand thus are judged to be ineffective. Johannes summa-rizes the situation nicely in writing about Oceania:

"When fishermen do not understand the purposes offishing regulations or perceive them as being imposedarbitrarily by outsiders they are not liable to look onthem with favor or obey them voluntarily" (1981:198).Moreover, rules influencing how people fish haveanother virtue: they lower enforcement cost by makingpolicing relatively easy. It is easy to monitor whetherpeople are fishing along a prohibited beach, or taking aforbidden species, or using illegal gear. It is entirelyanother matter to enforce a numerical rule, since thisrequires counting amounts of fish and keeping recordsof catches.

Many fisheries management regimes in the UnitedStates founder on exactly such shoals. Fishermen knowthat fisheries are chaotic, and policies that ignore thisinsight seem ineffective, unrealistic, and even foolish(Smith 1990:9). From the point of view of such people,obedience to rules based on stock-recruitment modelsimposes costs that will not result in future benefits.They are a poor investment.The problems inherent in numerical managementwere underscored in the attempts to manage thegroundfish stocks of the Gulf of Maine using trip quotasand three-month quotas (Case 1). The plan was monu-mentally unpopular, and the self-reporting system ledto massive cheating. There were a good many arrestsand a lot of political agitation (Acheson 1984). In 1980,this plan was put in abeyance and another substituted.In retrospect, it is apparent that the basic problem wasthat fishermen did not believe the rules would conservethe stocks. This led to cheating, which motivated stillothers to cheat in an effort to get their share of the fish.In the past, fishermen may have been suspicious of thefigures on which science was based; now they knewsuch figures were completely fraudulent, since theywere the source of them.Vincent and Elinor Ostrom have done outstandingwork analyzing the conditions under which institutionsare generated to conserve resources. Elinor Ostrompoints out that "where substantial temptation exists toengage in opportunistic behavior, no set of rules will beself enforcing" (1992:55). In the case of the New En-gland groundfishery, the incentives made self-enforce-ment impossible, and the government did not have theresources to enforce the rules. As a result, large num-bers of fishermen became "free riders," and the ground-fish management plan, which constituted what MancurOlsen would define as a public good, became impossi-ble to maintain.18 In this and many other cases, whenfishermen do not believe a management plan will resultin future benefits, the goals of individuals are not thoseof the society at large, enforcement costs grow, andmanagement plans fail.19


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Berkes's 1989 edited volume is "sustainable develop-ment." But such statements are little more than profes-sions of faith and do not constitute hard evidence thatparametric rules conserve marine resources.

The Maine Lobster Fishery: AnExampleofParametric ManagementIt is difficult to assess the effect of regulations onstocks. The number of biological, climatological, politi-

cal, and cultural factors is so vast that controlled com-parisons are virtually impossible. For this reason, it isdifficult to demonstrate the superiority of parametricmanagement over any other approach. There are somecase studies, however, that do buttress the case forparametric management. One is the Maine lobster in-dustry, with which we have been working for over twodecades.In the Maine lobster fishery, management has al-ways been parametric in that emphasis has been onregulating how people fish rather than how many fishare caught. Since the 1880s, lobster management inMaine has depended on regulations to protect thebreeding stock and increase the number of eggs in thewater. These have taken the form of size regulationsand prohibitions on taking female lobsters with eggs(Acheson 1988:138-141, 1989, 1993). There is also a lawthat lobsters may be taken only by traps, which must beequipped with escape vents to allow small lobsters toescape. It is illegal to drag for lobsters using trawls,since, while traps are environmentally benign, trawlsare unselective, mangle lobsters, and damage the bot-tom. In the entire history of the industry, there havebeen no laws to limit the number of lobsters that can becaught by an individual or in aggregate, nor are thereany limits on the number of boats or licenses.In the Maine lobster fishery, catches have fluctu-ated greatly over the past 120 years. From 1880 to thepresent, annual Maine lobster catches averaged about20 million pounds. There have been two unusual peri-ods: the period between World WarI and the beginningof World War II, when the catch was only 5 to 7 millionpounds, and the period from 1989 to the present, whenlobster catches have hovered around 30 million pounds.In 1994 the catch was 38 million pounds, an all-timerecord (Maine Department of Marine Resources 1995).Enough good data have been collected on catches,numbers of boats, traps, temperature changes, changesin regulations, and illegal activity that it is possible toexamine all of the hypotheses proposed by biologistsand members of the industry concerning the changesobserved in catches. The results have been reported inanother essay (Acheson and Steneck 1995). While thedata from that study cannot be reported here due to

