Fisheries Climate Survey Report FINAL - Flipbook - Page 15
specific adaptation approaches that unpack this variation will be necessary (Pinsky and Mantua, 2014).
Understanding what harvesters perceive as the greatest risks to fisheries and accounting for the current and
future impacts from climate change is important for policy and management implementation now.
Fisheries regulations are often implemented to constrain individuals with the intention of conserving the longterm sustainability of a resource. This can also lead to the reduced adaptive capacity of harvesters (Stoll et
al., 2017). To a large extent, fisheries management is dependent on harvesters’ buy-in to regulations to have
high compliance across a fishery (Kaplan and McCay, 2004; Silver and Campbell, 2005). Buy-in is driven by a
shared understanding of the risk that is being mitigated (Slovic, 1987) and the transparency and credibility of
the science being used in decision making (Johnson and van Densen, 2007; Yochum et al., 2011; Runnebaum
et al. 2018). If harvesters think that the risk has been evaluated too high or the resulting restrictions are too
stringent, there will be less buy-in (Slovic, 1987) and likely lower compliance with those regulations. Survey
respondents repeatedly indicated that harvesters should be listened to more and be more a part of the
management process, highlighting a desire for their perceptions of risk to inform management along with the
perceptions of managers.
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