Stories of Fisheries

In-depth (based on site visits with extensive interviews)

Capsule (shorter pieces which appear below)

  • Mexico - Sonora - Seri’s Sustainable Fisheries - The Seri Indians made full use of their traditional territorial rights in the Gulf of California to develop sustainable fisheries and scallop harvesting.
  • Fiji & Cook Islands - Coastal Fishery Restoration - Traditional no-take reserves and seasonal taboos restore troubled coastal fisheries.
  • USA - Minnesota - Red Lake Restoration - Native Americans restore wild rice and walleye fish on their reservation.
  • USA - Washington State - Lummi Nation Marine Aquaculture - Native Americans save their reservation with eco-development.
  • Canada - British Columbia - Sustainable Oyster Farming - Oyster farming diversifies the economy and provides incentives for ecological protection.

Mexico - Sonora - Seri’s Sustainable Fisheries

by David Nuñez

The Seri or Comcaac are an indigenous people that up to a few decades ago still practiced a semi-nomadic hunter/gatherer lifestyle among the islands of the Gulf of California, in Northwest Mexico. Wars of extermination carried out first by Spaniards, and then by independent Mexico (hostilities did not end until the early 20th Century), took them to the brink of extinction and only about 600 remain today.

In the 1930s the federal government abandoned its extermination and relocation strategy and instead tried to settle the Seri in two villages within their territory, El Desemboque and Punta Chueca, by facilitating the creation of a fishing cooperative. The shark fishery was heavily promoted, particularly for the extraction and processing of livers to yield vitamins. But with the advent of synthetic vitamin production in the 1940s, the fishery collapsed and the Seri turned to hunting sea turtles, which in turn was banned by the 1980s. Meanwhile during the 1970s outsiders discovered a profitable scallop fishery just off-shore which fueled an influx of non-Seri fishermen into the region.

In an effort to correct past wrongs and help the Seri survive, the Mexican government granted the Seri collective ownership of a fraction of their historical range in 1975. This included Isla Tiburon (Shark Island) and the land across from it on the mainland, as well as exclusive fishing rights to the surrounding waters. Unfortunately, the exact limits of these waters were never properly established and a lack of vigilance from authorities has restricted the Seri Exclusive Fishing Zone to the channel between the Island and the Mainland, which is narrow enough to allow the community to control access.

Free from government interference in their affairs, the Seri community has developed a set of rules that has allowed catches within this small channel to remain stable over the past thirty years, while the productivity of much larger neighboring fisheries has collapsed by up to 90%. The successful management of their tiny fishery has now been recognized by their neighbors, and the lessons learned are being used to implement similar programs in neighboring communities.

Though several different species of fish, crustacean and mollusk are harvested in the channel, the scallop fishery offers us a good example of just how the Seri use cultural, social and biological knowledge to effectively manage their fisheries.

Though Seri do participate in the commercial scallop fishery, most are reluctant to dive and so most of the fishing is done by outside crews. To be granted access to the channel, outsiders must 1) pay an entrance fee, 2) hire a Seri as member of the crew at the same wages (not only does this increase employment, but it allows the Seri to monitor the outsiders), 3) avoid fishing in the sandbar areas which are restricted to subsistence fishing mentioned below, and 4) agree to a catch limits.

The subsistence scallop fishery is a traditional activity which takes place during the lowest tides of the year, in which shallow waters allow the scallops to be harvested by women and children, without diving. Historically it has been an important social & cultural event in Seri society, and also serves to monitor the overall health of the fishery. When these harvests are low, social repercussions can be harsh: women might humiliate the men in public for being careless with such a valued common resource, and the men in turn will blame the outsiders and cancel all access until tempers cool, stocks recover or economic necessity forces them to issue permits once again.

The fishermen's deep knowledge of the fishery itself also enhances its sustainability. By capturing only the largest scallops, they increase the likelihood that any animal caught has already reproduced. And by abstaining from diving in seasonal seagrass beds, where the work is harder and one is more likely to step on stingrays and crabs, they ensure that over 10% of the channel is off-limits for at least 8 months a year. Finally, the Seri are well tuned to both the abundance and size of their catch, and rotate fishing grounds regularly, with some sites being visited several times a year, and others only once every few years.

Their success has allowed them to begin sending their children to university, and in 1998 for the first time the younger generation won local elections and a college graduate was elected as their leader. With these changes the Seri have begun cooperating with NGOs and universities, who are trying to replicate their model in other communities. They have become certified by the Marine Stewardship Council, and branched out into other ventures, such as a Women Artisans Cooperative that sells arts and crafts to tourists; and a Sea Turtle Conservation program that has won international awards.