HowWell Does Parametric ManagementConserve?In the past decade, a number of maritime anthro-

pologists have written on folk or local-level manage-ment. One of the themes running through this body ofliterature is that tragedies of the commons are notinevitable. People in local communities are capable ofdeveloping effective institutions to conserve resourcesand have done so in widespread parts of the world.20The effectiveness of these traditional folk managementefforts stems from the fact that in tribal and peasantsocieties, conservation rules embody the principles ofparametric management. They attempt to preserve ba-sic biological processes rather than limit the amount offish that can be taken. In addition, they are obeyed. Inthese societies, the rules promote the conservation ofthe resource in ways that reflect local norms, so that thegoals of individuals and communities coincide. Theyare not imposed by a central government with littleknowledge of the local area or personal stake in theoutcome. Since there is an incentive to obey conserva-tion rules, costs of enforcement are low, as are theincentives to be a free rider.

Despite the number of case studies and the strongassertions of a growing number of anthropologists,however, there is very little statistical data that local-level or folk management rules are effective in conserv-ing the resource. The evidence is largely anecdotal. Insome instances, authors have noted that resources havenot crashed and have assumed that the sustained yieldsare due to folk management rules.2] In other cases,historical changes are used as evidence. Johannes(1978, 1981:63-67) argues that the fisheries of Oceaniadeclined dramatically after the traditional managementsystem broke down under the pressures of Western-ization. He assumes that the traditional system musthave been effective. Many other factors besides themanagement system may have affected fish popula-tions, including environmental factors, community pre-dation, human population growth, technologicalchange, and pollution. These have not been investi-gated. Other authors have supported their argumentsabout the effectiveness of folk management rules bygathering quantitative data to demonstrate that limited-entry systems result in larger catches for those remain-ing in the fishery.22The favorable effects, however, aredue primarily to the fact that the existing stock is re-served for fewer people. Larger catches per capita arenot convincing evidence that the rules enhance thestock size. Despite these problems, the senior authorhas referred to these local-level or folk managementsystems as effective (Acheson 1989), Christopher Dyerand James McGoodwin refer to "robust systems of folkmanagement" (1994:9), and the theme of Fikret


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space limitations, some of the findings of this study areimportant for our purposes.Explanationsof Biologists and Fishers

