Human Ecology, VoL 6, No. 4, 1978

Systems Ecology, People Ecology, and the Anthropology of Fishing Communities Bonnie J. McCay 1

Ecological approaches within maritime anthropology are reviewed, particularly those concerned with resource management in fisheries and characterized by certain assumptions of systems ecology. The systems ecology approach used in anthropology exhibits certain problems, including the assumption of equilibria, the tendency to restrict analyses to immediate and "natural" environmental relations, and the reification of analytical systems. Under the rubric of "people ecology," data from research among commercial fishermen of Fogo Island, Newfoundland, are used to explore an alternative that emphasizes people rather than systems as starting points for study, and underscores the role of larger social and political processes in affecting local man - environment relations. KEY WORDS: fishery management; systemsecology; marine adaptations; adaptive strategies;

Newfoundland.

ECOLOGICAL APPROACHES IN MARITIME ANTHROPOLOGY

Most anthropological studies of fisherfolk are ecological in the sense of Steward's "method of cultural ecology" (1955). They are explicitly or implicitly concerned with what there is about a wet and fishy productive regime that defines the social, cultural, and economic life of fishing communities (cf. Smith, 1977a: 4). Environmental variables and their differences in time and space are set apart from and used to help explain selected features of fishing lifestyles (Andersen and Wadel, 1972a: infra; 1972b: 2-3; Andersen, 1974; Smith, 1977a, infra; Smith, 1977b; Hewes, 1948; Brox, 1964; Breton, 1973). A few studies are also ecological in applying general systems theory to questions of

1Department of Human Ecology and Social Sciences, Cook College, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey. 397 0300-7839/78/1200-0397 $05.00/0 9 1978 Plenum Publishing Corporation

398

MeCay

organizational strength and change (e.g., Gersuny and Poggie, 1974; Epple, 1977). While "cultural ecology" and general systems theory approaches in maritime anthropology tend to treat environmental variables as independent of the units of analysis, the systems ecology approach includes environmental variables as parts of functional systems. Although systems ecology is a newer model in maritime anthropology (Smith, 1977b: 12), enough studies employing its assumptions exist, particularly in the area of resource management, to allow a critical review. This review will be followed by an exploration of an alternative, "people ecology," utilizing data from research among commercial fishermen of northeastern Newfoundland .2

SYSTEMS ECOLOGY AND FISHERIES MANAGEMENT In systems ecology the natural environment is no longer an independent variable: the strategy is "showing that cultural practices function as parts of systems that also include environmental phenomena" (Vayda, 1969: 13). Selected aspects of human behavior and environment are variables in functional systems, regulated by interactive processes such as negative and positive feedback (Vayda and Rappaport, 1968: 494-495; Flannery, 1972). Systems ecology typically focuses on populations and systems, rather than on communities, cultures, or individuals, as units of analysis (Vayda and Rappaport, 1968: 494). Systems ecology holds some promise in helping us understand how fishermen manage their relations to marine resources. The analytical model used by fisheries economists assumes that all fishermen behave as anarchic villains in a "tragedy of the commons" (Hardin, 1968) which leads inexorably to resource depletion and economic waste (e.g., Christy and Scott, i965; Crutchfield and Pontecorvo, 1969). Because most marine fisheries are common-property and open-access, participants are believed to lack self-regulating mechanisms and motivations. One criticism of this model is that it ignores the effects of the degree of capitalization and the opportunity costs of capital on the exploitative behavior of fishing enterprises, and thus unfairly blames "impoverished local

2For a comprehensive review of ecological approaches in anthropology see J. Anderson (1974). The data from which the ideas explored in this essay derive were obtained during predoctoral field research on Fogo Island, Newfoundland, between 1971 and 1974. Research was supported by a traineeship of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, under the auspices of Columbia University's program in ecological anthropology. An earlier draft of this essay was presented to the Northeastern Anthropological Association annual meeting, March 24-26, 1977, at Rhode Island College, Providence, Rhode Island. I would like to thank Michael Moffatt, Miriam Kaprow, and anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.

The Anthropology of Fishing Communities

399

fishermen" for resource depletion caused by the "large, high-powered ships and the factory fleets of the wealthiest nations" (Clark, 1973: 631). Another criticism is that it glosses over evidence that many communities o f fishermen do have ways of altering the common-property and open-access nature of marine resources. A major contribution of maritime anthropology has been to show that fishermen may indeed be regulating certain aspects of the ecological and economic systems in which they participate. The social science literature clearly depicts among fishermen such traits as the establishment of formal or informal property rights to prime fishing space; modes of excluding newcomers or outsiders from "community" waters; and information-management tactics which help establish temporary property rights to concentrations of fish (e.g., Acheson, 1972, 1975; Andersen, 1972, in press; Andersen and Stiles, 1973; Bowles, 1972; Brox, 1964; Cattarinusi, 1973; Dikkanen, 1965; Forman, 1967; Martin, in press). Most of these traits hinge upon the management of fishing space rather than of fishing effort and fish populations per se (Andersen and Stiles, 1973; Andersen, in press; Martin, in press). However, in some instances the traits have effects on the fish populations, some of which may be viewed as resource management insofar as they mitigate the likelihood of "overfishing" or resource depletion (Acheson, 1975; Berkes, 1977; Bowles, 1972; Cordell, 1974; Forman, 1967). 3 Although few ofthese studies use explicit systems models, all may be interpreted as "showing that cultural practices function as parts of systems that also include environmental phenomena" (Vayda, 1969: 13).

PROBLEMS IN SYSTEMS ECOLOGY: EQUILIBRIA One conceptual problem in systems ecology is that too often it assumes that equilibria are goal-states of functional systems. The early work of Suttles (1960) and Piddocke (1965) on the role o f the potlatch feasts of the salmon-

3A cautionary note is required before generalizing about the ecological functions of spacing behaviors among fishermen. Permanent or temporary ownership rights and other spacing mechanisms are neither general attributes of subsistence, peasant, or small-scale fisheries, nor necessarily conservative of resources. Territoriality may be predictable where marine resources are relatively sedentary and/or seasonally predictable in location, as in lobstexing and in salmon and some cod fisheries. It may also, however, be the outcome of competition between different levels of exploitative technology (Martin, in press; Andersen, in press). Except for the effects of fishermen's information-management tactics on the spacing of fishing units, territoriality may be completely absent in open-sea fisheries for mobile resources (cf. Andersen, 1972). It is probably least likely among rapidly modernizing fisheries which, like frontier cash-crop agriculture, are characterized by strategies of working for short-term profits and quantity rather than for long-term sustained yield and quality (see Margolis, 1977). The extent to which territoriality has ecological effects is in any case an empirical matter.

McCay

400

fishing Coast Salish and Kwakiutl Indians as regulatory mechanisms in population-resource systems did not explicitly use an equilibrium model (Orans, 1975: 320). However, it spurred the work of others in elucidating cultural traits which were claimed to function in maintaining equilibria in relations between populations and resources (e.g., Vayda et al., 1961; Rappaport, 1968, 1971). A recent discussion of the problems of contemporary New England fisheries reflects an equilibrium-centered human ecology: government regulation of fisheries is necessary "to restore equilibrium" to an ecological system upset by technological change and by a lag in adjustments by "social organization" components of the system (Gersuny et aL, 1975: 6). One problem with the assumption of equilibria is that it too often remains just an assumption: Gersuny et al. (1975) do not state what equilibrium would entail, nor do they show that it ever existed in the New England commercial fisheries. Another is that its emphasis on system processes which maintain some kind of finely tuned balance between human populations and their environments tends to ignore the reality of system disruptions and "unbalanced" relations. This point has been made in reference to anthropological studies of fishing peoples (Anderson, 1972), to biological ecology (Holling, 1973), and to human ecology (Vayda and McCay, 1975:298-299). We have suggested, following Slobodkin (1968), that the notion of homeostatis be used instead. This approach emphasizes that some properties of homeostatic systemsmust at times change so as to maintain other properties that are important for staying in the existential game-properties such as what Holling calls resilience and what might be described as remaining flexible enough to change in response to whatever hazards or perturbations come along. (Vayda and McCay, 1975: 299) The notions of homeostasis and resilience may be elucidated by their opposites, and the latter objectified by Nietschmann's (1972) portrayal of the turtle-fishing Miskito Indians of Nicaragua. When sea turtles became market resources rather than subsistence resources, the Miskito lost one major source of flexibility in coping with a "boom and bust" pattern of articulation with the capitalist market economy; they have since become dependent on a declining resource (Nietschmann, 1972: 66).

