| To address problem such as bycatch, policy-makers are increasingly employing conservation technology, a management method that uses a device to protect organisms and/or habitat. Despite the increasing use of conservation technologies (CTs), the process of their invention and development remains poorly understood and problematic. Also, historically there have been problems with ensuring widespread, long-term, and proper use of CT.; Thus, I sought to answer the question of how best to successfully invent CTs and secure their widespread, long-term adoption by examining two case studies: (1) the use of turtle excluder devices (TEDs) to reduce the mortality of sea turtles in shrimp trawls in the U.S. Shrimp fishery and (2) the use of various CTs to reduce the mortality of dolphins in the U.S. Eastern Tropical Pacific tuna purse-seine fishery.; I conducted on-site, semi-structured interviews with key informants selected with purposive and snowball sampling of representatives from federal agencies, state agencies, and industry and conservation groups. I collected documents that I analyzed with Grounded Theory, a set of techniques that allows the identification of concepts that emerge from text and the linkage of these into theory. I concluded that: (1) development of CTs occurs in and ought not be divorced from a social context; (2) the most widely adopted CTs have been conceived, invented, or modified by fishers; (3) participants in the invention network often fail to recognize the expertise of fishers, and thus fishers are marginalized in the invention network; (4) both Sea Grant and NMFS used technology transfer methods that promoted CT awareness but not wide-spread adoption; (5) some policy-makers and managers erroneously believed that a mandate negates the need for individual adoption decisions; (6) enforcement is not a substitute for nor can it assure true adoption; (7) diffusion theory would be a more appropriate model to encourage wide-spread adoption; and (8) adoption of CT is most likely when a commercially practical CT is promoted with persuasive and informative extension activities and regulations are enforced.; The end product of my research is a framework detailing the best management practices for inventing and fostering the adoption of marine conservation technologies. I also propose theories of invention and diffusion specific to conservation technologies. |
