Journal Article

Permanent link for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10535/5

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Co-Management in the Maine Lobster Industry: A Study in Factional Politics
(2013) Acheson, James M.
"One of the most promising mechanisms to conserve fish stocks is co-management, a type of ICCA (Indigenous Peoples' and Community Conserved Territories and Area), in which responsibilities are shared by resource users and the government. In Maine, the lobster co-management system, established in 1995, divides the coast into seven zones. It permits license holders in each zone to recommend rules on four issues to the commissioner of the Department of Marine Resources. This article describes the history of the Maine lobster co-management system, emphasising the role of factional politics in determining the development of policies and rules. In the Maine co-management system, political outcomes depend on the power of factions of fishermen and the coalitions of those factions with government units at higher scales. Cross-scale cooperation is necessary. In the cases where such a cross-scale coalition existed, rules were passed and policies went into effect. In those cases where no such coalition existed, gridlock reigned. If we wish to understand the production of rules for the lobster industry, we must focus not only on the actions of different industry factions, but also on the byzantine relationships between lower levels of management (i.e., the zone councils and the Lobster Advisory Council) and higher scale institutions (i.e., legislature, Maine Department of Marine Resources, etc.). In this paper, special attention is paid to the reasons that stricter trap limits have not been devised, despite the fact that such limits would solve a variety of serious problems."
Evolution of the Maine Lobster Co-management Law
(2000) Acheson, James M.; Stockwell, Terry; Wilson, James
"In fisheries management circles, there is growing realization that traditional ways of managing marine resources are not working and that new approaches to management need to be tried. One of the most promising of these new approaches is co-management, where authority for managing fish stocks is shared between the industry and government agencies. This paper discusses the implementation of the new co-management system, which was initiated in the Maine lobster industry in 1995. "The law has clearly been successful; it has been framed in a way to allow lobster fishermen to be able to generate rules to constrain their own exploitative effort. At the same time, a number of problems have come to the fore, not the least of which was the fact that passage of one regulatory measure caused problems for certain groups of fishermen who demanded remedial legislation. Thus, the co-management effort in Maine has moved ahead by solving a sequence of problems. But the fact that these problems are being solved places Maine in the forefront of jurisdictions experimenting with new ways to manage fisheries. Those interested in fisheries management may want to recall the state's motto 'Dirigo' - 'I lead.'"
The Evolution of the Maine Lobster V-Notch Practice: Cooperation in a Prisoner's Dilemma Game
(2011) Acheson, James M.; Gardner, Roy
"The Maine lobster industry is experiencing record high catches because, in all probability, of an effective management program. One of the most important conservation measures is the V-notch program that allows fishermen to conserve proven breeding females by notching the tails of egg-bearing lobsters. Such marked lobsters may never be taken. Although thousands of lobster fishermen participate, it is a voluntary practice. The genesis of this practice is not easily explained, because V-notching poses a prisoners dilemma problem that gives fishermen an incentive to avoid the practice. The most common explanations for ways to overcome prisoners dilemma problems will not work in the case of the V-notch. An unusual combination of factors explains the V-notch program: (1) a strong belief among those in the industry that the V-notch is effective in conserving the lobster stock; (2) a low discount rate because the long-term gains from V-notching are higher than the one-time gain from defection; (3) a gain in reputation for those who V-notch. At the start of the 20th century, fishermen did not V-notch; by the end of the century, V-notching was common. We explain the change in strategies using a three-parameter evolutionary model that emphasizes the importance of culture change."
Ostrom for Anthropologists
(2011) Acheson, James M.
"Elinor Ostrom has devoted much of her career to understanding the conditions under which people have incentives to conserve or over-exploit commonpool resources (e.g. oceans, air, irrigation, unowned forests and grassland). While a growing number of anthropologists have taken an interest in this critically important topic, her work is not well known to many anthropologists. This paper describes three different aspects of Ostroms work which should be of interest to anthropologists. First is her analysis of collective action problems and the conditions under which people in local communities have devised rules and institutions to solve those dilemmas to conserve resources. Second is Ostroms discussion and classification of the complex rules used to manage resources. Third is her analysis of four kinds of goods (i.e. public goods, common-pool resources, toll goods and private goods) and the property regimes that produce them in different combinations. Last, I outline several directions in which her work seems to be going."
Territories of the Lobstermen: Good Ocean Boundaries Make Good Neighbors... and Vice Versa
(1972) Acheson, James M.
"The rules for lobster fishing territories are especially critical because they control access to the lobsters and because they have important ecological implications at a time when some parts of the marine resource are being over exploited. "Growing up in an inland area of Maine, I was for a long time vaguely aware that territoriality existed among lobstermen. Only recently, however, did I find evidence of these territorial rules and investigate them systematically."

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