First, our analysis of time-series data on catchesand effort showed that the variations in catches cannotbe explained in terms of stock-recruitment models sofavored by scientists. Such models would lead us topredict that periods of low catches are associated withlarge amounts of effort that damaged the breedingstock, and that high catches can be explained in termsof low, or at least controlled, effort. Quite the oppositeis the case. In the 1920s and 1930s, when catches wereat their lowest, effort was very low as well. In 1931, forexample, there were only 2,800 fishers who used168,000 traps to produce 5.3 million pounds of lobster.By way of contrast, the record-high catches of the 1990swere produced by very high levels of effort. In 1994, 38million pounds of lobster were caught in Maine by 6,503license holders using a record nearly 2.4 million traps(Maine Department of Marine Resources 1995). Thosetraps were more efficient than numbers alone wouldindicate, due to changes in technology. For the 25 yearswe have been studying the lobster industry, fisheriesbiologists have argued that the excess effort was lead-ing the fishery to imminent collapse. That has not hap-pened. We have concluded that the theory has littlepredictive value.The favorite hypotheses of the fishing industry willnot stand up under scrutiny either.23 In the 1930s, thelow catches were explained in terms of low ex-vesselprices. That is, prices were so low that a large numberof people were driven from the industry, and the smallnumber who remained could not produce large catches.In fact, catches were low, but prices were not very lowin terms of constant U.S. dollars (Acheson 1992). Thereal problem was a greatly diminished stock of lobsters,as is indicated by both low total catches and low catchper unit of effort.Fishers now explain the low catches of the inter-war years in terms of what they call the poverty gaugehypothesis (Acheson 1992). That is, the legal minimumsize was so large in the early decades of the century thata very high percentage of all lobsters were illegal, whichresulted in low catches. If this is true, then catchesshould have gone down dramatically in 1907, when thelegal gauge was increased, making a large number oflobsters illegal. Conversely, catches should havejumped upward in 1915 and 1933, when the legal mini-mum size was reduced greatly. None of these changesin catches occurred (Acheson and Steneck 1995).The most popular explanation of fishers for theboom of the 1990s is community predation. They arguethat big cod and haddock eat many little lobsters, and

since the stocks of these groundfish are at all-time lows,predation on lobster is reduced, resulting in largercatches. However, the evidence is that cod and haddockdo not eat an unusually large number of lobsters. Inaddition, there are a number of other species whosestocks are large that eat as many lobsters as do ground-fish, such as sculpin. Moreover, if this hypothesis weretrue, one would be able to observe an inverse correla-tion between lobster and cod stocks-allowing forsome delay for animals to reach maturity. No suchcorrelation exists (Acheson and Steneck 1995:17-19).What is most significant about the hypotheses pro-posed by biologists and lobster fishers is that, true toform, the biologists tend to explain changes in catchesin terms of effort; the fishers in terms of environmental,legal, and economic factors.Parametric Factors InfluencingLobsterCatches

What did produce the bust of the interwar yearsand the boom of the 1990s? Our research on historicaldata indicate two factors are important: water tempera-ture and parametric regulations.Water temperature controls a number of importantbiological processes in lobsters, including molting,growth rates, feeding activity, breeding, and larval set-tlement. Our data demonstrate that the latter functionis the most important where population variations areconcerned. Larval lobsters float through the water col-umn after hatching and then settle on the bottom, iftemperature conditions are correct. Ourstatistical dataindicate that recruitment of lobsters is correlated withyears of temperatures favorable to larval settlement(over 15 degrees Celsius). That is, the bust of the 1920sand 1930s is associated with low water temperatures,the boom of the 1990s with favorable temperatures(Acheson and Steneck 1995).From the time regulations went into effect to thepresent, management has been based on varying kindsof size limits and protection of gravid females. In theearly decades of the century, however, these regula-tions were largely ineffective, due to massive violationsof the law. It was common during this period for fisher-men to keep small lobsters both for home consumptionand for sale to those involved in the huge "short lobstertrade" (Crie 1932-33). Perhaps worst of all, it was farfrom uncommon for people to scrub the eggs off gravidfemales so they could be sold. It is always difficult toget exact data on the amount of illegal activity. How-ever, it is clear that millions of small lobsters weretaken before they had a chance to breed once, and theeggs were scrubbed off many females that did manageto survive to breeding size. The commissioner of seaand shore fisheries was so convinced that the massiveamount of illegal activity was destroying the industry