PROBLEMS IN SYSTEMS ECOLOGY: TELEOLOGY, SYSTEM REIFICATION, AND BOUNDARIES The second set of problems within systems ecology arises from the failure to remember that systems are analytic entities, as well as the tendency to restrict analyses to immediate and "natural" environmental relations. In maritime anthropology a systems ecology approach may emphasize the extent to which

The Anthropology of Fishing Communities

401

the effects of territoriality and other behaviors among fishermen include reduced competition for limited resources and lower levels of fish mortality. However, it may also ascribe a reality beyond that of analysis to the system depicted, leading us to go beyond our data and to misplace the goals, purposes, and functions of the observed phenomena to the level of the hypothesized system (Vayda and McCay, 1975: 299-300; Richerson, 1977; Bennett, 1976: 21-22). It may demonstrate that changes in the state of critical environmental variables (e.g., the numbers, size, and/or availability of fish) feedback to initiate compensatory changes in cultural variables. However, in so doing, cultural traits may be interpreted as derived from, dependent on, or maintained by their ecological "functions." Consequently, we may be led to ignore important dimensions of social structure and to make untenable assertions about the relations between people and their resources. The work of Forman (1967, 1970) among the raft fishermen of Coqueiral, northeastern Brazil, illustrates these problems. Forman identifies and analyzes the practice of secrecy about the landmarks of certain fishing spots as "an ecologically adaptive m e c h a n i s m . . , a spacing mechanism which minimizes competition and prevents overfishing by according temporary property rights to individual fishermen" (Forman, 1967: 417). That a negative-feedback system exists is suggested by the fact that there is the greatest amount of secrecy about those fishing grounds where the most valued species are found, and hence where the resource might readily be overfished (1967: 423,424). The practice of secrecy serves to reduce competition for limited resources and reduce the amount of effort applied at any given fishing spot, thus helping maintain the resource base for the population over time. The role of secrecy in minimizing competition for scarce fishing spots is not questioned here. 4 What is problematic is the assertion that secrecy is "ecologically adaptive" because it also functions to prevent overfishing, and the implication that this function helps explain its practice. The problem is both empirical and conceptual. Data were unavailable on the status of fish populations in the area (Forman, 1967: 425), a persistent and widespread obstacle to studies of fisheries (cf. Dickie, 1975: 34). We thus have no way of knowing whether the fish populations at the zealously guarded spots had ever been depleted by overfishing, nor whether any immediate potential for depletion existed (cf. Cordell, 1973). To the conceptual point is the questionable logic

4Forman provides only anecdotal information about the practice of secrecy and about competition among fishermen (1967: 422) and no evidence that secrecy really works to stop fishermen who want to compete for the same spots (see Cordell, 1973: 1846). Moreover, the "zealous guarding of spots as secrets and the attempts of others to find them are constant causes of contention in Coqueiral" (Forman, 1967: 422), leaving one to wonder how much the practice of secrecy motivates people to find out for themselves!

402

McCay

behind the suggestion that secrecy is "ecologically adaptive" to a p r o b l e m overfishing- that exists only as a potential. Forman himself notes that overfishing had probably never been a "real problem" because of the nature of the technology used (Forman, 1967: 423). The problem echoes that faced by Rappaport (1968, 1971) in his portrayal of a self-regulating system of people, pigs, ritual, and environment in New Guinea. The overall system is postulated to function to keep population below the carrying capacity of the local environment, but there is little evidence that the group studied had ever reached a size approaching carrying capacity (Rappaport, 1968: 95; cf. Salisbury, 1975). Nevertheless, having depicted a functional system and having ascribed reality to it beyond that of analysis (see Rappaport, 1977: 148), one is led to claim system-level goals or functions. The effects of New Guinea ritualism or Brazilian secrecy about fishing spots may - or may not - be to keep the population below carrying capacity or to prevent overfishing. However without evidence of prior experience with problems of resource depletion it is difficult to conceive of these cultural traits as systemic "homeostats" with the functions or purposes ascribed. A related problem is that of the boundaries of the analytic system. Given the mobility of prey - and often predator - in most fishing interactions, it is difficult to delimit appropriate boundaries for analysis. Cordell (1974) acknowledges this in his study of Brazilian estuarine fishermen when he notes that the behavioral system he describes is likely to have little effect on the status of fish populations in the lagoons because the fish are migratory, and thus subject to many pressures outside the lagoons (1974: 391). The tendency of systems ecologists to restrict their analyses to immediate and "natural" environmental relations also raises a boundary problem. By narrowing the system of the Coqueiral raft fishermen to cognition and to the behavior of fishermen on the water, Forman (1967) is led to view secrecy as a kind ofhomeostat responsive to local resource and economic variables. However, elsewhere (Forman, 1970) it is clear that Coqueiral secrecy is dependent on other factors: Where ownership of fishing equipment has become concentrated in the hands of single companies, or a few individuals [rather than dispersed among individual producers] the phenomenon of secrecy disappears and resources are depleted. (Forman, 1970: 74) Changed relations of production result in changes in the mechanism of secrecy. Change in environmental variables does not. Incorporating variables such as social relations of production into our analyses may make them more likely to account for both social and ecological change. This may include changes in the ability of individuals and local communities to retain control over some aspects of their relations to their resources. This critique has its parallel in Friedman's (1974) discussion of the importance of social relations of production in structuring the "homeostats" in

The Anthropology of FishingCommunities

403

man-environment systems (see also Murphy, 1970; cf. Rappaport, 1977: 161162). Moreover, the systems ecology approach suffers from being taken uncritically from biological ecology, where certain of its assumptions are also being questioned (e.g., Colinvaux, 1973). Only one portion of a general critique of systems ecology will be reiterated: the error of forgetting that systems are analytic entities first and foremost, and that what the analyst postulates as structure and function, or self-regulation and system goal, may be the outcome of the diverse strategies of multiple actors in complex interaction (Vayda and McCay, 1975: 399; see also Richerson, 1977: 19-20; Rutz, 1977). This is a restatement of the problem of relating "microcosmic" and "macroscopic" processes (Pelto and Pelto, 1975), or how individual and group adaptations are articulated with a larger system (Bennett, 1969: 23-24; Rutz, 1977: 157). The critique calls for clarification of the units of adaptation and analysis in ecological studies, and for greater attention to be accorded the role of individuals and other social units, rather than systems, in managing relations to resources and to environmental hazards (Vayda and McCay, 1975: 300-302; Richerson, 1977; Bennett, 1976). TOWARD A "PEOPLE ECOLOGY": ADAPTWE STRATEGIES AND RESPONSES

Rather than look for, or hypothesize the existence of, self-regulating systems involving human populations and their environments, the human ecologist might benefit from focusing on the problems or hazards faced by people, and how they respond to them (Vayda and McCay, 1975). The term "people ecology" implies that we should leave open the question of whether individuals, organized groups, populations, ecosystems, or other entities are significant units of adaptation (see Alland and McCay, 1974 for a discussion of units of adaptation). The nature of responding units is likely to vary, perhaps in ways predictably related to the nature of environmental problems (Vayda, 1976). The adaptive strategies of organisms faced with changing and problematic environments may be a fruitful starting point in this approach. The notion of "adaptive strategy" is central to recent evolutionary ecology, and closely related to optimization and consumer choice theory in microeconomics (Rapport and Turner, 1977). One useful definition of adaptive strategy is "the patterns formed by the many separate adjustments that people devise in order to obtain and use resources and to solve the immediate problems confronting them" (Bennett, 1969: 14). Adaptive strategies and decision-making among fishermen have been studied from several respectives (e.g., Davenport, 1960; Britan and Denich, 1976; Quinn, 1976). Most relevant to an ecological approach are those which focus on how people adjust to and cope with environmental change and uncertainty. Such phenomena as "multi-job strategies" (Middleton, 1977: 122: cf. Andersen, 1974), family firms, and composite fishing strategies (L6fgren,

