Studies on community impacts of fishing regulations

There are two broad categories of information that NMFS uses in its evaluations of impacts: community profiles and impact assessments. Impact assessments look at the basic profile of the community and then provide additional investigations of the likely impacts of specific regulations on each community --given its unique characteristics and heritage. The page on laws and policies provides some guidelines for National Standard 8 analyses and for Social Impact Assessments. Here we provide a sampling of some of the impact assessments conducted in recent years, in an attempt to give researchers and others a feel for how those guidelines are put into practice.

• 1996 'An Appraisal of the Social and Cultural Aspects of the Multispecies Groundfish Fishery in the New England and the Mid-Atlantic Regions' by David Griffith and Christopher L. Dyer. Prepared under Contract Number 50-DGNF-5-00008 between The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration and Aguirre International. HTML version or PDF file (1.1MB).
• 1998 Social and Cultural Impact Assessment of the Highly Migratory Species Management Plan and the Amendment to the Atlantic Billfish Management Plan. Prepared for the Highly Migratory Species Office, National Marine Fisheries Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce, July 1998. New Brunswick, NJ: The Ecopolicy Center. (Douglas Wilson and Bonnie J. McCay)
• 2000 'Fishing Ports of the Mid-Atlantic' by Bonnie McCay and Marie Cieri. A Report to the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, Dover, Delaware, April 2000.
• 2001 "New England's Fishing Communities"   by Madeleine Hall-Arber et al. Revised version of the final report for Northeast MARFIN grant #NA87FF0547.
• 2002 'Identifying Fishing Dependent Communities: Development and Confirmation of a Protocol' by Steve Jacob, Michael Jepson, Carlton Pomeroy, David Mulkey, Chuck Adams and Suzanna Smith. A MARFIN Project and Report to the NMFS Southeast Fisheries Science Center.