POWRE: Science, Environmental Policy and the Ethics of Commercial Fishing

Baylor University, Waco TX

Investigators

Abstract

Recent declines in oceanic fisheries have occurred despite extensive scientific investigation of the impacts of commercial harvest on marine ecosystems. This research utilizes interviews to investigate the impact of scientific research on the normative ethics of fishers from declining, stable, and healthy or recovering fisheries. The interview protocol allows fishers to determine their own ethical priorities, and to report their concepts of right and wrong action by utilizing their own language and rationale. The POWRE grant will fund visits to maritime library collections and to the University of California for the purpose of discussing sampling design and ethical and social sciences professionals. The investigator will conduct a field test of new methodologies for determining why fishers accept or reject scientific findings and for evaluating the influence of increasing legislative and external, professional control of fisheries on the communal ethos of the fishers. This research is significant for the future of environmental ethics and of social science inquiry into environmental issues. It has clear relevance to wildlife preservation policy. The results of this project will help to improve understanding and communication between academic environmental ethics and communities economically dependent on maritime resources, as well as developing a more accurate view of how scientific information may influence the ethics of fishers. The project is appropriate to the POWRE program because the investigator's career has been interrupted by work-related injuries and by a job change from a federal agency to an educational institution. The POWRE grant will accelerate the investigator's transition into research in ethics at a critical career phase, and will allow her to develop a new line of investigation.