404

McCay

1972) may be viewed as adaptive strategies which help maintain resilience in the face of fluctuating, uncertain, or declining fisheries. In the final section of this essay, two more general adaptive strategies, "diversification" and "intensification," are discerned from data on how coastal fishing people of Fogo Island, Newfoundland, coped with environmental problems. The Fogo Island Fishery Fogo Island lies 10 miles off the coast of northeastern Newfoundland. The island comprises 120 square miles of windswept rocks, ponds, heath, and forest. In 1971 the population was 4,257, unevenly distributed among nine coastal settlements, or "outports," linked by roads but oriented toward the sea. Almost everyone is descended from 18th- and 19th- century emigrants from England and Ireland who came to engage in a commercial cod fishery as servants, apprentices, or independent fishermen. Despite a recent phase of rapid urbanization and proletarianization in Newfoundland, the Fogo Island population has remained about the same since the 1930s. Fishing and fish-related industry are the principal sources of income for more than half of the households of the island (McCay, 1976). Incomes from fishing are typically low: in the early 1960s they averaged around $900 per fisherman; by the early 1970s they rarely exceeded $2,000 per fisherman. Incomes are supplemented by wage labor, seasonal unemployment insurance, and social assistance. The island lies on a broad, shallow, and seasonally productive marine shelf, to which cod, Atlantic salmon, and other fish migrate during the summer (late May to August), and on whose deeper margins and shoals many fish stay through the fall (September to November) and sometimes into the winter. The behavior of fish and of fishermen, and the social life of the outports, are keyed to the strongly seasonal and variable climate of the region. The fishery was, and largely remains, seasonal, inshore, and based upon low or intermediate levels of technology. Small wooden punts, outboard-propelled open boats, and inboarddiesel propelled skiffs are used in the inshore fishery. Gears range from handlines, line-trawls, and gill-nets to an elaborate cod trap. "Fish" means cod in Newfoundland. Cod has long been the major species pursued, supplemented by salmon and lobster during the early summer and the early fall. The inshore fishing season rarely begins before late May because of lingering Arctic ice. It reaches a peak between late June and early August, during the intensive cod migrations inshore, and extends for variable periods into the fall. During the 1960s a nearshore fishery was developed, which extended the fishing season somewhat (again, dependent on weather and ice conditions), and also extended the range of species to include redfish, turbot, greysole, yellowtail flounder, and other groundfish. The nearshore fishery involves the use of 50to 65- foot wooden boats, called "longliners," which are equipped with powerful

The Anthropology of Fishing Communities

405

marine engines, hydraulic gurdies for hauling gill-nets, and an array of electronic and radar navigational and fish-finding aids. The trap skiffs and the longliners are manned by crews of from four to six men, normally linked by close agnatic ties. Smaller boats are crewed by between one and three men, again usually close agnates. Excepting a few longliners, all fishing operations are daily. The inshore fishermen rarely go more than 10 miles from shore. The longliner crews fish as much as 40 miles from shore, and occasionally go farther, even to the Labrador Coast, several hundred miles away. Until the mid-1960s, almost all cod was processed by the fishing crews, supplemented by "shore crews" of women and children, and sold as light-salt, sun-dried cod, the highly prized baealhao of Mediterranean markets. During the mid-1960s this labor-intensive production and processing system, controlled by kinship groups, was gradually replaced by the practice of heavy-salting cod and selling it to local firms for further processing in fish plants. By 1969 a local fishermen's cooperative had also developed a market for fresh cod, which was shipped to another Newfoundland community to be frozen in blocks for sale to American markets. In 1970 the cooperative found similar outlets for other species. Environmental Problems

Because the economy of Fogo Island is dependent on the local fishery, the marine environment is a logical source of environmental problems. This discussion will restrict itself to the cod fishery. Variability in the size of yearclasses is inherent in Atlantic cod populations (Hannesson, 1975). Temporal and spatial variations in wind, currents, and other factors generate changes in cod migratory behavior and availability (Templeman, 1966). Unpredictable variability in cod is compounded by the effects of storms, high winds, and Arctic ice on the ability of fishermen to get out to the grounds and use their gear. The result is a highly uncertain and fluctuating resource. Codfish production figures on Fogo Island between 1954 and 1962 vary as much as twofold from year to year (McCay, 1976: 148). In addition, in any given year cod may be abundant on some fishing grounds but scarce on others. Until about 1963 temporal and spatial variability in fish catches was "normal," usually manageable, and hence not truly problematic (see Vayda and McCay, 1977). A variety of coping mechanisms existed. Cod fishing crews which used the large, box-like cod traps often maintained two or three traps, placed in widely scattered "berths," or fishing spots. If fish were scarce in one berth, they might be abundant in another. Similarly, crews used or kept on hand a wide variety of fishing gear, and often two or more different kinds of boats, which permitted a rapid switch from one technology to another. If cod failed to come into shallow inshore waters where the "trap" fishery took place, the

406

MeCay

crew might set gill-nets or use hook-and-line gear in deeper near-shore waters. In addition, family firms maintained the capital equipment and recruitment process necessary for engaging in a "fall fishery," which they relied upon as insurance against the failure of the more intensive and normally more productive "summer fishery." Seasonally available salmon and lobster also provided buffers against the failure of cod. Moreover, a long tradition of being "fisher: man-farmers," and more recently "jacks of all trades," provided yet another means of coping. When fishing was poor, lumbering, construction work, subsistence farming, and the use of government transfer payments (unemployment insurance since 1959 and welfare assistance) provided alternative or supplemental sources of income. Finally, the "truck" system of exchange between fishermen and the fish merchant houses on the island helped minimize the effects of annual fluctuations. Dealing primarily in credit rather than cash, merchants not only forwarded annual expenses of outfitting and household consumption against the next season's catch, but also carried over a fisherman's debts from one year to the next. The system, like sharecropping (Wallerstein, 1974: 105), represents a mode of risk-minimization in a setting in which labor is plentiful and capital scarce. It endured from around the turn of the 19th century to the early 1960s on Fogo Island (and until 1974 in one community on the island). Its costs were relegated to the fishermen, who had little control over prices of fish or goods, and suffered persistent poverty and technological underdevelopment (see Wadel, 1969a; cf. Royal Commission, 1933: 105; Wolf, 1955). As with many cultural solutions to environmental problems (cf. Little and Morren, 1975), the truck exchange system generated secondary problems. The system also bespeaks a major structural problem in Newfoundland's political economy: the inability of fishermen to bargain for better prices (Brox, 1972). The price of fish has thus been yet another major and uncontrollable environmental problem. The price of salt cod had begun to decline by 1960-1961, and continued to decline and fluctuate until 1969, when the government created a Crown corporation to bolster the faltering saltfish industry. It is difficult to ~isolate one "environmental problem" affecting Fogo Islanders, and it is necessary to keep in mind social and economic problems when reviewing responses to uncertainty and decline in fish catches. One weakness of the argument that ecological anthropology might benefit from focusing on how individuals respond to hazards and problems (Vayda and McCay, 1975: 300-302) is that the approach may ignore the reality of social structure and the extent to which adaptation is a "process of accommodation to environments and to certain internal characteristics of the behavioral system itself'' (Alland, 1975: 60). However, an individual-centered approach can also ask how the ability of individuals to respond effectively to whatever problems they face including not only environmental perturbations but also social o n e s - is con-

