Science and Citizen Participation in Fisheries Management

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This empirical research will add to our understanding of the relationship between-science, environmental policy, and public participation. Using a meso-level approach in the context of marine fisheries management, the investigators examine how science, and claims about scientific-credibility, are used within large, but still defined, communities of stakeholders.-- Many federal fisheries management-plans exist and informative comparisons among them can be made. The research will tap in to an ongoing-debate about what constitutes good fisheries data and how such data should be used, and builds upon-previous research on stakeholder participation in marine fisheries management decisions.-- It uses key informant interviews, a telephone survey, case studies, and document analysis, to examine (1) how the level of overall scientific certainty about an issue affects participant claims about scientific credibility, (2) what patterns can be discerned in how participants gather and use scientific information, and (3) how legal mandates about scientific issues affect the use of scientific data and claims about credibility. Key informant interviews will include fisheries-scientists and other participants in fisheries management, scientists and other personnel-working for federally mandated regional councils and commissions and state-level agencies, and fishers from the-commercial and recreational sectors. Respondents will be asked about their use of scientific information-and their opinions about how such information should be used. In interviews of scientists, investigators will ask about-how specific legal mandates affect the way they use data and make scientific decisions.--The telephone survey of a random selection of participants in public meetings and hearings will test-hypotheses, generated from the key informant interviews, about how institutional and professional-affiliations, and class and sectoral interests, affect perceptions of how science should be used. The case studies of the management of lobster, bluefish, and summer flounder will involve three-major methods: 1) participant observation of fisheries management-procedures; 2) in-depth interviews with participants from different agencies and stakeholder groups;-and 3) archival research on documents from fisheries management agencies and other sources.--The final project component studies a sample of federal fisheries management plans to make both qualitative and-quantitative comparisons of 75 species under effort-based-management from around the United States. Using publicly available documents, the investigators will assess both the-certainty of the science on which the plan is built and the type of challenges to that science that have been-made in public fora, to test the hypothesis that more certain science leads to fewer public challenges-to that science.-