It is obvious that one of Mexico’s smallest minorities has a lot to teach the rest of us.

For further information see Seri Comcaac Indians and Comunidad y Biodiversidad.

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Fiji & Cook Islands - Coastal Fishery Restoration

by Amanda Suutari

The decline of the region's fishery (especially the kaikoso, a species of clam important to local subsistence and livelihood) was caused by various factors including overfishing, mangrove destruction, reef blasting, night fishing and foreign fishers.

When villagers of the Veratavou region and a local non-governmental organization got together to find solutions to the problem, they created a list of rules; they banned blasting, gill nets, and mangrove cutting around the lagoon, stopped issuing licenses to foreign fishers, and designated "tabu," or no-take, reserves in designated areas in the lagoons.

Results were immediete and dramatic. The kaikoso increased up to three times in the protected areas, there was a spillover effect into non-protected areas, and other vanished species, including a local delicacy, made reappearances. Residents reported up to 35% increased incomes (some of which goes into a collective trust fund for eight villages, which has been invested into electrification projects). Coastlines are expected to be more resilient to cyclones or other natural disturbances. Community cohesion is increased, and interest in science and tradition among young people has also improved.

Services restored/improved: Food/income, storm protection, cultural heritage values/knowledge systems

This case is similar to what happened in Fiji. The Cook Islands in the South Pacific are populated by indigenous Koutu Nui, whose way of life depends on coastal resources, especially the trochus (their shellfish staple source of subsistence and income).

Similar to Fiji, the Raratonga islanders' fishery was on the decline due to overfishing; fishers were going out further to chase increasingly fewer and less diverse species of seafood; trochus harvests were shrinking.

The elders in Raratonga, alarmed, decided to re-introduce the traditional no-take system known as raui. Unlike Fiji, these are temporary reserves which are instituted or lifted according to season, harvests, and other conditions. Bans on net fishing and night fishing were installed. The local churches, strong social centers for the Koutu Nui people, endorsed the program, which helped strengthen the commitment of villagers. Results were equally dramatic: Trochus populations have exploded, diversity of sea life has rebounded, corals have increased. It has given way to other plans, including bringing local schools to study the life in the lagoon.

Services restored/benefits: food/fiber, ornamental resources (trochus shells), recreation and tourism, education

For more information visit the South Pacific Regional Environment Programme.

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USA - Minnesota - Red Lake Restoration

by Regina Gregory

The Red Lake Band of the Chippewa Tribe lives on an 837,000-acre reservation in northern Minnesota, an area about the size of Rhode Island. The band takes its name from the reservation's Red Lake, one of the biggest freshwater lakes in the U.S.

The traditional staple food of the Chippewa is wild rice, which once grew in abundance in the marshes around Red Lake. It is a 5-foot-tall aquatic plant native only to North America. In late August - the Wild Rice Moon - the Chippewa paddled canoes into the marshes to harvest the rice. The harvesting method included knocking some grains back into the lake to sustain future harvests, and leaving some grains on the plants as food for birds.

In the 1930s, when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began impounding two nearby rivers, the tribe's major rice-producing areas were destroyed or heavily damaged. Most people on the reservation no longer go "ricing" at all. But the band is trying to restore some of the old rice stands, and has purchased 2,500 acres next to the reservation for a commercial wild rice farm.

Besides making money for the band, the wild rice farm provides critical habitat for a large number of species. Eighteen species of ducks and geese eat wild rice and other plants that grow in the rice paddies. The dense vegetation provides ample nesting sites for bitterns and teals, and when the paddies are drained in late summer, the mudflats serve as stopover areas for godwits, yellowlegs, phalaropes and other shorebirds.

Red Lake also once teemed with fish, in particular walleyes. In 1917 tribal members launched a commercial fishery with gillnets on their portion of the lake, in addition to subsistence fishing. In the portion governed by the state of Minnesota, sport fishing by the general public flourished. Eventually people were taking more fish than the lake could provide, and harvests plummeted.

The Red Lake Band realized the walleye needed time to recover. In 1997 the tribe halted commercial fishing, and in 1998 stopped subsistence and sport fishing as well. The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources banned walleye fishing in its portion of the lake in 1999. To augment the natural regeneration process a fish hatchery was established, and between 1999 and 2003 more than 100 million walleye fry were released into the lake.

The fish thrived, and the effort is now known as one of the nation's most successful freshwater fish recoveries. The lake was reopened to walleye fishing, but in a cautious way to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past.

