Barbara Paterson, a visiting postdoctoral fellow at MUN and Conservation Corps intern Katie Rundquist, are conducting a study on the social ecology of small pelagic fisheries on the west coast of Newfoundland. Focusing particularly on the area around Bonne Bay, Barbara and Katie are spending several weeks this fall looking at the inshore and offshore fisheries for capelin, herring and mackerel. The goals of their research are:

1. to explore how fishing actions within the current management framework affect herring, mackerel and capelin stocks in this area.
2. to learn more about the relationship between the different fleet sectors
3. to find out how the different sectors utilise the resource and how this affects fish harvesters and communities in the region from Port au Choix to the Bay of Islands.

Barbara and Katie will be conducting interviews with harvesters, union representatives, DFO managers and scientists to learn about these fisheries. They will be asking questions about the biology and ecology of the fish, the way they are harvested now and in the past, how recent management of the fishery has affected harvesting and any thoughts or concerns people have regarding the status and management of these fisheries.

With funding from the Robin Rigby Trust, this study is a collaborative project between the CURRA and Namibia and conducted under the supervision of Professor Barbara Neis and with guidance from CURRA researchers and community partners.

Barbara lives in Namibia, a country in southern Africa whose western border is the Atlantic Ocean. It shares land borders with Angola and Zambia to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south and east. The small pelagic fishery for sardines collapsed in the 1970s and has never recovered. Instead harvesters are now concentrating on juvenile mackerel as well as fishing in neighboring Angola. Barbara hopes to learn from the Newfoundland experience and to take some valuable lessons home to Namibia about designing research for recovery.

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