Monkfish Mysteries. A Narrative Analysis of Place-making and Knowledge Production among North Norwegian Fishermen

Abstract

In this article, major focus is on creative production of knowledge needed to outsmart the monkfish at deep seafloor locations. This production is examined through narrative analysis. Narratives link individual human actions, events and experiences into interrelated aspects of an understandable composite. This is a cumulative process that shows some of the complexity and contextuality of everyday meaning-making. One recurrent question is, how do fish think? How fishermen construct narratives about the behavior of marine animals and their preferred underwater habitats is presented and analyzed. Some narratives are contested but all the same influence human–animal interaction. Narrative work further establishes and confirms common ideas, informed by marine biological science, fishermen's experiences, creative imagination and hopes. These narratives address topics also related to overfishing and resilience.

Keywords:

• Narrative analysis
• Knowledge production
• Fish
• Fishermen
• Place-making

Notes

1. Participant observation and conversations in work situations were the basic field methods when information was gathered.

2. There has been a tendency in the years following the first fieldwork period that more vessels of 15 m have been added to the fleet and manned by two men.

3. Latin names are given the first time vernacular names of fish appear.

4. Fieldwork in Helligvær amounts to one year during 2006–2007 (all seasons) and later in 2008, 2010; all together some 16 months.

5. When the skipper asks the anthropologist for his opinion this is part of normal conversation onboard the vessel. It should not be regarded as a sign of uncertainty or reluctance to act, but an indication that he is assessing the possibilities regardless of what the anthropologist says.

6. A computer that shows sea maps and can also supply three-dimensional images of the bottom topography.

7. Catch weights are sometimes confusing when focus is on the monkfish. The fish may be handed over just gutted, other times only the tails, heads cut off, are brought to the fish buyer.

8. This is not Maurstad's major focus in her brave and path-breaking account of how body skills internalized at sea during commercial fishing efforts are emotionally attached to memories.

9. Note, angler fish is a synonym for monkfish in English.

10. Because gutting the fish soon became my job, I continued to investigate what many fish had eaten.

11. One fisherman, resident of an island a few hours by boat south of Helligvær, has fished this species with some success for some years now (2010).

12. Andreas' paternal grandfather, father and father's brother are all fishermen.