Job Satisfaction in Fisheries Compared

This article draws comparative lessons from seven job satisfaction studies on marine capture fishing that were recently carried out in nine countries and three geographical regions—Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean. The seven studies made use of an identical job satisfaction assessment tool and present information on a selection of métiers mainly in the small-scale and semi-industrial fishing sectors. The responses manifest statistically significant geographical variation. Multidimensional plots and cluster analyses lead the authors to identify three clusters: (1) Southeast Asian (Vietnam and Thailand); (2) Caribbean (Belize, Nicaragua, Dominican Republic) and (3) Afro-Indian (Senegal, Guinea Bissau, and India). Jamaica is a significant outlier. On a general level, the authors conclude that fishers who report that they are not interested in leaving the occupation of fishing score higher on three traditional job satisfaction scales—basic needs, social needs and self actualization. Those who say they would leave fishing for another occupation are younger, have less fishing experience and smaller households. The latter findings are of relevance with regard to the pressing need, felt by fisheries managers, to move fishers out of the fishery

Social Impact Analysis and the Modelling of Societal Costs of Fisheries: An Assessment

Theorists and modelers have made significant progress in defining ecological and economic parameters for measuring the 'costs' of fisheries. The social dimensions of such universal exercises, however, have barely been worked upon. This is a serious omission. In the context of the EC-funded ECOST programme, a group of social scientists is investigating the value of the job satisfaction approach to the fisheries field. This paper describes the usefulness of job satisfaction for the modeling of societal costs in fisheries, and the problems and opportunities encountered

Disaster response: being ready

A Fisheries and Aquaculture Response to Emergency (FARE) training, along with a Training of Trainers course, was held recently in St Georges, Grenad

Fishing as Therapy: Impacts on Job Satisfaction and Implications for Fishery Management

This study presents unique comparisons, across space and time, regarding aspects of fishers’ perception of their job satisfaction and well-being between two geographic areas where fishing constitutes integral part of the local economy and culture: the Northeast Region US and the Caribbean. Examining differences in aspects of job satisfaction and well-being in such highly different environments (both human and natural) will provide information for developing models to understand how different stressors (e.g. changes in the natural, socio-cultural, economic and managerial environments) affect those whose livelihoods depend directly on fishery resources. Models elucidating relationships between environmental and anthropogenic changes and the well-being of resource dependent populations will provide indispensable input for the development of strategies that incorporate both natural and human objectives in preserving and maintaining essential ecosystem services. (from the second page

Exploring ‘islandness’ and the impacts of nature conservation through the lens of wellbeing

Motivated by growing concern as to the many threats that islands face, subsequent calls for more extensive island nature conservation and recent discussion in the conservation literature about the potential for wellbeing as a useful approach to understanding how conservation affects people's lives, this paper reviews the literature in order to explore how islands and wellbeing relate and how conservation might impact that relationship. We apply a three-dimensional concept of social wellbeing to structure the discussion and illustrate the importance of understanding island–wellbeing interactions in the context of material, relational and subjective dimensions, using examples from the literature. We posit that islands and their shared characteristics of ‘islandness’ provide a useful setting in which to apply social wellbeing as a generalizable framework, which is particularly adept at illuminating the relevance of social relationships and subjective perceptions in island life – aspects that are often marginalized in more economically focused conservation impact assessments. The paper then explores in more depth the influences of island nature conservation on social wellbeing and sustainability outcomes using two case studies from the global north (UK islands) and global south (the Solomon Islands). We conclude that conservation approaches that engage with all three dimensions of wellbeing seem to be associated with success

Which Fishers are Satisfied in the Caribbean? A Comparative Analysis of Job Satisfaction Among Caribbean Lobster Fishers

Lobster fishing (targeting the spiny lobster Panulirus argus) is an important economic activity throughout the Wider Caribbean Region both as a source of income and employment for the local population as well as foreign exchange for national governments. Due to the high unit prices of the product, international lobster trade provides a way to improve the livelihoods of fisheries-dependent populations. The specie harvested is identical throughout the region and end market prices are roughly similar. In this paper we wish to investigate to which extent lobster fishers’ job satisfaction differs in three countries in the Caribbean and how these differences can be explained by looking at the national governance arrangements