The Anthropology of Fishing Communities

407

strained or enhanced b y social and political processes (cf. Wisner et aL, 1976). In concluding this brief outline of problems faced by Fogo Islanders before the recent period o f decline in fish catches, one such process needs emphasizing: the proletarianization o f the rural labor force o f Newfoundland (Antler and Faris, in press) and the extent to which this process has meant the loss o f producer control over labor. By the mid-1960s recruitment o f crews had become a problem for Fogo Island fishermen, despite high rates of unemployment in Newfoundland (McCay, 1976). The relative u n i m p o r t a n c e o f fishdepletion prior to 1963 (see Hodder, 1965) is reflected in the nature o f the local systems of resource management. The variety of mechanisms e m p l o y e d b y Fogo Islandfishermen to space their own fishing enterprises on the fishing ground ranged from secrecy about valued fishing spots to "harbor laws," encoded in a set of provincial fishery regulations, regulating the timing and placement of cod traps and establishing "sanctuaries" for certain types of fishing gear. s Given a low level of technology, and the fact that labor available to process the fish was a major factor limiting production levels, overfishing was not a problem. Instead, by these means communities and individuals managed to gain access to valued points o f access to the resource, and helped maintain an egalitarian veneer on the water, protecting small-scale fishermen from competition with fishing crews having more capital-intensive and spaceconsuming gear (cf. Martin, in press). When overfishing became a problem, it was due to the effects of "offshore draggers" (foreign industrialized trawlers) on the northeastern Newfoundland and Labrador cod stocks (Pinhorn etal., 1975; Wells, 1972). Local systems of resource management were ineffective in coping with this problem and, indeed, declined in use as Fogo Island fishermen adjusted to the problem o f declining cod catches (see McCay, 1976: 177-194).

s Since the early decades of the 20th century, the Newfoundland government has enabled local communities to petition for Newfoundland Fishery Regulations backed by government sanctions. The cod-trap berths around the northern half of Fogo Island are regulated by laws which establish the time at which one is allowed to claim a berth, the ways claims may be made, how disputes are to be handled, and the spacing of cod traps. On the southern half of the island, where population has been sparse until recently, access to valued trap berths is still regulated by informal usufruct and inheritance norms, although an unregulated first-come-first-served system has begun to appear. The hook-and-line (and now gill-net) fishing grounds farther from shore have been regulated informally and through the Newfoundland Fishery Regulations in a variety of ways: in some areas, handline fishing for cod is the only method allowed, protecting handline fishermen against the space-consuming trawl-line or gill-net technology; in other areas, fishing with "jiggers" (baitless fish-shaped lead lures) has been banned. This latter was for two reasons: (1) fishermen believed that the use of baited hooks "baited the grounds" and kept the cod coming to the grounds; and (2) fishermen who had customarily used these grounds were threatened with competition from fishermen from another community who used jiggers because bait was scarce on their side of the island.

McCay

408 Table I. Inshore Catches of Cod, Number of Inshore Fishermen, and Yearly Catch per Fisherman, 3-Year Averages, 1958-1972, ICNAF Division 3K (Including Fogo Island) Period

Average annual cod catch (1,000 lb)

AverageNo. fishermen

Yearly catch per fisherman (1,000 lb)

1958-1960 1961-1963 1964-1966 1967 -1969 1970-1972

51,970 40,487 33,126 30,198 18,892

4,672 4,599 4,360 3,364 2,897

11.1 8.8 7.6 9.0 6.5

Table I shows the sharp decline o f cod catches in the region between 1958 and 1972. The first major effect experienced by Fogo Islanders, reportedly around 1963-1964, was what fisheries biologists call "growth overfishing" (Cushing, 1974), or a decline in the numbers of large, older fish in the stocks. This affected the fall hook-and-line fishing season, which selected for larger, older fish on nearshore fishing grounds, in combination with a concomitant decline in bait fish (capelin, herring, mackerel, squid). It thereby reduced the buffering function of the fall fishery, making crews more dependent than ever on the summer fishery. A secondary effect of "growth overfishing" was increased dependency on the size of individual year-classes, or cohorts, of cod (Wells, 1972). A "strong" year-class occurs only once or twice every decade in Atlantic cod, while in the intervening years the year-classes are below average (Hannesson, 1975). Thus, during the 1960s, when olderyear-classeshad virtually disappeared, Fogo Island fishermen experienced only 2 years (1962 and 1968) of very good inshore cod fishing, while the other years were reported as far below normal, and occasionally as "failures. ''6 By the end of the 1960s and on into the 1970s, as the offshore fishing effort increased, the cod stocks showed signs of true depletion (Pinhorn et al., 1975: 28) or "stock overfishing" (Cushing, 1974). A new form of exploitation was evident, as the process of marine industrialization and the movement of fishing fleets across the Atlantic resulted in declining fish catches for the coastal fishing populations. Appropriate responses to the problem rested on international politics and the management of regional fisheries by international organizations. The ineffectiveness of the International Commission for the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries (ICNAF) has been discussed elsewhere (e.g., Graham, 1970). In 1977 Canada joined many other nations in establishing a 200 mile fishing zone and sharply

6The term "failure" is partly subjective, but may have an objective correlate in the inability of fishermen to catch enough fish to qualify for unemployment insurance. My informants usually used the term this way, and the reports of welfare officers in the 1960s suggest that inability to qualify for unemployment insurance was the measure of "failure" then.

The Anthropology of Fishing Communities

409

reduced the amount o f foreign fishing allowed in the waters off Newfoundland. It has been estimated that it will be a decade before the cod stocks return to the 1969 levels. Through their cooperative, Fogo Island fishermen have voiced their views on the need for such protection. The rest of this paper will turn to the other ways they responded to decline in fish catches.

THE CASE F O R AN "INDIVIDUAL"-CENTERED ANALYSIS Responses to most problems experienced by Fogo Islanders through the 1960s were initially at the level o f individuals and households. Other important units o f response to be discussed were a local "improvement c o m m i t t e e " which functioned as a protest group vis-/t-vis the government, and a fishermen's cooperative. Implicit in this focus on individuals is a methodological and theoretical orientation that (a) emphasizes intracultural diversity (Pelto and Pelto, 1975), (b) counters the tendency o f "systems ecology" to focus on populations and ecosystems as appropriate units o f analysis, (c) holds to a view that interactions observed in complex systems may be understood "as the consequences of the various and variable adaptive strategies of individual organisms" (Vayda and McCay, 1975: 299), and (d) reflects the social structure of outport Newfoundland. Because o f historical mercantile strategies in a setting o f scarce capital and uncertain markets (Wadel, 1969a; cf. Antler, 1977), households have long been the principal units o f production and decision making. ?

Diversification and Intensification In the following sketch, individual and household responses are viewed in the aggregate as "adaptive strategies" formed by the many separate adjustments that people devised to cope with problems, especially those o f declining fish

7 "Family firms," comprising individual households or extended-family sets of households, recruit their own labor, prosecute their own fishery, and until the mid-1960s processed their own fish to marketable product. The mode of production is not a precapitalist one; nor is it inherent in fishing (Antler, 1977). On Fogo Island, merchants had switched from hiring labor, owning boats, and managing centralized fish-processing "stages" to a reliance on households for the finished product by the beginning of the 19th century. They have also encouraged family subsistence efforts and seasonal logging and sealing as a means of shifting the cost of social security from merchants (and government) to producers. The system persisted partly because it afforded resilience to both merchants and family firms. The latter have paid most of the costs of its maintenance. Its significance here is that the basic level of decision-making and adaptation has been that of individuals and households. Attempts on the part of such actors to cooperate with others in joint action to replace the merchant-dominated system, such as the Fishermen's Protective Union of the early decades of the 20th century, and cooperatives in the 1950s, usually failed. The cooperative which formed in 1967 succeeded because merchants had already left the island.