For more information see Restoring a Lost Legacy in the National Wildlife Federation's journal.

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USA - Washington State - Lummi Nation Marine Aquaculture

by Amanda Suutari

The Lummi Nation occupies some 12,500 acres of land and 8,000 acres of Puget Sound tidelands in the Northwest corner of Washington State, about 200 km north of Seattle.

The Lummi people have lived in Northwest Washington for about 12,000 years and there are about 4,000 members of the nation today. Fishing, especially salmon, has been the basis of their culture and survival, with ceremonies and folklore centered around salmon and salmon fishing. According to Lummi legend, a deity known as the Great Salmon Woman tells them that if they only take the salmon they need and protect the spawning areas, the salmon will thrive; this teaching has shaped their relationship with the salmon and its habitat throughout the generations.

The last decade has seen dramatic drops in salmon stocks all over the Pacific Northwest, with two of the four salmon species considered endangered. This has been due to logging of headwater areas, small dams on salmon streams, ground and water pollution from industry and agricultural wetlands, and inappropriate development of wetlands. The Lummi Nation maintains the largest Native American fishing fleet in the Pacific Northwest, and the most extensive fisheries protection program in the region. Many of its highly qualified tribal fisheries technicians and specialists were trained at Lummi Community College or Lummi School of Aquaculture. The fisheries department has an annual budget of 3 million dollars and overseas one of the country's most successful productive salmon hatcheries in the US.

The goals of the program are to sustainably manage fisheries stocks, including protection of salmon spawning habitat, conducting salmon counts in many small river tributaries near Nooksak Basin, monitoring the return and harvest of salmon and increasing production of hatcheries, pursuing new and stricter laws to protect salmon habitat, and launching an aggressive public education campaign to better inform the public of the importance of salmon as a sustainable source of livelihood. It also manages an extensive shellfish hatchery in the Puget Sound tidelands.

The Lummi Nation is also represented on the International Salmon Commission, among whose goals are to regulate activities of offshore driftnet fisheries. It is a model for involvement of indigenous peoples in planning and management of natural resources, both local and internationally, and its traditional values, such as "generational time" (the impact of today's policies on distant future generations) and management practices have great potential to influence fisheries management policy at the state or national level.

The Lummi Nation also has launched a variety of social programs such as a mobilization against drugs, education and youth programs, and a wellness program aimed at improving physical and mental health.

For more informtaion visit the Lummi Indian Nation.

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Canada - British Columbia - Sustainable Oyster Farming

by Amanda Suutari

This case is interesting because it is a radical departure from the boom-bust cycles characterizing Canadian Pacific Coast economies and ecosystems since the early 1900s. These include whaling, sealing, mining, sardine canning, and logging.

Clayoquot Sound includes coastal temperate rainforest, rivers, lakes, marine areas and beaches, and is home of the Nootka first nations peoples. It is best-known as being the focal point of one of the country's largest civil society campaigns to stop industrial logging, culminating in 1993 when the provincial government allowed logging of old-growth forest in the region. Activists organized blockades and other acts of civil disobedience which finally resulted in the region being declared a World Biosphere Reserve in 2000. (However, critics are skeptical of this because "reserve" does not legally protect the resources. Environmentalists insist that the same companies under changed names are using the sanitized euphemism of "conservation-based forestry" to continue industrial logging in a form virtually unchanged, which has lulled people into the belief that the area is protected.)

Anyway, as the economy searches for solutions to wean itself off its past addictions to resource extraction, aquaculture of shellfish began growing in the region since 1985 as a way to diversify the economy. An important difference between farming of shellfish (mainly oyster but also scallops and clams) and what has gone before is that it depends on a pristine marine ecosystem to thrive. It requires fertile water, good currents, and nutrients, including leaf litter from the shore, which means the marine ecosystem is recognized to include the neighboring terrestrial ecosystem. Because they grow in such good conditions, the oysters themselves are said to be of very high quality. In fact, shellfish farms have had to close a few times by law after heavy rainfall when fecal levels in the inlets where they are raised are too high. The practice itself is low-impact and relatively pollution-free (it does have some impacts and must be monitored carefully). The sector is expected to expand by up to three times by 2007.

This is another illustration of how markets can shape long-term preservation of a resource (as in silvofisheries in Malaysia, tree frogs in Peru, agroforestry in China's upper Yangtze watershed) as much as they were incentives for earlier short-sighted use of resources through the same pattern of discovery, exploitation, and depletion. Finally it shows some residents have learned important lessons after watching history repeating itself for a century.

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