For generations to come: exploring local fisheries access and community viability in the Kodiak Archipelago

Abstract

The sustainability of fisheries and fishing-dependent communities depends upon numerous political, cultural, economic, and ecological factors. My research explores a key threat to this sustainability in Alaska -- the graying of the commercial fishing fleet. As current fishermen approach retirement age and a decreasing number of young people obtain ownership level careers in Alaska's fisheries, succession impacts become an increasingly pressing issue. This research utilized a political ecology framework and mixed methods ethnography, including 70 semi-structured interviews and 609 student surveys, to study local fisheries access and community viability in the Kodiak Archipelago communities of Kodiak City, Old Harbor, and Ouzinkie. This research documents barriers that fishermen face at different stages in their careers and describes related implications. Findings indicate that opportunities for rural youth and fishermen are increasingly constrained by interrelated economic and cultural barriers that have created equity and sustainability concerns. Furthermore, research suggests that the privatization of fisheries access rights is a major catalyst of change that has amplified these barriers, generated social conflict, and resulted in a transformed paradigm of opportunity compared to decades past. Secondly, this research compares fishermen's identities and livelihood motivations to dominant framings in academic literature and policy realms. This comparison reveals that in-depth understandings of fishermen are not well explained by narrow economic assumptions and instead include broader social and cultural dimensions. Lastly, exploration of the entangled relationships between fisheries access and rural youth pathways demonstrates increasing pressures within coastal communities, such as globalization, outmigration, youth ambivalence, substance abuse, and overall constrained opportunities. Nonetheless, coastal communities are working towards increasing local resilience to external pressures through social network support and some youth are bucking demographic trends by moving into fishing livelihoods. Due to the suite of threats facing fishing people and communities, it is increasingly important to have a deeper understanding of natural resource management impacts and local dynamics within fishing communities in order to plan for sustainable coastal futures.