410

McCay

catches. Data are derived from fieldwork interviews between 1971 and 1974 among the people of Tilting, Joe Batt's Arm, and Barr'd Islands, and with management of the cooperative, combined with statistical data from the 1960s. Two general kinds of "adaptive strategy" discerned are diversification and intensification. The former refers to a general "spreading of the risk" and expanding alternative modes of coping with environmental problems. Intensification is used here to refer to increased commitment to an investment in one or another mode of resource procurement. The two strategies may be temporally and logically related in a process of response: diversification as an adaptive strategy comes first, and intensification follows. The logic is that of the theory of "economics of flexibility" (Bateson, 1963; Slobodkin, 1968; Slobodkin and Rapoport, 1974). According to the theory, minimal, less costly, and more reversible responses to environmental perturbation are predicted to occur first. If an environmental problem worsens or is not adequately met by the initial responses, "deeper," more costly, and less reversible responses take over, restoring flexibility to other responses. The initial response to fishery declines, as well as to declines in the price of fish, was the normal response to environmental uncertainty: the expansion of alternatives (i.e., diversification). Fishing crews responded in ways already described. In addition, most diversified their gear by purchasing governmentsubsidized nylon and, later, monofilament gill-nets, which had advantages of both durability and versatility. In several outports, including Seldom-Come-By and Stag Harbour on the southern side of the island, the general response was to reduce dependency on cod by investing more in salmon and lobster fishing. These fisheries had the advantage of taking place during the early summer, making possible the scheduling of wage labor during the rest of the summer and into the fall, when cod were scarce. The cod fishery coincides with the peak period of wage-labor employment in the seasonal economy of the region. Cod fishermen on the northern side of the island (from Fogo to Joe Batt's Arm and Tilting) were less favorably situated for intensive salmon and lobster fishing, and thus had more difficult scheduling choices to make. Occupational pluralism was an important kind of diversification response. Adult men increasingly found full- and part-time jobs in the expanding construction and mining sectors of the regional economy, or moved to Toronto and Montreal (typically leaving their homes, families, and boats on the island at first). In addition, Fogo Islanders diversified their resource procurement system by increasing their utilization of government welfare payments. During the first half of the t960s, these adaptive strategies resulted in little change in total fisheries participation (Table II), and the numbers of fishermen counted by the federal government remained fairly stable from 1961 to 1965. The proportion of "casual" and "part-time" fishermen increased, however, while the problem of labor scarcity hurt some trap crews, which disbanded.

The Anthropology of Fishing Communities

411

Table II. Number of Full-Time Fishermen, Fogo Island, 19631969 Year

No. fishermen

1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969

758 780 766 751 664 580 579

Between 1960 and 1965 two attempts were made by the provincial government to "intensify" the adjustments of Fogo Islanders. The first was to encourage the development of a more intensive "longliner" fishery, in which larger and more effective boats would be used to catch more fish. However, only local merchants purchased longliners; local fishermen resisted either serving as crew members on these vessels or applying for government funds to acquire their own. The second attempt was to increase the out-migration that had occurred as a by-product of occupational pluralism. This was to be done through a government resettlement program, whereby households would receive funds to move away from the island into other Newfoundland communities, and entire communities were to be completely abandoned. Resettlement required community consensus, and resettlers gave up their right to return. By 1965-1966, resettlement had become a public issue on the island. Although 60% of those interviewed by a sociologist said they wished to resettle (DeWitt, 1969), no community was able to achieve consensus, and only a few individual households left under a separate program. The specific reasons for conservatism on both matters are beyond the scope of this essay (see DeWitt, 1969; McCay, 1976). One general reason was the uncertainty and risk inherent in both options. Fishermen avoided the commitment and indebtedness implied by longliner fishing, while households avoided both the commitment and the irreversibility implied by resettlement. Intensification

During the second half of the 1960s larger numbers of households and individuals made "intensification" responses to the manifold problems of the local fishing economy. This was accelerated by an extraordinary decline in fish catches that occurred in 1965, and a series of extremely poor fishing seasons through 1974. Examples of "intensification" included increased reliance on welfare assistance; increased commitment to wage labor, which replaced fishing

412

McCay

as the core of pluralist strategies; increased temporary and permanent outmigration; and investment in longliner fishing technology. By 1965-1967, the welfare rolls on Fogo Island were among the highest in Newfoundland. Increased reliance on wage labor is illustrated by the fact that the local clerks responsible for the electoral rolls identified more and more voters as "laborers," "engineers," or "carpenters" rather than as "fishermen," despite the fact that many so designated continued to fish seasonally, or in some years but not others. At the same time, actual participation in fishing began to decline greatly (see Table II), reflecting increased participation in wage labor and out-migration. Out-migration had been high between 1961 and 1966, and the total population declined from 4,533 to 4,318, a rate of 0.7% per year. By 1971 population had declined to 4,257, and between 1966 and 1971 alone, the yearly average population decline was 2.8%. Finally, the nature of fishing changed as the number of longliners used by Fogo Islanders increased from three (owned by merchants) in 1964 to 32 (owned by fishermen) in 1972; they employed about 200 full- and part-time fishermen out of a total fishing population of approximately 450.

Government Intervention

The temporal pattern to the activation of the three "intensification" responses might suggest that there was a graduated series of responses that somehow articulated with the worsening environmental problems (cf. Vayda, 1976). Welfare rolls peaked in the winter of 1965-1966; out-migration peaked between 1967 and 1968; and the longliner fishery did not begin to expand until 1969, when / the first set of fishermen-owned vessels was launched from a new shipyard run by the cooperative (which had begun operating in 1968). However, to understand this temporal ordering of responses it is necessary to add goverment intervention to the analysis of Fogo Island responses to problems. Ecological analyses too often disregard such "outside" influences (but see Waddell, 1975; Lees,, 1974). Government intervention is a major part of the social environment in Newfoundland, and can be seen as an aspect of response processes, particularly as it channels coping in directions that fit government goals. Government intervention may also increase vulnerability to environmental problems. First, the temporal link between high welfare rolls and out-migration was the result of the perception on the part of government decision-makers that high welfare rolls were a "problem," and their proposal that resettlement was the solution. Although resettlement of the entire island or of any one community did not take place, some out-migration was stimulated by the resettlement program. Sixty-seven households received funds for moving between 1967 and 1970, most leaving in 1967 and 1968. In turn, the public issue of resettlement resulted in a shift in the unit of response from the individual and household

The Anthropology of Fishing Communities

413

to the organized group: the Fogo Island Improvement Committee. Formerly a special-purpose group of automobile owners who worked for road improvement, this coalition of merchants, businessmen, government employees, and others was reactivated and eventually succeeded in stopping large-scale resettlement (see DeWitt, 1969). The outcome of the work of the committee, plus university extension fieldworkers and a film-maker who experimented with the use of films in "community development" (Wade1, 1969b), was a shift in government policy. "Redevelopment" became the political catch-phrase. The intensification of fishing by the use of longliners occurred in 1969, 1 year after the improvement committee began a fishermen's cooperative and a shipyard for building longliners. This response also was a direct outcome of government "meddling" in the response processes and the decision-making of the Fogo Islanders. Elsewhere I have discussed the way in which the islanders attempted to identify their problems and to start a cooperative, which would constitute an important institutional change in the fishery, give fishermen greater control over their production, and expand alternatives to fishing by developing centralized fish-processing (McCay, 1976: Chap. 3; McCay, in press). Relevant here is that in applying for government assistance in beginning a cooperative the Fogo Islanders lost much of their power to define their problems and the solutions. Bureaucrats in the government Department of Rural Development usurped that power, and narrowed the manifold economic and environmental problems to the single problem of "the lack of an adequate fish supply" (Bilous, 1973: 17). This justified the reformulation and simplification of solutions to fit the government's policy of favoring private business. By upgrading the fishing technology, a consistent supply of fish could be produced, and private concerns would soon be attracted to the island, filling the vacuum left by the withdrawal of local merchant houses in the early 1960s. The provincial government provided support for a cooperative to manage a shipyard for building longliners. Other functions of a cooperative, such as supplying gear and buying fish, were incidental and viewed as temporary. However, private capital did not move back onto Fogo Island, and the cooperative gained broader functions and more government support. Nonetheless, it was committed to, and dependent upon, the intensification of fishing. Longliner fishing increased rapidly after 1969, heavily subsidized by the cooperative and the government. Longliner fishing initially restored flexibility to the fishery, enabling a new phase of "diversification" in fishing activities: more different species of fish were available, as longliner fishermen exploited new grounds, and the greater range and seaworthiness of the vessels made possible greater mobility in the fishery. In addition, the new longliner fishery was complementary to the inshore fishery. In years when the inshore fishery was poor, longliner fishing provided a buffer, enabling the cooperative to handle large amounts of fish, and providing some work for inshore fishermen, both on the longliner vessels and in the cooperative's fish-handling processing facilities.

