Social capital survey in groundfish

Quota allocations to groups of self-selecting permit holders (known as sector allocations) are increasingly being considered as a way to provide fishermen with greater control and flexibility in their fishing businesses while achieving efficiency gains. This new approach, which devolves substantial management responsibilities to groups of fishermen, represents a potential transformation in the relationship among permit holders as well as the relationship between permit holders and fisheries governance structures. A baseline of existing social capital in the groundfish fishery in the Northeast Region was conducted in 2010 by the Gulf of Maine Research Institute. This survey, to be conducted twice over the next six years, will follow up on this earlier initiative and will enable researchers to measure the change in the types and strength of relationships

between groundfish permit holders in the Northeast.

This work will inform our understanding of how best to design collaborative management structures in support of sustainable fisheries in the region and nationally.

Information collected via telephone interviews

NEFSC Data Access Procedure:

1. Formal request in writing usually to the data owner/contact or Center Director;

2. Requester is contacted by data owner to review and verify the request content and details for data delivery options.

3. If data is confidential then owner will determine if the data may be released to the requester;

4. If data can be released, the data is downloaded and packaged for delivery electronically; or the requester may be directed to where the data is available online.

NEFSC Data Access Constraint:

If data is stored on an internal NEFSC network, the requester may not have direct access to query the data unless they are also authorized for network access.

survey was piloted and adapted as needed

Archival of source data preserving unaltered collected data, Scheduled backups, Remote storage backups, Password protection

responses were entered into spreadsheet from 2 surveys which were mailed out to groundfishermen in New England. Two surveys were one year apart.