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that he took unusual political risks to stop it (Acheson1992:157). His efforts, unfortunately, were in vain. Bythe 1930s catches had fallen to the point where largenumbers of fishermen left the industry (Judd 1988:619).The magnitude of the disaster drove home the needfor conservation and an end to illegal activity. From theearly 1930s to the present, support for conservation andlaw enforcement grew. In the industry at present, con-servation regulations are almost universally obeyed.Violators of the law find themselves in trouble not onlywith the wardens but with large numbers of their fellowfishermen as well (Acheson 1988:90).The growth of this conservation ethic resulted inpolitical support for a number of unusual conservationlaws. In 1933, the legislature was able to pass a double-gauge law-a controversial measure that never wouldhave received much industry support in more normaltimes.24 It is still in force. In 1951, the "V-notch" lawwent into effect. Fishermen who catch a "berried" fe-male (a female with eggs) may voluntarily cut a notchin her tail before they return her to the water. Thatfemale may never be legally taken as long as the notchis visible. This program has received almost universalindustry support, with the result that there are literallymillions of V-notched lobsters-proven breedingstock-in the Gulf of Maine (Acheson 1993:76), a testa-ment to industry support of conservation.25In 1982, the industry supported a law requiringescape vents on all traps to lower mortality by allowingundersized lobsters to escape. In 1993, the industryfought hard to obtain compromise legislation thatwould prevent the abolition of the V-notch law and thedouble-gauge measure--laws the industry is convincedare critically important conservation devices (Acheson1993). In the spring of 1995, industry leaders supportedlegislation to divide the coast into small units and allowpeople in the industry to take a strong role in managingthem. This legislation would never have passed but forthe strong support of industry leaders. These legalmeasures have undoubtedly played a role in producingthe boom of the 1990s, although the magnitude of theireffect is still being debated.26The case of the Maine lobster fishery buttresses theidea that preserving basic biological processes is thesecret to maintaining the health of stocks. Catches fellwhen temperatures were not favorable and when regu-lations to preserve small lobsters and breeding stockwere violated en mass. But the fact that water tempera-ture plays such an important role in influencing catchesmeans that some critical variables cannot be controlled.We suspect this may be the case in all fisheries.

TheCasefor ParametricManagementThe problems facing the world's fisheries suggestthat a different approach to management is overdue.Numerical management, as it is currently practiced, is

not working well. We are convinced that the majorproblem lies in the concepts used.We would argue that numerical approaches to man-agement be replaced with parametric management,which is more appropriate for fisheries, given theirchaotic nature. We are proposing that fisheries be man-aged through rules on how fishing is done in relativelysmall areas, to maintain regular biological processes,rather than by attempting to control how much iscaught, in an attempt to achieve MSY over the entirerange of the stock, as is currently done. Factors such asgrowth rates, spawning potential, migration routes, pre-dation patterns, and nursery grounds remain relativelystable over time. These are the parameters of our com-puter model, and as long as they remain stable, popula-tions of fish fluctuate only within certain limits. Theseparameters can be maintained by rules on technology,time, and location and by protecting animals in certainperiods of their life cycles. To be sure, such a programwould not result in stable or even predictable catches,but we believe it would avoid the kinds of stock failuresand disasters being experienced in so many fisheries atpresent. That may be all we can reasonably expect toaccomplish.Several aspects of the parametric approach shouldbe stressed. First, the primary advantages of the para-metric approach are that it lowers costs of obtaining theinformation, which ultimately lowers enforcementcosts and results in the generation of effective institu-tions. Parametric management seeks to preserve regu-lar biological processes, which can be observed byhumans and do not change much, if at all. This meansthat knowledge about these biological processes can begathered at reasonable cost and that knowledge, oncegained, should last a considerable time. When peoplegenerate rules to maintain these essential biologicalprocesses, rules they believe are effective and see asrealistic or in their best interest, they can be expectedto support them. This should result in fewer infractionsand ultimately more effective conservation of the re-source.The numerical approach focuses attention on con-trolling mortality on target species. This, we argue, isthe fatal flaw. It demands so much information thatthese management regimes are impractical. The lack ofeffectiveness of such systems is noted by fishers, whohave a strong motivation to become free riders, therebyraising enforcement costs and making the developmentof effective rules costly, if not impossible.


