-
1.
Cultured fish
-
2.
No fish is
worthless,
only the
system that
casts it
aside.
-
3.
Savour and
sustain: each
mouthful of
story and
flavour, tasted
to its source,
helps the life of
the harbour
continue
-
4.
The technical experts don’t work in the labs;
they haul knowledge in with their hands
-
5.
Why should we grant you our fish to damage?
Allocate quota according to care.
-
6.
A harbour without a boat - a hearth without a flame
-
7.
We harvest and hunt not quota but knowledge:
-
8.
take too much and we render ourselves stupid.
-
9.
Slow fishers of the world crew together! Let no one labour
alone who knows the true value of their catch
-
10.
The fish’s eye sees through all lies
-
11.
Growth ring on
fish scales, the
fishers brief
thumbprint on
fish flesh – one
without the
other is a half-hearted
story
-
12.
Co-management: your fish on my plate at our price, not the sea’s
expense
-
13.
Questions equal quality – the more we ask, the more
value grows in the hold of the boat and in the mouth
-
14.
Your plate is the world – explore the wild territories of the catch!
-
15.
Listen to those who daily listen to the sea – its whispers of distress, its
songs of harvest – shout what they say to the paper world.
-
16.
Match the market to the catch, not the catch to the market
-
17.
Authenticity in the mouth! Taste the truthfulness of strange utterances:
rigour mortis, red gills, the moment caught in the sea’s clear eye
-
18.
Study the dictionary of fish; learn the mother tongues of
the sea; sing the poem of the fish on your plate
-
19.
Ask the slow fish whence it came, and the sea enters the room in the
names of boats, in the word of the fisher, in the dream of an ecosystem
-
20.
Catch the policy in nets; don’t glimpse it like a tourist out for a day trip
in a boat.
-
21.
Not a plate of
fish, but a dish of
tides, grounds,
nets and hooks –
all that was not
caught
sweetening the
flavour
-
22.
Wake the life of fish on ice: face up to the strange and local shapes of the sea – be changed!
-
23.
Energy company tax dodge / windfarm
Marine “Conservation” Zone
Working class exclusion zone
Anchorage for ships
Everything else
-
24.
Elinor Ostrom
“Complex
problems require
complex
solutions”
Folke et al (2012) An Uncommon Scholar of the Commons. Ecol Soc 17:1–3.
Knowledge economy – everyone needs food though. Place for people to succeed and garner respect without academic qualifications in Northern Europe.
So – I hope you have gained the impression by now that there is an intrinsic link between people and fisheries and that the how we manage people is at least as important as how we manage fisheries.
Final argument is that when we try to invent complex solutions to complex problems we generally fail. These are the latest rules and regulations that govern the prawn fishery in the north sea. They are detailed, complex and change frequently. Unfortunately, they are also inappropriate, often ludicrous and detested by the users they are supposed to serve.
“Now that we know those dependent on these resources are not forever trapped in situations that will only get worse overtime, we need to recognise that governance is frequently an adaptive process involving multiple actors at diverse levels. Such systems look terribly messy and hard to understand. The scholars’ love of tidiness needs to be resisted. Instead we need to develop better theories of complex adaptive systems focussed on overcoming social dilemmas, particularly those that have proved themselves able to utilize renewable natural resources sustainably over time” Ostrom 2005, p286. (in Rodgers et al, 2010)