The Performativity of New England’s Groundfish Fishery as Ecosystem-Based Fisheries Management (EBFM) Practices Emerge

Keywords: Performativity, EBFM, ocean markets, fisheries
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Sunday
Session Start / End Time: 2/27/2022 11:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/27/2022 12:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 19

Abstract

Fisheries research and management practices not only describe and measure the seafood industry, fishermen, fish, and their environments in efforts to support New England’s groundfish market, but also contribute to the formation of the realities of the fishery. Critiques of the relationship between neoliberal capitalism and fisheries depletion demonstrate how global scale political economics since WWII has affected local-scale fisheries and created feedbacks between industrialization and overfishing. Most fishermen and fishing community members are caught in supporting increases in production and investments in expanding the industry, even as it is providing fewer opportunities for them and threatens the resource that they are dependent on. Assigning blame to capitalism itself exculpates the individuals and institutions that are negotiating their roles within the fishery, but the fishery is conceptualized and defined by those who research and regulate its production in relation to, and support of, the industry operators who have invested their capital – and the fishery’s ecological health. Analyzing the description-construction of performativity as the New England Fisheries Management Council (NEFMC) attempts to reverse collapsing cod stocks in the context of an ecosystem-based management scheme reveals potentialities of changes in research, assessment, and management perspectives and practices. The practices that go into translating these EBFM implementation processes in the NEFMC’s work shape both the Fisheries Ecosystem Plan and the ontology of the fishery market.