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Furthermore, while in a small-scale tribal societylocal people can develop rules to manage small areaswith no involvement of the government, if parametricmanagement is to be used in modern industrial fisher-ies, a hierarchical approach to regulation must be used.Some biological factors are characteristic of the speciesover its entire range (e.g., spawning potential); othersare very localized (e.g., habitat). Thus, some regulationswill be required to affect the fisheries system on a largescale. Others can be tailored to affect smaller-scaleevents and processes. Different levels of governmentmust be involved in each. Failure to match biologicaland social scales can result in problems. For example,when administrative units are too small, people in oneunit may have no incentive to conserve uncatchablejuveniles who migrate to other areas where they arecaught as adults.Where possible, management should be handled bysmall-scale units. These have two advantages. Manage-ment of small units eases the problems of obtaininginformation on biological processes, since it is easier tolearn the intricacies of a small zone than a large one.Local-level management would presumably be moreable to frame rules to fit local conditions in ways thattake into account local practices and norms. This, inturn, should result in a higher degree of political sup-port. This is not to suggest, however, that there are nobiological phenomena of the stocks and aspects of thefisheries that are not general, and demand managementon a very large scale.Finally, there are a number of fisheries that havebeen managed by local-level political units using a para-metric approach (see Figure 3). The approach we areadvocating is scarcely untried. Moreover, many ob-servers of such folk management systems are con-vinced of their effectiveness; analysis of the data fromthe Maine lobster industry supports this contention.The idea that we in modern countries have much tolearn about resource management from third-world so-cieties does not easily suggest itself to scientists andadministrators. However, we suggest there is a gooddeal to be learned and that such societies may havediscovered the key to solving very serious problemswith the world's major fisheries.

NotesAcknowledgments.The research on which this essay isbased was done between 1987 and 1993 as partof the Univer-sity of MaineChaosProject, sponsored by the UniversityofMaine and the Universityof New HampshireSea Grant Pro-gram.A number of papers have resulted from this project,includingAcheson 1995;WilsonandDickie 1995;Wilson andKleban 1992; and Wilson et al. 1991a, 1991b. Both of theauthors hold joint appointments in the Center for Marine

Studiesat the Universityof Maine,and both have been em-ployedby the NationalMarineFisheriesService.1. Austin 1992; Bencivenga 1991; McGoodwin1990:1-4;New York Times 1992; Walsh 1991.2. Finlayson 1991;Smith 1990;Wilson and Kleban 1992.The journal Maritime Anthropological Studies (MAST) isnowunfortunatelydefunct.In its shortlife, a largeamountofgoodmaritimeanthropologyappearedin its pages.3. Parametricmanagementis not radicallynew. Ratheritmodifies and extends a number of disparatesolutions thathave been proposedto cure the problemof fisheriesin recentyears. Some biologists have advocated ecosystem ap-proaches, while others favor multispecies managementoffisheries(KerrandRyder 1989).Somesocial scientists favorself-governance(comanagementor local-levelmanagement)of fisheries. The parametricapproachincorporatesparts ofall of these ideas. Most important, fishing communities inlargeparts of the world managetheir fisheries in ways thatarecongruentwiththis approach.Resourceusers discoveredthe essence of the parametricapproachlongbefore we did.4. Fishingeffort refers to the physicalinputsin the fishingproductivesystem. It is usually conceived in terms of num-bersof people orboats exploitingagivenstock. Itis generallyconceded to be a sloppy term. In economics as a whole, therelationshipbetween physical inputsandoutputis expressedinterms of productionfunctions.A key concept is that of anisoquant:the amount of output that can be produced byvaryingcombinationsof physical inputs. Implicitin the ideaof an isoquantis the notion that inputscanbe substitutedforeach other. Fishingeffort does not include the idea of substi-tutability(thatpeople can be substitutedforboats).5. Such policies include quotas or other measures evalu-atedin terms of fishingmortality;see Rosenberget al. 1993.

