Privatizing the Right to Fish: Challenges to Livelihood and Community in Kodiak, Alaska

Courtney CarothersSchool of Fisheries & Ocean Sciences

University of Alaska FairbanksAlaska Marine Science Symposium, January

2009

Dissertation Research Overview

• Privatization of Fishing Rights Symbolic & Material Transformations

I. Discourses of privatizationII. Loss of fishing rights in Alaska villagesIII. Lived realities in Alutiiq fishing

communitiesIV. Possibilities for redistribution of rights

Dissertation Research Overview

• Privatization of Fishing Rights Symbolic & Material Transformations

I. Discourses of privatizationII. Loss of fishing rights in Alaska villagesIII. Lived realities in Alutiiq fishing

communitiesIV. Possibilities for redistribution of rights

I. Discourses of Privatization

• Framing of fisheries access privatization is key to understanding debate & impacts

Catch Shares Revive FisheriesScience study confirms that this innovative approach is the best way to manage and restore fisheriesEnvironmental Defense Fund 2008

II. Loss of Fishing Rights in Villages

• Why do small coastal communities in GOA disproportionately lose fishing rights?

Net Result of Halibut Quota Transfers: 1995-2004

-500

0

500

1000

1500

<1,00

0

1-2,0

00

2-4,0

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4-6,0

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6-9,0

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>30,0

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Size of Community

Quo

ta S

hare

(1,0

00

s)

Halibut IFQ holder survey

• Sample buyers, sellers, & original quota holders– 14% of pop (n = 1,100); 46% response rate– 50% of respondents from small, remote

fishing villages• How do community & demographic

variables affect:– Buying and selling patterns – Opinions of privatized access programs

Logit Analysis

• Relationship between individual attributes and buying and selling patterns?

• Attributes:– Age– Income– Education– Ethnicity– Residency in small, remote fishing

community– Fishing income dependence

Logit Analysis

• Model the probability that an individual is a seller (not a buyer)

• Three attributes influence Pr[sell]– Age

• The older an individual is the more likely s/he is to sell.

– Ethnicity• Alaska Native quota holders more likely to sell.

– Income• The lower an individual’s income is the more

likely s/he is to sell.

Likert Scale Composite

• Alaska Native respondents show least support for privatization

• Respondents who do not identify their community as “fishing dependent” show the most support.

Manage more fisheries with IFQs

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

Alaska Native Non-Native

Perc

ent

Agree

Disagree

III. Lived Realities in Alutiiq Villages

• What factors explain trends of loss of fishing rights?

• How are these changes experienced locally?

Ethnographic Research

• 15 months (2005-2006)– Larsen Bay, Old Harbor,

and Ouzinkie– >150 interviews– 71 household surveys– Participant observation– Social network analysis

Larsen Bay

• 90 people• 70% Alaska Native

○

○Ouzinkie• 190 people• 88% Alaska

Native○

Old Harbor• 200 people

• 89% Alaska Native

Dramatic Decrease in Fishing Participation

Larsen Bay Old Harbor Ouzinkie 0

102030405060708090

100

Parents fished

Previously fished

Currently fish

Why this decrease?• “It all started with the permit” • Cannery period (1880s to 1960s)

– Flexible, informal commercial fishing relationships

– Men ran cannery boats; women worked in canneries

– System of wages and credit – Labor mobility – crew transition to

skipper to owner– Maintenance economy: “getting through

the winter”; “not getting ahead of your neighbors”

Privatizing the Right to Fish

• Access privatization (1970s – present)– Right to fish individualized and

commodified– Initial allocation of rights usually to boat

owners– Subsequent allocation by market ($$)

• Economic & social disconnect with cannery period

“Before all this Ouzinkie was a fishing community, free enterprise…It was family fishing. (Permits) eliminated all that. (Before) you didn't have to own anything. It worked as a bartering system. You work for the cannery and they took care of you.”

Privatizing the Right to Fish

• Kin-based fishing not rewarded– Capital investment over labor investment

• Labor mobility restricted“With limited entry, most of the young people

didn't want to be crewmembers their whole lives – they got out of fishing. (It would have) cost them $200,000 to get into the fishery.”

• Right to fish become alienable disproportionate rate of sale

Disproportionate Rate of Sale

• Higher discount rate (Langdon 1980)– Current cash flow more important than

future earning potential• High-value capital asset detrimental• Limited access to collateral, financial

institutions, knowledge of programs• IRS repossession• Other factors

– Low wild salmon prices– Exxon Valdez oil spill

Social Change

• Values– Individualism, competition

• Status – Labor/class hierarchies– Wealth disparities– “Business style” fishermen gain political

power– “Lifestyle fishermen” subordinated (Mason

1993)• Economy

– Maintenance to accumulation

Social Change• The “Lost” Generation

“When I was young, I grew up knowing that I’d be a fisherman and I knew one day I’d be a boat owner... Guys growing up today don’t know that; there’s no reason to think they can be boat owners – most of them can’t be.”

Elder fisherman in Ouzinkie

Social Change

• Loss of fishing rights not just income– Loss of identity, meaningful lifestyle,

connection to place– New stratification altered community

dynamics– Linking of loss of fisheries to increasing

social problems– 50% decrease in village populations– Impact on subsistence economy

IV. Redistribution of Rights

• Community-based rights– Community Quota Entity Program

• Aboriginal claim to fish• Social movements• Collective planning

– Kodiak Island Rural Regional Leadership Forum • “Commercial fishing is part of our future”• Economic diversification

Summary

• Complex relationships b/t people, places, & resources

• Privatization is remaking these relationships

• Privatization constrains fishing livelihoods and connection to place

• While effects not entirely predictable, tend to reinforce historical inequities based on class & ethnicity

• Symbolic/ideological struggle over language, values, and assumptions

Acknowledgements

• Dissertation Committee: – Eric Alden Smith (University of Washington)– Dave Fluharty (UW)– Ben Fitzhugh (UW)– Jennifer Sepez (NOAA Fisheries)

• Funding Agencies– National Science Foundation– Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological

Research– Washington Sea Grant Program– Morris K. Udall Foundation

Quyanaasinaq

• The people of the Kodiak Archipelago– Tribal Councils of Larsen Bay, Old Harbor

and Ouzinkie– Mary Haakanson, Phyllis Clough, Mary

Barb Christiansen, the Fields, Herman Squartsoff, Angeline Campfield, Jack Wick, Gwen Christiansen, RJ Zeedar