North Atlantic Fisheries in Change. From Organic Associations to Cybernetic Organizations

Abstract

During the 1990s radical changes took place in marine ecosystems,\nfisheries and fishing communities around the North Atlantic. Social-ecological\nrestructuring involving interactive changes in marine ecosystems, harvest technologies, fisheries science, management practices and goals, fishing households\nand communities and markets radically transformed fisheries associations. This\narticle draws on insights from multiple sources, including a series of career history\nand other semi-structured interviews with fishers from Newfoundland and\nLabrador and Norway. These insights are presented in the form of career histories\nof two fishers, one from North Norway and one from Labrador on Canada’s east\ncoast. These career histories are contextualized within the larger literature on the\npost-World War II history of these two regions and the resulting descriptions are\nused to inform the design of three ideal types of fishery associations (organic,\nmechanical and cybernetic) that capture three main phases of interactive socialecological restructuring during this period. Our argument is that today’s North\nAtlantic harvesters are increasingly embedded in cybernetic fisheries organizations\nthat are radically different from the forms of association that dominated in\nthe past. In our analysis and conclusion we highlight the sustainability challenges\nand opportunities this process of cyborgization poses for these fishers and for\nNorth Atlantic fisheries in the future.