Fishing People Of The North

Nineteen peer-reviewed articles are included in the proceedings of the 2011 symposium, Fishing People of the North: Cultures, Economies, and Management Responding to Change. Authors present research in the disciplines of anthropology, biology, and economics on fishing communities in Alaska, Hawaii, Canada, Russia, Japan, and Norway. Among many topics, the papers cover cultural responses to climate change effects; transitions in fishing communities regarding permits, quotas, and target species; using local knowledge to preserve a fishery and to map subsistence patterns; and tribal involvement in fisheries management. Contributors share ways to address change and ensure that fishing remains a healthy, vibrant part of northern coastal communities

This collection brings together writers from two continents and four countries whose traditional cultures are based on Pacific wild salmon. 72 duotone photos. Line drawings. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

Like their counterparts in developing countries, rural people living on the periphery of developed nations are increasingly vulnerable to forces beyond their control. Farmers, miners, and fishermen must cope with periodic resource scarcities, fluctuating global markets, and neoliberal trade pacts. Island Voices explores this struggle through the perspective of people living on Arnøya, an island off northern Norway. John C. Kennedy spent years collecting their stories, each of which offers resounding proof of how change, both local and global, has unevenly benefited the island's four villages.

Using case studies drawn from across Canada, the papers demonstrate that there are many shared issues in the various small-scale fisheries of this country, and locate small-scale fisheries in their historical context as well as in that of global concerns.

A stunning new voice in nature writing makes an epic journey along the Yukon River to give us the stories of its people and its protagonist--the king salmon, or the Chinook--and the deepening threat to a singular way of life, in a lyrical, evocative and captivating narrative. The Yukon River is 3,190 kilometres long, flowing northwest from British Columbia through the Yukon Territory and Alaska to the Bering Sea. Every summer, millions of salmon migrate the distance of this river to their spawning ground, where they go to breed and then die. The Chinook is the most highly prized among the five species of Pacific salmon for its large size and rich, healthy oils. It has long since formed the lifeblood of the economy and culture along the Yukon--there are few communities that have been so reliant on a single source. Now, as the region contends with the effects of a globalized economy, climate change, fishing quotas and the general drift towards urban life, the health and numbers of the Chinook are in question, as is the fate of the communities that depend on them. Travelling in a canoe along the Yukon River with the migrating salmon, a three-month journey through untrammeled wilderness, Adam Weymouth traces the profound interconnectedness of the people and the Chinook through searing portraits of the individuals he encounters. He offers a powerful, nuanced glimpse into the erosion of indigenous culture, and into our ever-complicated relationship with the natural world. Weaving in the history of the salmon run and their mysterious life cycle, Kings of the Yukon is extraordinary adventure and nature writing and social history at its most compelling.

Herring are vital to the productivity and health of marine systems, and socio-ecologically Pacific herring (Clupea pallasii) is one of the most important fish species in the Northern Hemisphere. Human dependence on herring has evolved for millennia through interactions with key spawning areas—but humans have also significantly impacted the species’ distribution and abundance. Combining ethnological, historical, archaeological, and political perspectives with comparative reference to other North Pacific cultures, Herring and People of the North Pacific traces fishery development in Southeast Alaska from precontact Indigenous relationships with herring to postcontact focus on herring products. Revealing new findings about current herring stocks as well as the fish’s significance to the conservation of intraspecies biodiversity, the book explores the role of traditional local knowledge, in combination with archeological, historical, and biological data, in both understanding marine ecology and restoring herring to their former abundance.

Fishing for Truth is the complex story of the role of science in the decline of the Northern Cod stocks. At issue are conflicting interpretations of recent events, institutional and scientific texts, and scientific data. The central claim of the book is that all knowledge, including scientific knowledge, is influenced by social process. Finlayson, a sociologist, conducted extensive interviews with scientists and bureaucrats in the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO); he argues that failure to predict fish stocks is closely related to the failure to recognize how scientists' interpretations of natural reality are themselves socially constructed to a crucial degree.