The endangered coastal fishers along the coast of the Archipelago Sea: The environmental conflict in policy-making

Abstract

The small-scale fisheries of the Finnish archipelago are in crisis. Three major problems were identified during an ethnographic study of the different stakeholders in the fishing sector: the grey seal, the great cormorant, and regulation of pikeperch harvesting. Within the framework of political ecology, developments in the current state of the fisheries are examined and the policy-making processes are analysed. Additionally, the notion of knowledge and the role of both scientific knowledge and local ecological knowledge in the context of fisheries management and fisheries management science are discussed.