414

McCay

A brief "boom" phase in longliner fishing (1969-1971)was followed by one of diminishing returns (1972-1975). The longliner fishermen depleted some stocks on the nearshore grounds, and were in continued competition with offshore trawlers for diminishing resources. In response, longliner fishermen on Fogo Island intensified their fishery even further. One cost of engaging in an intensified longliner fishery was the inability to continue occupational pluralist and subsistence activities because of the greater amount of time required for longliner operation, maintenance, and repair. In addition, because of time constraints and shifts in species fished, longliner fishermen gave up fish processing; they became more dependent on the quantity of fish caught. This dependence led to increases in the number of gill-nets used: in 1969 longliners handled 20-60 gill-nets apiece, but by 1973 the average was 200. Increased time was spent moving about to new fishing grounds, as catch per gill-net declined. Work days increased from about 12 hours to over 18 hours. According to informants, during the early phase of longliner fishing the standard "haul," or catch, was about 1,000 pounds of cod per gill-net. By 1973 a "very good haul" was only about 200 pounds per net, and that was mixed species, which bring a lower price than cod. Concomitantly there was a dramatic increase in operating costs: basic outfitting cost was around $2,000 in 1969, and in 1973 it was estimated by informants to average over $9,000 (McCay, 1976). In sum, longliner skippers were pressured to respond to declining fish catches by investing more effort and money in the fishery, and catching even more fish in order to meet their expenses. Much like the turtle fishermen of Nicaragua (Nietschmann, 1972), they had become overspecialized and dependent on declining resources. The costs of this strategy were felt not only by the longtiner owners and the fish, but also by the inshore fishermen, who competed for some of the same fish stocks depleted by the longliners. Costs were felt by the cooperative too. Because the fishermen's cooperative on Fogo Island was designed as a vehicle for the development of longliner fishing technology, its management channeled much of its capital into subsidizing the acquisition and outfitting of longliners. Profits were based on the salt-fish business, but costs were disproportionately those of carrying the accumulating debts of the longliner shipyard (McCay, 1976; Chap. 10). Profits from the former were used by the management to carry losses from the latter. The cooperative's profit margin narrowed and disappeared. By 1973 the cooperative was near bankruptcy, rent by political factionalism, and losing the support of its shareholders. Failure was averted by a short-term government loan, obtained through the politicking of university extension workers who had staked their careers on the success of "community development" on Fogo Island (e.g., Williamson, 1975). The cooperative was subsequently reorganized, the shipyard shut down, and the number of longliners used by islanders reduced to 28, through repossession by the cooperative and attrition (i.e., death of the owner) without replacement. Further ex-

The Anthropology of Fishing Communities

415

pansion of longliner fishing was curtailed by a government freeze on subsidization of longliner construction in Newfoundland in 1973-1974 and the subsequent development of an entry permit scheme for vessels over 45 feet in length. On Fogo Island, these government responses to the problem of declining returns from the longliner operations throughout northeastern Newfoundland merely institutionalized the individual responses. The only longliners built or acquired by the Fogo Islanders after the spring of 1972 were replacement vessels of larger capacity. Inexperience and mismanagement were partly to blame for the cooperative's problems, and the diminishing returns of the longliner fishery were partly due to the continued and intensified competition with foreign trawlers for fish. Nonetheless, understanding both also requires acknowledging the role of government (and the islanders' dependence on government) in usurping the power to define problems and carry out solutions. Understanding the latter requires an analysis of Canadian and Newfoundland policies and processes related to economic development, scientific research, and fisheries modernization, a topic beyond the scope of this essay (but see McCracken and MacDonald, 1976).

CONCLUSION I have outlined two general kinds of "adaptive strategy" observed among Fogo Islanders during a period of decline in the fishery, and I have shown that "diversification" responses were followed by "intensification" responses. Diversification involved the broadening of alternatives, both within fishing and between fishing and other modes of making a living. This "adaptive strategy" appears to have been the most general, to have been "traditional." and to have characterized the responses of individuals and households to fisheries decline during the early 1960s. However, as environmental and economic problems endured and worsened, many people adjusted in ways that I have labeled intensification: going on welfare, becoming wage lab orers, leaving the island, or becoming longliner fishermen. 8 The process described is predictable from ecological theory. Within the "economics of flexibility" theory, minimal responses to perturbation may be valuable in providing a built-in time lag for evaluating the magnitude, duration,

8The "intensification" strategies described were not always cleaz-cut and mutually exclusive alternatives. A few individuals tried all four at different times during the 1960s. Accepting the welfare option is most often associated with wage labor, labor migration, and/or continuing to engage in inshore fishing. It is least likely to be found prior to becoming longliner fishermen, although many longliner fishermen were forced to apply for welfare payments by 1973-1974.

416

McCay

and other characteristics of problems, as well as the effectiveness of solutions. They thereby minimize the chance that costly and irreversible responses are activated for what might turn out to be trivial or transient problems. The implied cautiousness might also be adaptive for human actors who tend define inherently complex problems in terms of narrow solutions on hand (Rittel and Webber, 1973) and thus, as in the case of "technological fix" solutions to natural hazards (Mitchell, 1974), create new problems for themselves and others. However, if environmental problems persist, the costs of diversification strategies [i.e., on Fogo Island, the costs of traveling between different jobs and home, the social costs of "going on the dole" in a culture valuing hard work (Wadel, 1973)] may increase in saliency for the actors. They are then expected to make decisions leading to increased commitment to one or another course of action. If adaptive, the shift to "intensification" response strategies reduces some of those costs and helps restore "flexibility" to actors and their social units (see Bateson, 1963; Slobodkin and Rapoport, 1974). While this discussion makes some sense on a theoretical and intuitive level, its boundaries must be considerably enlarged. The shift from diversification to intensification strategies on Fogo Island cannot be viewed simply in relation to characteristics of the natural environment. Similarly, the observed shifts from "individual" to "group" units of purposive action - e.g., the cooperative movement - are not readily explained by the decline in the amount or the size of fish caught. Both were stimulated by the involvement of "outsiders" in local matters, and made possible by the structural dependency of small Newfoundland outport communities on the government. The "outside" was an important source of resources, including community fish-processing "stages," financial assistance for the cooperative, and a variety of "winter-works" programs which provided employment during the long winter and helped buffer the effects of fisheries decline. However, government and university extension involvement was also a source of "meddling" (see Flannery, 1972), resulting in the usurpation of decision-making and the power to formulate problems and solutions. It also channeled the intensification phase of local response processes into longliner fishing. The result was increased local participation in that near-irreversible process of overcapitalization and resource depletion sometimes called the "tragedy of the commons" (Hardin, 1968). Another result was the near-demise of the producers' cooperative, the one important community-level response to the manifold problems of the local fishery and economy. An ecological approach which ignores the islanders' interaction with government, which focuses solely on, for example, ways in which fishermen alter their means of allocating fishing space in the water, may provide some valuable information about coping and adaptive strategies, but will not tell us much about why the fishermen took up longliner fishing when they felt that the fishing grounds could not support such an intensified fishery (cf. DeWitt, 1969), and

The Anthropology of Fishing Communities

417

why the cooperative came near bankruptcy when it was making a profit from the sales of salt fish. Both questions are directly related to the survival of the people of Fogo Island - as Fogo Islanders - and are thus ecological. This sketch of responses on Fogo Island has erred in the direction of overgeneralization. Individuals, households, and communities differed significantly in the extent to which they became occupational pluralists, stayed with the inshore trap fishery, joined the cooperative, or engaged in longliner fishing. Some communities on the island remained steadfastly "traditional" throughout the 1960s and 1970s, while others became models of material and economic modernization. Some suffered a sharp decline in population, while others grew. Many people appear to have muddied through, paying little heed to either the longliner fishery or the cooperative. Government intervention in the affairs of the island also helped many people continue their minimal, occupational pluralist ways of coping. For example, a variety of government-financed infrastructure wharf and road projects, fisheries college courses, and winter-works programs were obtained by local "action committees," particularly during a period of extreme difficulty in the fishery between 1972 and 1974. The projects were used by individuals as ways to stay on the island without going on welfare, to continue in a faltering and uncertain inshore fishery, or longliner fishery, and to hold open other options. This holding pattern may have enabled fish and people to benefit from the Canadian government's emerging attempts to better manage foreign and domestic fishing and to redress its former policy of disadvantaging the inshore fishery. The persistence of these and other outport communities in rural Newfoundland has stimulated reconsideration of the meaning of community development, and the importance of providing the means and power to make decisions at the local level (McCracken and MacDonald, 1976).

