The context in which research like ours takes place today-becoming more difficult?

1. Fishy Knowledge? What we can (and cannot) learn from interviews and qualitative research methods in marine, coastal and fishing contexts.Dr. Brendan FlynnSchool of Political Science & Sociology. A Research Workshop organized by the Centre for Environment, Development and Sustainability (CEDS), NUIG. Thursday November 17th 2011

2. The context in which research like ours takes place today-becoming more difficult? • Examples from the Literature B. Advantages and Disadvantages of research like ours-how substantive are these…do we communicate them well?

3. A. The context in which we use these research tools Trend 1: Fishing/Marine/Coastal policies and controversies are becoming more contested, more visible, more salient, more fraught…..no long a sleepy backwater of research Examples: Hugh’s fish fight; CFP reform and discards debate How then does this context impact on interviews…does such becomes a more fraught/heated approach…is given more or less credence by policy-makers who urgently want ‘data’ findings…solutions? Will interviewees speak freely? Will expectations run high (or low)?

4. Trend 2: Official Marine and Fisheries Science is experiencing new epistemic directions-BUT not clear if paradigms are being displaced…. A trend towards near-real time fishers’ dependent data harvesting using VMS/GPS/E-log books…even video……why do official government agencies need us if they have this real-time data? A return to a fixation with MSY, and precautionary management levels in stock advice……problematic……but hegemonic concept A still lingering debate on Ecosystem Based Management of marine and coastal resources..which folds up coastal planning and recreation use/disputes with classic fisheries and marine energy regimes….. What does that mean for researchers like us…that want to/feel we should use qualitative softer research methods…interviews and ethnographic accounts…what is our relevance and what can we offer to that shifting agenda?

5. To stir debate…..I might suggest that the only trend that is likely to be open and favorable to “us”…is the Ecosystem Based Management tradition (which is complex and varied)….the other two trends I regard as possibly reactionary and hostile to our ‘research’ values, findings and approach…..it may well become actually harder to get official bodies to take our type of work seriously…… Does this suggest we should seek to position much of our work within an Ecosystem/Interdisciplinary/Management literature and paradigm? Or should we engage with other trends head on? Should we be using insights generated by work like ours to challenge these other epistemic research agendas? Don’t we have to think and communicate clearly what it is we’re offering…that is valuable, usable, valid, different, attractive to epistemic and policy elites as well as a wider audience?

6. B: Examples from the Literature Carruthers, Erin H. and Barbara Neis (2011) ‘Bycatch mitigation in context: using qualitative interview data to improve assessment and mitigation in a data-rich fishery’, Biological Conservation, 144, pp.2289-2299. Interviewed long-lining skippers targeting Swordfish and Yellow-fin Tuna as part of a Canadian project to reduce discards of turtles, sharks and sting-rays. The fishery was ‘data rich’ with supposedly hard quantitative data. 25% of Skippers refused to do interviews-ethical problems and risk averse to future controls…’evidence would be used against them in some way’……also an ethical problem for the researcher: do I deliver findings which undermine the interviewee’s livelihood? What guarantees can you give them? They used taped interviews and HyperResearch 2.7 for qualitative data analysis.Their N was 24 out of 40 ‘active’ license holders. Found strong associations between targeting practices and by-catch rate and composition.Found different discarding practices (rationales) and that de-hooking gear was working. Discrepancies between traditional data and their interviews was evident. A proposed by-catch avoidance measure (fishing in colder water was suggested by skippers as likely to produce other problems for other species. Did NOT ask the skippers to estimate by-catch levels-other data exists and it would sour the interview!

7. Sitzia, Lorraine (1996) Catching Stories: oral histories from the Brighton Fishing Community. Brighton: QueenSpark Quite different…classic oral history/ethnography..very general focus…not applied to specific policy problems…reveals interesting problematic of who to interview…active or part-time fishers…and their wives? How important…what could they reveal?

