Cumulative Effects, Creeping Enclosure, and the Marine Commons of New Jersey

Abstract

"In response to declining fish stocks and increased societal concern, the marine 'commons' of New Jersey is no longer freely available to commercial and recreational fisheries. We discuss the concept of 'creeping' enclosure in relation to New Jersey's marine commons and suggest that enclosure can be a process and function of multiple events and processes and need not be the result of a single regulatory moment. We provide a short review of the 'expected' effects of enclosure, based on classic studies as well as more recent fisheries work. Some of this work has focused on Individual Transferable Quotas (ITQs), and has suggested a loss of flexibility, erosion of community, proletarianization of fishermen, and corporatization of the fishery are among the effects of enclosure. Here we present some findings of our research to discuss if and how the signs of enclosure may be visible in fisheries that do not feature ITQs through the rich detail that emerges from attention to the lived experiences of fish harvesters and to the cumulative effects of regulations. Relying on an oral history approach, we examine the multiple micro-political moments and enactments that result appear to have resulted in 'creeping' enclosure, and provide a case study of the incremental and cumulative processes by which neo-liberal formations can be implemented. We cast these processes as 'flows' of governance and discuss how this creeping process of enclosure has affected the flows of information between fish harvesters, managers and scientists by affecting both participation in fisheries and the accumulation of knowledge itself."