I was fortunate enough to present my research at this conference, titled Trade, Narratives, and Nuances: Scaling Down of the Seafood Trade Talk, where I advocated for a principled governance of the trade in seafood. As my Master’s degree is finishing up, this conference, and feedback I received on my presentation gave me many ideas of where I can go next with my research. I’m very grateful for the researchers who I was able to meet with during this conference and who gave me advice ranging from best early career moves to potential future PhD options.
This past month I attended the MARE X People and the Sea Conference hosted by the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. I attended this conference as a student of Too Big To Ignore and was able to catch-up with many of our organization’s international collaborators. Researchers at the conference presented exciting new findings from their work including studying gender in fisheries, markets and food security, and linking local research with global instruments including the increasingly important Voluntary Guidelines for Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries being administered by the FAO.
Research that examines people and the sea is diverse in both geographic reach as well as methodological approaches taken. What links much of this research, though, is the increasing recognition that the social sciences and humanities are going to be integral to navigating the future of the marine environment and how people use, benefit, and interact with it.
MARE X, which included all levels of researchers, from Master’s students to Emeritus Professors, offered great insight into what the global research community is up to, and how they are using past research to inform future collaborations. I was fortunate enough to present my research at this conference, titled Trade, Narratives, and Nuances: Scaling Down of the Seafood Trade Talk, where I advocated for a principled governance of the trade in seafood. As my Master’s degree is finishing up, this conference, and feedback I received on my presentation gave me many ideas of where I can go next with my research. I’m very grateful for the researchers who I was able to meet with during this conference and who gave me advice ranging from best early career moves to potential future PhD options.
The greatest benefit of attending MARE as a graduate student is being exposed to the amount of critical thought and rigour that goes into so much work done globally. From the work done by TBTI contributor Dr. Jose Pascual-Fernandez to increase local consumption of small-scale fisheries catches in the Canary Islands, to work done by researchers in the Northeast U.S. researching the implications that offshore wind energy has for fish harvesters. I was fortunate to see many researchers who were affiliated with my undergraduate university, the University of Rhode Island, presenting work they were doing in the region where I was raised and where my interest in the marine environment and the people that rely on it was sparked. The MARE conference allowed me to both engage with the applied research being done, as well as reconnect to what has motivated much of my research: an interest and understanding how global change is affecting coastal communities.
The marine environment is changing, with direct drivers including land/sea use change, direct exploitation, and climate change, according to the recent IPBES Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. These drivers have direct implications for human-use of the marine environment, and will make reaching the UN Sustainable Development Goals even more difficult to reach, particularly SDG 14; Life Below Water. Addressing these increasingly complex issues will necessitate continued collaboration between the sciences, both natural and social, as well as a recognition that those who are most vulnerable to such global change are the people who live at, and with, the sea. MARE, with its focus on interdisciplinary research and social justice is one actor in this fight, but pressures remain. One major obstacle is the continued lack of understanding about what the social and policy sciences have to offer decision makers at the highest levels.
The last session of the conference, which included speeches from global policy makers and researchers had a warning from one speaker: “those who fail to produce critical research, will lose their right to critique.” This stark warning, aimed at researchers present, continues to show the lack of understanding of what the social sciences can bring to the table. Although much work is done in quantitative social science to inform policy makers, with qualitative work digging into the immense nuances of these challenges, the point of conferences such as MARE is to not play by the rules set by the current political system that has produced such failures, but to critically think of why we are in the situation we are in, and to, through rigorous research, explore and elucidate how coastal peoples are living in this globally-changing world. Research presented at this conference foregrounded principles such as sustainability and equity, principles that are informed by a social justice focus. This approach has led to critical examinations of how we govern our oceans at the highest scales and the on-the-ground implications of these decisions.
The social sciences focusing on marine issues do not critique for the sake of critiquing, but to guide better decision making with explicit considerations of those that are reliant on our coasts and oceans. For example, the marine social sciences have shown that linking market mechanisms does not always result in either sustainability or equity for people who use the sea, from research showing the negative effects of privatizing fishery resources to the new critiques of Blue Growth with corresponding calls for Blue Degrowth and Blue Justice. Taking part in the MARE conference was inspiring in the sense that, as a graduate student hoping to embark on a career doing this work, it is increasingly important to question and critique the current systems that are leading to repeated struggles in the governance of the marine space, and in doing so, aid in the creation of transformative action.
Written by: Jack Daly, TBTI Masters’ student
Jack’s research looks at fisheries trade through the lens of a bilateral free trade agreement between Canada and the European Union. This research, nested in fishing communities in the Great Northern Peninsula of the island of Newfoundland, examines how people in fishing communities perceive trade and ultimately how trade policy impacts them.
Jack is in a final stage of completing his MA degree at Memorial University of Newfoundland, under the supervision of Dr. Ratana Chuenpagdee. His research is funded by TBTI and Ocean Frontier Institute.