6. There are a few cases that buttress the stock-recruit-ment model of fisheries. DuringWorldWarI andWorldWarII, when fishing effort decreased, the stocks went up. Wemight also mention the case of the striped bass and thesalmon stocks of the Frazer River and Alaska.However, alarge number of factors other than effort could explain anincrease in these stocks duringthose periods.7. GarrettHardin,perhapsthe most widelyread commonproperty theorist, argues that governments probably willhave to act in highlyautocratic fashions to protect resources(Hardin1968,1977).8. Acheson 1989;AndersonandSimmons1993;Feenyet al.1990;Hardin1968;McCayandAcheson 1987.9. Figure2 contains only a few of the manycases of fish-eries underscientific management.We could have includeddozens of additional cases.10. Two kinds of difficulties were encounteredin catego-rizingsocieties andplacingthem in Figure2 orFigure3. Thefirst concerns the level of controlby governments,scientists,and people at the local level. Most of the fisheries in thesocieties in Figure2 are managedby the officials of centralgovernmentswith the help of scientists. There are fisheriesin modem industrialcountries, however, where the fishingindustryhas had a very strong influence on the regulationsemployed,includingthe Mainelobster industry(Case 5) andthe Lofotengroundfishery(Case 6). These aremore cases of


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what Pinkerton (1989) calls "co-management" than instancesof "scientific" management by a central government.Most of the societies in Figure 3 are cases where manage-ment rules are generated and enforced at the level of the localfishing community. Some of the societies, however, havestrong control by governments, even though the managementtechniques have not been developed by scientists. TokugawaJapan (Case 9), for example, exhibited strong top-down con-trol even though no scientists were involved. It is scarcely aquintessential case of folk management.

Second, in an era of rapid change, traditional ways ofmanaging fisheries are breaking down, and many govern-ments of third-world countries are superimposing top-downmanagement schemes on local communities regardless of thestate of the folk management system. Thus, a society thatmight be placed in Figure 3 at one point in time might well beplaced in Figure 2 at another. Figure 3 contains cases in whichfisheries management rules were generated by local people,or at least by nonscientists, at the time the ethnography waswritten.

11. "Riparian rights" refers to kinds of ownership rightsover areas or resources in oceans, lakes, or rivers. The exactbundle of rights such owners have varies considerably fromsociety to society. In worldwide perspective, riparian rightsare very common (Acheson 1981:280-281; Durrenberger andPalsson 1987). Fikret Berkes, a very knowledgeable observer,says that fisheries "are almost never truly open-access"(Berkes 1985:204).12. All of the societies in Figure 3 have fisheries that werenot under scientific management at the time the ethnographywas written. They are all cases in which the ethnographerstated that rules existed to control the resources in some way.

Moreover, the cases reported were not selected by a ran-dom sample. The ethnography on most tribal and peasantsocieties typically contains little on the rules used to regulatefisheries. We had to select cases where solid data were avail-able.

We have been accused of being biased toward successfulcases in our selection of third-world fisheries. Since we didnot select the cases using a random sample, we have littledefense. However, the point is not that these rules alwayssucceed, but that the kind of rules chosen in fisheries wherethe scientific approach to management is absent have certaincharacteristics. They can and often do work well.13. In the ethnography, there are several instances inwhich it is expected that people will take only the amount ofresources they can consume. However, an emphasis on con-servation, which motivates individuals to voluntarily restricteffort, is very different from an enforced rule specifying howmuch can be taken by an individual or community as a whole.14. Recruitment refers to the number of adult fish pro-duced several years hence (see Daan et al. 1990; Hall 1988).15. Even if fisheries do not prove to be chaotic, they arecertainly complex. This complexity alone will make predic-tion very difficult.16. Wilson et al. 1991a, 1991b and Wilson and Kleban 1992.17. For example, estimates on natural mortality on lobsterstocks range from 2 percent to 30 percent.18. A "free rider" is able to take advantage of benefitsprovided by other people and does not have to pay for them

