Training Managers for 21st Century Fisheries

An international cooperative initiative designed to facilitate production of human capital necessary to meet 21st century fisheries management challenges.
  Challenges for 21st Century Fisheries and Broad Vision for Training 

Participants in the Training Managers for 21st Century Fisheries workshop  attempted to develop a vision of 21st century fisheries and described a challenging and complex management future requiring fisheries managers to have a broad range of skills and abilities. (Also see Section 2 of 2001 Workshop Report - PDF)

Vision of Fishery Management:

Fishery managers face major difficulties in addressing the following categories of challenges or issues - sustainable fisheries; cooperative and stakeholder-based management and research; ecosystem management; management under risk and uncertainty; property rights and allocation; international management; public environmental objectives; management effectiveness; ocean governance; and litigation.

Specific challenges and their perceived priority varied among workshop representatives from government, academia, and industry. Those with significant administrative responsibilities emphasized the gap between recent legal mandates for sustainable fishery management and existing management practices, and argued fishery managers should use the next ten years to overcome "implementation-overload" and address legal responsibilities under current law. Many participants stressed the need to transition to stronger rights based approaches for fishery management. Industry representatives emphasized the importance of private sector stakeholder responsibility for fishery management, but also recognized the challenge of reconciling management by fishing rights holders with other stakeholder groups. Representatives of indigenous people highlighted the need to meet sustainability mandates - particularly the needs of future generations, and stressed the importance of integrating ethics with institutional design and scientific management responsibilities. They also cited the value of indigenous knowledge and the need to minimize loss of historical, cultural and resource knowledge as traditional users and managers retire or end their participation in fisheries.


Vision of the ideal fishery manager:

Participants understood that depending on the governance system, there may be many "managers" in the fisheries process including stakeholders, stakeholder leaders, formal directors of private sector and NGO groups, mid-level government managers, elected policymakers, and policy analysts and institutional designers. Thus, participants agreed to accept a broader definition of the fishery manager which includes many of the participants in the fisheries management process. 

Participants also generally agreed that fishery managers in the 21st century must be effective leaders possessing significant moral character and intellectual ability. They must not only be able to lead a policy process but also lead teams of competent professionals capable of addressing management challenges. They should be passionate about improving management of fishery resources and increasing public and private benefits. They must also have the necessary technical management skills, but must not lose touch with the physical and human components of fishery management-the fish, the water, the fishermen, and the seafood processors.

Consistent with this characterization, participants identified the following related assumptions to guide their discussion of training needs. 

1. Fishery management is a process, not a tightly bounded organization

In the past, fisheries management might have been more narrowly defined as an occupational category, but in reality, it a decision-making process with an integrated view, focusing on how to manage impact. Like management in any complex system or organization, the fisheries management process requires team-based analysis and implementation. Thus, fisheries management involves individuals with strengths in different disciplines and skill sets that must be melded together to address complex problems. 

2. All necessary skills and knowledge cannot exist in one manager.

All participants in fisheries management will require some common skills and knowledge, but at different depths. Participants will need to be familiar with other areas of expertise, however the level of familiarity will vary depending on their role in the process. Effective team-based analysis requires managers to take a comprehensive perspective, understand the management process, identify problems and challenges, and lead teams to address ecosystem-level problems at different scales. Managers leading teams must recognize the value of different areas of expertise and possess the necessary professional experience and skills to lead a team toward a solution. There will still be a need for specialists, but specialists will also need some knowledge of other disciplines.

3. The role of the fisheries manager varies.

The degree of accountability and authority held by the manager will vary depending upon the manager's role in the process. Managers primarily responsible for implementing decisions and monitoring and evaluating outcomes generally have a lower level of authority and accountability than managers responsible for strategic planning, policy-making, innovation and leadership. Stakeholders with decision authority have a higher level of accountability than others who are only advisory. The managers role and level of accountability is also defined by the institutional setting (e.g. rights-based), sector (e.g. government, industry, nongovernmental organization), management scale, type of fishery, and level of economic development.

Coastal Oregon Marine Experiment Station
Oregon State University

Webmaster for this Training Managers site: Laurie Jodice