Linking Marine, Regulatory and Demographic Patterns in the Fishing Communities of the Northwest

The holistic approach developed in the origins of social anthropology is valuable in examining community relationships to surrounding environments, particularly when these communities - fishing communities, for example - are dependent on local natural resources.  Ethnographic analyses have traditionally relied on multiple approaches, incorporating methodological elements like small-scale surveys of local economic and geographic conditions.  Included, as well, in this holistic approach is the gathering of demographic information, long the domain of marketing and other applied pursuits.  Nevertheless, in applied environmental social science, it is increasingly clear that demographics are central to understanding social interaction with, and the manipulation of, surrounding natural environments, notably when the social-ecological intersection is coastal or marine in nature.  This is apparent in the politically and economically convoluted context of the fisheries in the U.S. Pacific Northwest.  Demographics help convey predictions not only about small coastal communities and local fishing behaviors, but also about responses to regulations concerning adjacent marine and freshwater environments.  While multiple social elements are evident in terms of their importance to the human dimensions of the environmental analyses necessitated by fisheries management, demographic patterns, revealed in the anthropological research process, emerge as central to understanding west coast fisheries issues.