Changing boundaries and institutions in environmental governance: Perspectives on sector management of the Northeast US groundfish fishery

Abstract

Management through and by sectors has emerged as the primary mechanism for managing the Multispecies Groundfish Fishery in the Northeast United States. Sectors are cooperative associations of fishermen that in theory can pursue their own community-based goals but that in practice have tended to operate more like individual quotas. Based on interviews with groundfish sector managers, this paper examines the emergence of sectors as a new institutional form in the Northeast, and the rapid reorganization of the industry that has occurred in the wake of sectors. Some sectors have depended on existing relationships, particularly in sectors based on common ports, ethnicity, or kinship. But sectors also call on new sets of relationships and roles, such as the role of sector managers as important new bridges or "boundary agents" between government and industry. This paper reviews the differences and commonalities in the goals and objectives of different sector groups, the challenges and opportunities fishermen have faced adapting to the sector system in the context of reduced allocations, as well as the changing importance of different institutional forms in the management of the fishery. The sector system has been an experiment in decentralized and collaborative management, but in a context of increasingly privatized resources, rendering challenges and opportunities to fishermen in a rapidly changing socio-ecological environment. © 2014 Olson and Pinto da Silva.