SUMMARY

The "systems ecology" approach in ecological anthropology has been criticized for its tendency to misplace teleology to the level of emergent propertics of ecological systems from that of purposive actors - alone or in more or less organized g r o u p s - a n d for its tendency to neglect important aspects of social structure (Vayda and McCay, 1975; Richerson, 1977; Friedman, 1974; Salisbury, 1975). I have illustrated these and other criticisms of systems ecology by analyzing Forman's (1967) study of "secrecy" and its adaptive functions among raft fishermen in northeastern Brazil. In presenting my own observations of the fishermen on Fogo Island, Newfoundland, I have followed the suggestions of Vayda and McCay (1975) that people, rather than ecological systems, be the primary units of analysis, and that instead of depicting homeostatic systems

418

MeCay

relating people to their environment, we look instead at the actual problems people face, and how they respond to them. The generalizations that emerged from my Fogo Island data have some predictive value, and are in accord with the more theoretical predictions of some ecologists and evolutionary biologists. However, "people ecology" shares with Marxist materialism, sociobiology, and systems ecology the risk of becoming "vulgarized," particularly if it leaves out important dimensions of the cultural and social world of people.

REFERENCES Acheson, J. M. (1972). The territories of the lobstermen. Natural History 81: 60-69. Acheson, J. M. (1975). The lobster fiefs: Economic and ecological effects of territoriality in the Maine lobster industry. Human Ecology 3(3): 183-207. Atland, A., Jr. (1975). Adaptation. Annual Review of Anthropology 4: 59-73. Alland, A., Jr., and McCay, B. (1974). The concept of adaptation in biological and cultural evolution. In Honigmann, J. J. (ed.), Handbook of Social and Cultural Anthropology. Rand McNaUy, Chicago, pp. 143-178. Andersen, R. (1972). Hunt and deceive: Information management in Newfoundland deepsea trawler fishing. In Andersen, R., and Wadel, C. (eds.), North Atlantic Fishermen. Institute of Social and Economic Research, Memorial University, St. John's, pp. 120-140. Andersen, R. (1974). North Atlantic fishing adaptations: Origins and directions. In Pontecorvo, G. (ed.), Fisheries Conflicts in the North Atlantic. Ballinger, Cambridge, Mass, pp. 15-33. Andersen, R. (in press). Public and private access management in Newfoundland fishing. In Andersen, R. (ed.), North Atlantic Maritime Cultures. Mouton, The Hague. Andersen, R. and Stiles, G. (1973). Resource management and spatial competition in Newfoundland fishing: An exploratory essay. In Fricke, P. H. (ed.), Seafarer & Community. Croom-Helm, London, pp. 44-66. Andersen, R., and Wadel, C. (1972a). North Atlantic Fishermen. Institute of Social and Economic Research, Memorial University, St. John's. Andersen, R., and Wadel, C. (1972b). Comparative problems in fishing adaptations. In Andersen, R., and Wadel, C. (eds.), North Atlantic Fishermen. Institute of Social and Economic Research, Memorial University, St. Johns, pp. 141-165. Anderson, E. N., Jr. (1972). The life and culture of ecotopia. In Hymes, D. (ed.), Reinventing Anthropology. Random House, New York, pp. 264-283. Anderson, J. N. (1974). Ecological anthropology and anthropological ecology. In Honigmann, J. J. (ed.), Handbook of Social and Cultural Anthropology. Rand McNally, Chicago, pp. 179-239. Antler, E. (1977). Maritime mode of production, domestic mode of production, or labour process: An examination of the Newfoundland inshore fishery. Paper presented to the Northeastern Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, Providence, Rhode Island, 24-26 March, 1977. Antler, E. and Faris, J. (in press). Adaptation to changes in technology and government policy: A Newfoundland example. In Andersen, R. (ed.), North Atlantic Maritime Cultures. Mouton, The Hague. Bateson, G. (1963). The role of somatic change in evolution. Evolution 17: 529-539. Bennett, J. W. (1969). Northern Plainsmen: Adaptive Strategy and Agrarian Life. Aldine, Chicago. Bennett, J. W. (1976). The Ecological Transition: Cultural Anthropology and Human Adaptation. Pergamon Press, New York.

The Anthropology of Fishing Communities

419

Berkes, F. (1977). Fishery resource use in a subarctic Indian community. Human Ecology 5(4): 289-307. Bilous, M. (1973). Community Development on Fogo Island: A Socio.Economic Analysis. Department of Regional Economic ExPansion , Ottawa. Bowles, F. P. (1972). The fisherman as a predator: The role of lobster fishermen in a marine ecosystem. Paper presented to the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Toronto. Breton, Y. (1973). A comparative study of work groups in an Eastern Canadian peasant fishing community: Bilateral kinship and adaptive processes. Ethnology 12(4): 393-418. Britan, G. and Denich, B. S. (1976). Environment and choice in rapid social change.American Ethnologist 3(1): 55-72. Brox, O. (1964). Natural conditions, inheritance and marriage in a North Norwegian fjord. Folk 6(1): 35-45. Brox, O. (1972). Newfoundland Fishermen in the Age of Industry: A Sociology of Economic Dualism. Institute of Social and Economic Research, Memorial University, St. John's. Cattarinussi, B. (1973). A sociological study of an Italian community of fishermen. In Fricke, P. H. (ed.), Seafarer & Community. Croom-Helm, London. Christy, F. T., Jr., and Scott, A. (1965). The Common Wealth in Ocean Fisheries. The Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore. Clark, C. W. (1973). The economics of overexploitation. Science 181 : 628-634. Colinvaux, P. A. (1973). Introduction to Ecology. Wiley, New York. Cordell, J. (1973). Review of The Raft Fishermen, by Shepard Forman. American Anthropologist 75(6): 1845-1846. Cordell, J. (1974). The lunar-tide fishing cycle in Northeastern Brazil. Ethnology 13(4): 379-392. Crutchfield, J., and Pontecorvo, G. (1969). ThePacifie Salmon Fisheries. The JohnsHopkins Press, Baltimore. Cushing, D. H. (1974). A link between science and management in fisheries. Fishery Bulletin 72(4): 859-864. Davenport, W. H. (I 960). Jamaican fishing: A game theory analysis. In Papers in Caribbean Anthropology, Yale University Publications in Anthropology, No. 59, New Haven. DeWitt, R. L. (1969). Public Policy and Community Protest: The Fogo Case. Institute of Social and Economic Research, Memorial University, St. John's. Dickie, L. M. (1975). Problems in prediction. Oceanus 18(2): 30-35. Dikkanen, S. L. (1965). Sirma: Residence and Work Organization in a Lappish-Speaking Community. The Norwegian Research Council for Science and the Humanities, Oslo. Epple, G. M. (1977). Technological change in a Grenada W. I. fishery, 1950-1970. In Smith, M. E. (ed.), Those Who Live From the Sea: A Study in Maritime Anthropology. West, St. Paul, 173-193. Flannery, K. V. (1972). The cultural evolution of civilizations. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematies 3: 399-426. Forman, S. (1967). Cognition and the catch: The location of fishing spots in a Brazilian coastal village. Ethnology 6(4): 417-426. Forman, S. (1970). The Raft Fishermen: Tradition and Change in the Brazilian Peasant Economy. Indiana University Press, Bloomington. Friedman, J. (1974). Marxism, structuralism, and vulgar materialism. Man (n.s.) 9: 444-469. Gersuny, C., and Poggie, J. J., Jr. (1974). A fishermen's cooperative: Open system theory applied. Maritime Studies and Management 1 : 215-222. Gersuny, C., Poggie, J. J., Jr., and R. J. Marshall, Jr. (1975). Some Effects of Technological Change on New England Fishermen. Marine Technical Report No. 42, University of Rhode Island, Kingston. Graham, H. W. (1970). Management of the groundfish fisheries of the Northwest Atlantic. In Benson, N. G. (ed.), A Century of Fisheries in North America. American Fisheries Society, Washington, pp. 249-262.

