The complex institutional seascape of the Long Island Sound lobster fishery

Where nature is tied to human use in community, governance through institutions helps shape the quality and regulation of, access to, and use of natural resources. Because local-level norms contributing to resource governance are part of and interact with larger cultural, political, and economic systems, there is institutional plurality, complexity, and interplay. This project emphasizes the dynamic institutional dimensions of common pool resource use by examining how social actors gain access to resources in a complex setting where there is a thick institutional framework. The American lobster fishery is governed through a participatory interstate management regime with stakeholder representation at both national and regional scales. I have examined the lobster fishery in practice at the regional level of the Long Island Sound using a mixed-method approach including interviews, key informant mapping, participant observation, existing data, and surveys. The focus here is on the interactions among and between stakeholders and institutions, through which resource rights and access are framed, secured, and contested. The Long Island Sound lobster fishery shows that there are varying forms of community, norms, and dynamic interplay rather than homogeneity and shared visions. The fishery involves multiple jurisdictions, formal and informal institutions that may be unwritten or codified, as well as interest-based and local place-based communities. Institutions and social actors interact and are not readily separated; social actors, both as individuals and organizations, carry, shape and transform institutions, creating institutional/organizational nexuses. How lobstermen and fishermen perceive themselves, how they are networked, and how they engage institutions are inextricably linked. The research presented here contributes to the discussion of participatory fisheries governance, common pool resources and associated institutional formations. There are many unseen and unacknowledged factors, not incorporated in the formal frame, that influence the dynamics of the lobster fishery on the seascape. Whether customary rights are seen or unseen, they are part of the available institutional repertoire. The complex institutional intersections described in this research have transformed the institutional and material seascape for some of those involved in the Long Island Sound lobster fishery.