8. Matic-Skoko, S. (et al.) (2011) ‘Effectiveness of conventional management in Mediterranean type artisanal fisheries’, Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science, Vol.91, pp.314-324. Croatian case study which is basically a conventional fisheries natural science study using gear sampling surveys and then ‘free interviews’ and questionnaires….older fishermen noted declines in catch when rules on wider trammel nets came into force (shifting base line issue)….discovered low discarding (they eat what they can’t sell) …revealed a conflict between subsistence artisanal fishers and professional artisanal fishers….they stress the importance of the interviews…especially with old timers…

9. C. So what do we offer when using interviews/qualitative and bottom-up approaches? I suggest at least FOUR advantages 1. Providing deep context…..policy does not occur in a vacuum….the social meaning of policies should be understood…it is often forgotten…(example: CFP debate on Artisanal fisheries-in Ireland that is a minefield) 2. The implementation of policies is often socially negotiated on the ground….if this is ignored implementation can be threatened (very relevant for Natura, Planning, Resource/Recreation use conflicts, Drift net ban on Salmon, etc.)

10. 3. Our type of research may be good (better?) at explaining why and how type questions (but real-time data collection and analysis may be better at answering ‘what/where type’ questions.) There is also some ability to be forward looking, whereas most of the hard data looks backward “Why are you fishing the way you are, and how are you fishing different from Boat X even though you have the same basic gear?” “Why are you opposed to that wind farm?” “How might you accept that wind farm-consider the following conditions?” “How will you respond to a 100% discard ban if it comes into place in 7g?” The VMS shows you’ve reduced your effort in FU17…can you tell us why your fishing less there…or are you getting as much fish for less effort…or is there simply less fish there…or is it something else? [Answer: its fuel costs!]

11. 4. Our type of research is perhaps among the most obvious if policy-makers are interested in participation, stakeholders’ views, inclusion, legitimacy and ‘buy-in’. This is a serious problem-perhaps between 50-60% of Irish fishers are not in any union or representative body…..therefore when these bodies participate….they may not accurately reflect all participants…. BUT often policy-makers are not really that interested in such views…which are difficult Perhaps what they want often is consultation and some dialogue…but not much more…. Also there are cheaper rivals-survey based methodologies perhaps combined with hard data collecting….via BIM/MI or similar? Could our approach be useful in certain concrete situations…Naturaa coastal designations/Planning and MPA disputes…… Is there a need for a ‘quick and dirty’ approach which can be bolted on to the usually mandatory and limited EIS….? This would move our research agenda more towards practical experiments in participatory planning, citizen juries, planning cells, focus groups, online planning tools, etc.

12. One area that seems more ‘vague’ is to what extent we can use qualitative methods to add to (or even correct flaws) in the hard quantitative data-which is often simplistic, and ‘raw’…..also may have simpler problems like lack of time series, low Ns, lack of representative metier classes How easy…valid…and valuable is it to use our approach to collect ‘proper’ data? Should we even bother…would it be wiser to leave that to the others? Can we validly translate from soft data to hard data…turn interview scripts via coding and relationship software modeling into something ‘harder’? Even if we can do this, what is the value for us as researchers and for the end users or the research and the wider audience?

13. There is other more generic problem with interviews/qualitative data… Reliability and how Representative are they?….Interviewees can lie, memory is limited, shifting baseline problem, the focus on ‘signature’ events/policy shifts and flora and fauna changes, the tendency to frame interviewee within the context of recent events……small N case studies are usual/feasible…cost of interviews…time required….in some cases should participant observation be required….our neutrality can be question…’going native/empathy’. In fact we found some evidence that older fishers can contextualize recent catches against older benchmarks….moreover, they can describe gradual changes…and hidden tipping points…….. The small N problem is some way can be meet by replication of a variety of studies in different setting and generalizing within a wider literature…. Biggest problem is that our findings don’t have the ‘gloss’ of natural Science (example: VMS ‘sperm maps’)

14. There is also a question of how deeply connected our interview or qualitative research design should be to deeper social theory insights…about power relationships…the nature or knowledge…the role of the state……distinctive theoretical debates that could inform applied policy problems….for example the debate on the question of Resilience and its relevance for fishing, coastal and marine communities and controversies …should our interviews be looking for evidence of practices of resilience…polyvalency in artisanal fishing…should we conduct our research from this much deeper starting point rather ‘be of use to government’.

15. Conclusions? What are the pros and cons of our type of research methodologically To what extent can these be mitigated or accentuated where appropriate? What is your own experience? Where can we go with the insights we find to day? …..some type of Publication?