(see Acheson 1994:16). Olsen (1965) defines a "public" or"collective" good as any set of rules that help a community toachieve a goal that cannot be achieved by individual effort.They are created only under unusual conditions in whichspecial incentives apply.19. This is not to suggest that high enforcement costs aloneare responsible for the breakdown of conservation institu-tions. (See McGoodwin 1994 for a case in which a number ofother factors are involved in the dissolution of a folk manage-ment system.) A good many factors are necessary for institu-tions to be "crafted."Among the most essential conditions arethe ability to monitor and sanction those who violate rules.Numerical management, which demands a huge amount ofquantitative data on catch, makes monitoring prohibitivelycostly. The results are marked problems in maintaining fish-eries management regulations.Social scientists are beginning to ask about the conditionsunder which institutions to manage resources are generatedand break down (Acheson 1994;Anderson and Simmons 1993;Dyer and McGoodwin 1994:9; Ensminger and Ruttan 1991;Ostrom 1992). This body of literature borrows heavily frominstitutional economics and rational choice theory.20. Acheson 1989, 1994:9-11; Anderson and Simmons1993; Berkes 1985, 1989; Dyer and McGoodwin 1994; Johan-nes 1978; McCay and Acheson 1987; Ruddle and Johannes1985.

21. Berkes 1987:84; Foster and Poggie 1993; and Klee1980:253-257.22. Acheson 1988: app. 1; Dyer and Leard 1994.23. These explanations for the marked variations incatches have been offered by bright and experienced fishersand biologists. The fact that they are widely accepted reveals

something about the social construction of reality.24. The double-gauge law made it illegal to take lobstersunder 31/sinches and over 41/2inches in order to protect smalllobsters and large lobsters, which are proven breeding stock.Maine is the only jurisdiction in the world to have a double-gauge law.25. Both informal norms and formal laws promoted by theindustry control lobster fishing practices (Acheson 1993).Palmer makes the case that informal norms alone could notconserve the resources. Legislation is necessary (Palmer1994).26. Acheson and Steneck 1995; Bayer et al. 1989; andFogarty 1995.

References CitedAcheson, James M.1981 Anthropology of Fishing. Annual Review of Anthro-pology 10:275-316.1984 Government Regulation and Exploitive Capacity:The Case of the New England Groundfishery. HumanOrganization 43:319-329.1988 The Lobster Gangs of Maine. Hanover: New EnglandUniversity Press.1989 Management of Common-Property Resources. InEconomic Anthropology. Stuart Plattner, ed. Pp. 351-378. Stanford: Stanford University Press.


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1992 The Maine Lobster Industry. In Climate Variability,Climate Change and Fisheries. Michael Glantz, ed. Pp.147-165. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.1993 Capturing the Commons: Legal and Illegal Strategies.In The Political Economy of Customs and Culture: Infor-mal Solutions to the Commons Problem. Terry L. Ander-son and Randy T. Simmons, eds. Pp. 69-84. Lanham, MD:Rowman and Littlefield.

1994 Welcome to Nobel Country: An Overview of Institu-tional Economics. In Anthropology and InstitutionalEconomics. Monographs in Economic Anthropology, 12.James M.Acheson, ed. Pp. 342. Lanham, MD:UniversityPress of America.1995 Environmental Protection, Fisheries Managementand the Theory of Chaos. In Improving Interactions be-tween Coastal Science and Policy. National ResearchCouncil, U.S. Ocean Studies Board. Pp. 155-160. Wash-ington, DC: National Academy Press.

Acheson, James M., and Robert Steneck1995 Bust and Boom in the Maine Lobster Industry. Un-published MS.Akimichi, Tomoya1981 Perception and Function: Traditional Resource Man-

agement in Three Pacific Islands. Resource Managementand Optimization 4:361-378.Akimichi, Tomoya, and Kenneth Ruddle1984 The Historical Development of Territorial Rights andFishery Regulations in Okinawan Inshore Waters. InMaritime Institutions in the Western Pacific. KennethRuddle and Tomoya Akimichi, eds. Pp. 37-88. Osaka:National Museum of Ethnology.Alexander, Paul1980 Sea Tenure in Southern Sri Lanka. In Maritime Ad-

aptations: Essays on Contemporary Fishing Communi-ties. Alexander Spoehr, ed. Pp. 91-112. Pittsburgh:University of Pittsburgh Press.Anderson, Lee G.