420

MeCay

Hannesson, R. (1975). Fishery dynamics: A North Atlantic cod fishery. Canadian Journal of Economics 7(2): 151-173. Hardin, G. (1968). The tragedy of the commons. Science 162: 1243-1248. Hewes, G. W. (1948). The rubric "Fishing and Fisheries." American Anthropologist 50: 238-246. Hodder, V. M. (1965). Trends in the cod fishery off the East Coast of Newfoundland and Labrador. International Commission on the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries, Research Bulletin 2: 31-41. Holling, C. S. (1973). Resilience and stability of ecological systems. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 4: 1-23. Lees, S. H. (1974). Hydraulic development as a process of response. Human Ecology 2: 159-175. Little, M. A., and Morren, G. E. B., Jr. (1975). Ecology, Energetics, and Human Variability. Wm. C. Brown, Dubuque. L6fgren, O. (1972). Resource management and family firms: Swedish West Coast fishermen. In Andersen, R., and Wadel, C. (eds.), North Atlantic Fishermen. Institute of Social and Economic Research, Memorial University, St. John's, pp. 82-103. Margolis, M. (1977). Historical perspectives on frontier agriculture as an adaptive strategy. American Ethnologist 4(1): 42-64. Martin, K. O. (in press). Play by the rules or don't play at all: Space division and resource allocation in a rural Newfoundland fishing community. In Andersen, R. (ed.), North Atlantic Maritime Cultures. Mouton, The Hague. McCay, B. J. (1976). "Appropriate technology" and coastal fishermen of Newfoundland. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Columbia University. McCay, B. J. (in press). "Fish is scarce": Fisheries modernization onFogo Island, Newfoundland. In Andersen, R. (ed.), North Atlantic Maritime Cultures. Mouton, The Hague. McCracken, F. D., and MacDonald, R. D. S. (1976). Science for Canada's Atlantic inshore seas fisheries. Journal of the Fisheries Research Board of Canada 33(9): 2096-2139. Middleton, D. R. (1977). Changing economics in an Ecuadorian maritime community. In Smith, M. E. (ed.), Those Who Live From the Sea: A Study in Maritime Anthropology. West, St. Paul, pp. 111-124. Mitchell, J. K. (1974). Natural hazards research. In Manners, I. R., and Mikesell, M. W. (eds.), Perspectives on Environment. Association of American Geographers, Washington, D.C. Murphy, R. (1970). Basin ethnography and ecological theory. In Swanson, E. (ed.), Languages and Cultures of Western North America. Idaho State University Press, Pocatello, pp. 152-171. Nietschmann, B. (1972). Hunting and fishing focus among the Miskito Indians, eastern Nicaragua. Human Ecology 1(1): 41-67. Orans, M. (1975). Domesticating the functional dragon: An analysis of Piddocke's potlatch. American Anthropologist 77(2): 312-328. Pelto, P. J., and Pelto, G. H. (1975). Intra-cultural diversity: Some theoretical issues. American Ethnologist 2(1): 1-18. Piddocke, S. (1965). The potlatch system of the Southern Kwakiutl: A new perspective. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 21: 244-264. Pinhorn, A. T., Pitt, T. K. and Wells, R. (1975). Background information on Newfoundland and Labrador's inshore groundfish resources. Decks Awash [Extension Service, Memorial University of Newfoundland] 4(1): 28-30. Quinn, N. (1976). A natural system used in Mfantse litigation settlement. American Ethnologist 3(2): 331-351. Rappaport, R. A. (1968). Pigs for the Ancestors: Ritual in the Ecology of a New Guinea People. Yale University Press, New Haven. Rappaport, R. A. (1971). Nature, culture, and ecological anthropology. In Shapiro, H. L. (ed.), Man, Culture & Society, Revised ed. Oxford University Press, New York, pp. 231-267.

The Anthropology of Fishing Communities

421

Rappaport, R. A. (1977). Ecology, adaptation and the ills of functionalism. Michigan Discussions in Anthropology 2: 138-190. Rapport, D. J., and Turner, J. E. (1977). Economic models in ecology. Science 195: 367373. Richerson, P. J. (1977). Ecology and human ecology: A comparison of theories in the biological and social sciences. American Ethnologist 4(1): 1-26. Rittel, H. W. J., and Webber, M. M. (1973). Dilemmas in a general theory of planning. Policy Sciences 4: 155-169. Royal Comission on the Newfoundland Fisheries (Great Britain). (1933). Report. His Majesty's Stationery Office, London. Rutz, H. J. (1977). Individual decisions and functional systems: Economic rationality and environmental adaptation. American Ethnologist 4(1): 156-174. Salisbury, R. F. (1975). Non-equilibrium models in ecology. Anthropologica (n.s.) 17: 127-147. Slobodkin, L. B. (1968). Toward a predictive theory of evolution. In Lewontin, R. C. (ed.), Population Biology and Evolution. Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, pp. 187-205. Slobodkin, L. B., and Rapoport, A. (1974). An optimal strategy of evolution. Quarterly Review of Biology 49: 181-200. Smith, M. E. (1977a). Comments on the heuristic utility of maritime anthropology. The Maritime Anthropologist 1(1): 2-5, 8. Smith M. E. (ed.) (1977b). Those Who Live From the Sea: A Study in Maritime Anthropology. West, St. Paul. Steward, J. H. (1955). The concept and method of cultural ecology. In Steward, J. (ed.), The Theory of Culture Change. University of Illinois Press, Urbana. Suttles, W. (1960). Variation in habitat and culture on the Northwest Coast. International Congress of Americanists 35 : 522-537. Templeman, W. (1966). Marine Resources of Newfoundland. Bulletin No. 154, Fisheries Research Board of Canada, Ottawa. Vayda, A. P. (1969). An ecological approach in cultural anthropology. Bucknell Review 17(1): 112-119. Vayda, A. P. (1976). War in Ecological Perspective: Persistence, Change, and Adaptive Processes in Three Oceanian Societies. Plenum Press, New York. Vayda, A. P., and McCay B. J. (1975). New directions in ecology and ecological anthropology. Annual Review of Anthropology 4: 293-306. Vayda, A. P., and McCay, B. J. (1977). Problems in the identification of environmental problems. In Bayliss-Smith, T. F., and Feachem, R. G. A. (eds.), Subsistence and Survival: Rural Ecology in the Pacific. Academic Press, London, pp. 411-418. Vayda, A. P., and Rappaport, R. A. (1968). Ecology, cultural and noncultural. In Clifton, J. A. (ed.), Introduction to Cultural Anthropology. Houghton-Mifflin, Boston, pp. 477-497. Vayda, A. P., Leeds, A., and Smith, D. B. (1961). The place of pigs in Melanesian subsistence. In Garfield, V. E. (ed.), Proceedings of the 1961 Annual American Ethnological Society Meetings. University of Washington Press, Seattle, pp. 69-77. Waddell, E. (1975). How the Enga cope with frost: Responses to climatic perturbations in the Central Highlands of New Guinea. Human Ecology 3(4): 249-273. Wadel, C. (1969a). Marginal Adaptation and Modernization in Newfoundland. Institute of Social and Economic Research, Memorial University, St. John's. Wadel C. (1969b). Communities and Committees: Community Development and the Enlargement of the Sense of Community on Fogo Island, Newfoundland. Memorial University Extension Service, St. John's. Wadel, C. (1973). Now, Whose Fault is That? The Struggle for Self-Esteem in the Face of Chronic Unemployment. Institute of Social and Economic Research, Memorial University, St. John's. Wallerstein, I. (1974). The Modern World-System. Academic Press, New York.

422

McCay

Wel!s, R. (1972). Virtual Population Assessments of Cod in ICNAF Divisions 3K and 3L. International Commission for the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Research Document 72/16. Williamson, H. A. (1975). The Fogo process in communication. In 1975 Training for Agriculture and Rural Development. F o o d and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, Rome, pp. 93-98. Wisner, B., Westgate, K., and O'Keefe, P. (1976). Poverty and disaster. New Society (9 September): 546-548. Wolf, E. R. (1955). Types of Latin American peasantries: A prelitninary discussion. American Anthropologist 57: 452-471.