NOAA Fisheries Service's Voices from the Fisheries Project works with non-agency partners to identify existing marine fisheries focused oral history interviews and to encourage those who collected them to contribute copies to the VFF Database so that they become more easily available to others. Voices Partners include:

The Working Waterfront Festival
New Bedford, MA
http://www.workingwaterfrontfestival.org/

The Working Waterfront Festival is an educational celebration of New England's commercial fishing industry and culture. Laura Orleans, Director(r) and Kirsten Bendiksen, Associate Director(l),are co-coordinators of the event which includes a community documentation project collecting oral histories of people connected to working ports.

MIT Sea Grant College Program
Madeleine Hall-Arber
Marine Anthropologist
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, Massachusetts
http://seagrant.mit.edu/

Madeleine Hall-Arber has worked with New England fishermen for over 25 years. Her published work on New England fishing communities serves as the basis for describing the human environment for several regional fishery management plans. She advises fisheries managers on ways to mitigate the impacts of their decisions. She works with fishing industry representatives on fishing vessel safety, working waterfronts, oral history, and spatial documentation of fishing and marine habitat research projects. Her current focus is on the potential for ecosystem-based management to incorporate local ecological knowledge and emphasize the sustainability of both marine and human communities.

Rutgers the State University, Bonnie McCay
Board of Governors Distinguished Service Professor
Department of Human Ecology
New Brunswick, New Jersey
www.humanecology.rutgers.edu/faculty.html

Bonnie McCay has been researching how people interact with, adapt to, transform, and attempt to “manage” the marine environment for four decades in the North Atlantic communities of Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Norway, New Jersey, and most recently Scotland, and in the Pacific fishing communities of Mexico. She has published on the social and cultural dimensions of collaborative research and of fisheries and ecosystem management; the challenge of sustainably using common pool resources such as fish and shellfish; and on local and regional institutions for managing the commons ranging from fishery cooperatives to catch shares.

Commercial Fishermen of America
San Francisco, California and
Chester, Maryland
http://www.cfafish.org/

The Commercial Fishermen of America is a National non-profit organization that supports the nation’s fishing men and women and promotes the health of the oceans they work in.  The Commercial Fishermen of America promotes the common interest of the fishing industry, provides a forum to foster professional collaboration among fishermen, and educates Americans about the profession of commercial fishing.

Disclaimer:  Becoming a NOAA Voices from the Fisheries Partner does not imply Department of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or National Marine Fisheries Service (NOAA Fisheries Service) support for NOAA Voices from the Fisheries Project Partner's positions, activities, or opinions.

Project Originators

NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service
Patricia Pinto da Silva
Social Scientist
Northeast Fisheries Science Center
Woods Hole, Massachusetts
http://www.nefsc.noaa.gov/

Since early 2003, Patricia Pinto da Silva has been a Social Scientist for NOAA Fisheries at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole, MA where her research has focused on the role of fishermen’s organizations in the management of marine resources in the Northeast US.

NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service
Susan Abbott-Jamieson
Senior Social Scientist (Retired)
Office of Science and Technology
Silver Spring, Maryland
http://www.st.nmfs.noaa.gov/

Susan Abbott-Jamieson originated NOAA Fisheries Service’s Local Fisheries Knowledge Project in Maine with help from the Rural School and Community Trust, a non-profit organization. She coordinated the agency’s national social science research effort in support of its mission to conserve and manage the Nation’s living marine resources 2002-2011. Retiring in early 2011, she continues to work with Voices from the Fisheries Project as a contractor.