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Anderson, Terry L., and Randy Simmons1993 The Political Economy of Customs and Culture: In-formal Solutions to the Commons Problem. Lanham, MD:Rowman and Littlefield.Austin, Phyllis1992 Who Killed Maine's Multi-Million Dollar Fishery?Maine Times, February 14: 2.Baines, G. B. K.

1989 Traditional Resource Management in the MelanesianSouth Pacific: A Development Dilemma. In CommonProperty Resources: Ecology and Community-BasedSustainable Development. Fikret Berkes, ed. Pp. 273-296. London: Belhaven.

Barinaga, Marcia1995 New Study Provides Some Good News for Fisheries.Science 269:1043.Bayer, Robert, Peter Daniels, and Cheryl Waltz1989 Egg Production of V-Notch American Lobster alongCoastal Maine. Journal of Crustacean Biology 9:77-82.

Belcher, William1993 Personal communication.Bencivenga, Jim1991 New England's Fishery in Decline. Christian ScienceMonitor 83 (July 26): 3.Berkes, Fikret

1985 Fishermen and the Tragedy of the Commons. Envi-ronmental Conservation 12(5):199-205.1986 Marine Inshore Fishery Management in Turkey. InProceedings of the Conference on Common PropertyResource Management. Pp. 63-83. National ResearchCouncil. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.1987 Common Property Resource Management and CreeIndian Fisheries in Subarctic Canada. In The Question ofthe Commons: The Culture and Ecology of CommunalResources. Bonnie J. McCay and James M.Acheson, eds.Pp. 66-91. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.Berkes, Fikret, ed.1989 Common Property Resources: Ecology and Commu-nity-Based Sustainable Development. London: Belhaven.Bishop, Charles1970 The Emergence of Hunting Territories among theNorthern Ojibwa. Ethnology 9(1):1-15.Brightman, Robert1987 Conservation and Resource Depletion: The Case ofthe Boreal Forest Algonquins. In The Question of theCommons: The Culture and Ecology of Communal Re-sources. Bonnie J. McCay and James M. Acheson, eds.Pp. 121-141. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.Carrier, James1987 Marine Tenure in Papua New Guinea. In The Ques-tion of the Commons: The Culture and Ecology of Com-munal Resources. Bonnie J. McCay and James M.Acheson, eds. Pp. 142-167. Tucson: University of ArizonaPress.Crie, Horatio1932-33 Correspondence of the Commissioner of Sea andShore Fisheries. Augusta: Maine State Archives.Cushing, D. H.1977 The Problems of Stock Recruitment. In Fish Popula-tion Dynamics. J. A. Gulland, ed. Pp. 116-133. London:John Wiley.1988 The Provident Sea. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-sity Press.Daan, Nils, P. J. Bromley, J. R. G. Hislop, and N. A. Nielsen1990 Ecology of North Sea Fish. Netherlands Journal ofSea Research 26:343-386.Dewar, Margaret1983 Industry in Trouble: The Federal Government andthe New England Fisheries. Philadelphia: Temple Univer-sity Press.Durrenberger, Paul, and Gisli Palsson1987 Ownership at Sea Fishing Territories and Access toSea Resources. American Ethnologist 14:508-522.1995 Personal communication.Dyer, Christopher L., and Richard L. Leard1994 Folk Management in the Oyster Fishery of the U.S.Gulf of Mexico. In Folk Management in the World's Fish-eries. Christopher L. Dyer and James R. McGoodwin, eds.Pp. 55-89. Niwot: University Press of Colorado.


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Documents

Acheson, Order out of Chaos