Social Impacts of West Coast Groundfish Fishery Management with Oral Histories

A project measuring social and cultural impacts of fishery management on West Coast fishing communities, with a focus on the catch share system for the Pacific Groundfish Trawl Fishery. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration conducted this study, which includes the Pacific Coast Groundfish Fishery Social Study and the Voices of the West Coast oral history collection. A third initiative categorizes communities by gear and species, and a fourth, beginning in FY20, focuses on fishing crew data.

Use Cases

• Assess community-level effects of catch share management systems based on the documented social impacts.
• Analyze qualitative narratives from fishery participants based on the collected oral histories.
• Categorize and compare West Coast fishing communities based on the described gear and species usage.
• Study the demographics and conditions of fishing crews based on the FY20 data collection initiative.

Strengths

• Project scope includes multiple distinct data collection initiatives: a social study, oral histories, community categorization, and crew data.
• Managed by the authoritative National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce.
• Explicitly designed to inform fishery management decision-making and meet regulatory requirements.

Limitations

• Primary data format is PDF, which may limit computational analysis without extraction.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count and dataset scale are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce

Collection Method

Social study, oral history collection, and community categorization projects.

Time Range

Project includes initiatives up to FY20 and beyond.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-14 22:52:54.271634; freshness should be verified.

Geography

West Coast fishing communities, including locations like Astoria, Bellingham, and Monterey.