Expanding the Use of Traditional Ecological Knowledge in Understanding and Managing Herring Use in the Sitka Sound Special Harvest Area

 

This project seeks to assess the role of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) in managing herring stocks within the Sitka Sound Special Harvest Area. By considering ethnographic data of the marine environment, as well as subsistence harvest effort, it should be possible to identify key social norms and values associated with the resource. Such information could potentially be used to identify and model indicator variables in the decision making processes involved with how households in Sitka Alaska participate in this customary and traditional fishery. These indicators will provide valuable insight into how subsistence users make decisions to employ effort in harvesting herring spawn. The qualitative component of this project will include documenting TEK.  To collect data, the researcher for this project, currently employed as a graduate intern with the Division of Subsistence, Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G) will work cooperatively with the Sitka Tribe of Alaska (STA). TEK data will be used to identify marine habitat types, subsistence harvest locations (mapping), customary and traditional practices, and changing trends in accessibility to the resource. This information will be further supplemented with quantitative data including spatial habitat mapping, spawn density and deposition, and commercial harvest data collected by the Division of Commercial Fisheries, ADF&G. A Geographic Information System (GIS) will be used to display, analyze, and understand these variables and their measured outcomes. These interactions will be defined within the larger theoretical framework of spatial resilience in social-ecological systems. By taking this approach there will also be an emphasis on incorporating elements of participatory mapping and community based research, creating an interdisciplinary description of the human-environment interaction for this particular fishery. Fisheries management practices should incorporate local needs and values in order to be relevant for local users. By doing so, managers and policy makers can potentially mitigate conflicts between different user groups. Perceptions surrounding a resource may have a significant impact on how the resource is used and how such conflicts arise. Incorporating these alternative ways of knowing could improve how policy makers manage valuable resources across multiple scales of management and governance.