Integrating Social Values into Fisheries Management

Abstract

This article summarizes responses from program leaders and managers in fisheries management to a questionnaire requesting information about the use of social and community values in decision-making. More specifically, we investigated to what extent managers in the Pacific Northwest region know about and incorporate the social values of commercial fishing communities, the means by which they obtain their information, and the barriers to obtaining viable information for use in decision-making. In this pilot study, decision-makers and managers indicated that they have frequent contact with fishers and members of the coastal community, but the type of information they receive, and lack of trained personnel make it difficult to integrate the information into decision-making. Significant differences of opinion regarding the use and integration of social and community values information in decision-making also exist among our respondents. Without structural changes within management agencies that increase capacity to elicit values information from community members and standardize methods for evaluating, interpreting, and integrating the information into management plans and decisions, it is unlikely that community values information can be effectively used by managers in their planning process.