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Satisfaction with fishing and the desire to leave

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Abstract

Predicting who may leave a fishery is an important consideration when designing capacity reduction programs to enhance both ecological and economic sustainability. In this paper, the relationship between satisfaction and the desire to exit a fishery is examined for the Queensland East Coast Trawl fishery. Income from fishing, and changes in income over the last 5 years, were key factors affecting overall satisfaction. Relative income per se was not a significant factor, counter to most satisfaction studies. Continuing a family tradition of fishing and, for one group, pride in being a fisher was found to be significant. Satisfaction with fishing overall and the challenge of fishing were found to be the primary drivers of the desire to stay or leave the fishery. Surprisingly, public perceptions of fishing, trust in management and perceptions of equity in resource allocation did not significantly affect overall satisfaction or the desire to exit the fishery.

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Notes

  1. For owner-operators, income largely reflects their cash profits. Essentially, it is the money left over once all the costs have been paid. While potentially vague, discussions with industry in earlier studies suggested that this was the most appropriate measure of income from the fishers’ perspective (e.g., Courtney et al. 2012, 2014; Dichmont et al. 2013). For employed skippers, income represents their share of revenue (Courtney et al. 2014).

  2. The fleet managers were excluded from the analysis as they would have very different experiences to owner operators or employed skippers in the fishery due to their different role.

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Acknowledgements

This study was undertaken as part of the FRDC funded project “Developing and Testing Social Objectives and Indicators for Fisheries Management (FRDC Project 2010/040)”, with support from the CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere Flagship. We would also like to thank the fishers who took part in the survey, the owners of the mothership that assisted us with the surveys in the northern region, and the two anonymous reviewers who provided valuable feedback on the earlier draft of the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CSIRO Oceans and Atmospheric Flagship, PO Box 2583, Brisbane, QLD, 4001, Australia

    Sean Pascoe, Toni Cannard & Catherine M. Dichmont

  2. Queensland Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, GPO Box 46, Brisbane, QLD, 4001, Australia

    Eddie Jebreen

  3. Faculty of Health, University of Canberra, University Drive South, Bruce, ACT, 2617, Australia

    Jacki Schirmer

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  1. Sean Pascoe
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  2. Toni Cannard
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  3. Eddie Jebreen
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  4. Catherine M. Dichmont
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  5. Jacki Schirmer
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Correspondence to Sean Pascoe.

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Pascoe, S., Cannard, T., Jebreen, E. et al. Satisfaction with fishing and the desire to leave. Ambio 44, 401–411 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-014-0579-7

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