Rejuvenating the Fleet: Empowering Youth as the Future of Fisheries

Summary: Artisanal fishermen are disappearing and the industrial fishing sector is gladly filling the void. This transition endangers more than our environment; it threatens cultural and biodiversity, local economies, and the very sense of community that glues dynamic coastal communities together. But the horizon is not as bleak as media would have you believe, and youth-led initiatives are paving the way for sustainable, self-sufficient fisheries

“Tradition, which is always old, is at the same time ever new because it is always reviving–born again in each new generation, to be lived and applied in a new and particular way.” ~ Thomas Merton

Walk along any pier in the world today and you will smell salt-tinged air, hear the creaking of boats rocking in the water, see algae coating beams and buoys...and grey heads bobbing on those boats, striding down the docks, bent toward disentangling nets. The world's artisanal fishing fleet is aging. Most small scale, full-time fishermen are in their fifties, or sixties. Their traditions and fishing grounds are disappearing as their children move on to other, more profitable industries and corporations buy up licenses. Large-scale, industrial fisheries are eager to fill the vacuum left by a new generation disinterested in, or disconnected from their fishing heritage. But the fate of the world's waters, traditional cultures and communities are at stake.

We can hardly blame youth for opting out of this stigmatized sector. The long hours, fishy smells, and rigorous labor don't appeal to everybody. On top of all this, rising entry expenses, high operating costs, and global competition discourage locals, especially youth, from joining community-based fishing operations, and even the brave-hearted find it incredibly difficult to succeed. An aging fleet is a huge red flag because the disappearance of youth from small-scale fisheries has a lot more impact than we realize. Youth are the lynchpin of any community, but especially so in fishing communities where cultural traditions, local economies, environmental and ecological preservation hinge on their futures.

Hannah Heimbrich is an Alaskan drift fisher(wo)man. She is 29 years young. As she says, traditional fishing impacts a lot more than just the marine ecosystem or the people on board, “A healthy relationship with fisheries and the marine environment breathes so much life into a coastal community and its individual residents. It is one of the best ways we can foster resilient communities.” Hannah is a member of the Alaska Marine Conservation Council, which launched the ‘Graying of the Fleet’ study in 2013 in order to understand the social, cultural, economic and geographic barriers to local youth participation in fisheries in Bristol Bay and Kodiak Island waters. This study hopes to illuminate the greatest challenges to sustaining fishing communities and thereby facilitate youth engagement.

Other initiatives, like the Slow Fish conference in Genova last month, seek creative ways to involve youth in the dialogue around sustainable management and cultural preservation. Organized by UNISG's student association, the conferences educated, engaged and empowered youth to take a stand in the oft-misunderstood sea of fisheries debates. Friday, May 15^th, fishermen, academics and experts gathered at the Laboratori dell'acqua on the Porto Antico to talk about youth in fisheries. Old weathered fisherfolk described why they discouraged their children from entering this thankless livelihood, policymakers described youth as the pioneers of the new era of low impact fishing, bright-eyed anthropologists documented the disappearance of traditions and bridged a gap between generations and worlds in creating methods to revive this vanishing culture. In an inspiring conference that brought people of all ages, places, and walks of life, youth were given center stage to debate the future of fisheries with an older generation eager to share their insights, passions, and regrets.

But, as this conference showed, it's not simply a matter of changing policy to make small-scale fishing more viable for youth. Rather it's about changing the attitudes that grim media reports instill in us about fishing. Media panics around over-fishing, climate change, large-scale commercial competition and destruction have created a discourse that discourages potential fishermen and leaves a void in the industry that corporations gladly fill. This is especially problematic in countries where the seas (a public resource) are given away and privatized, effectively disinheriting these young people. Thus engaging youth in artisanal fishing is also about empowering those already in the industry to embrace their right to self-governance and valorizing the artisanal sector in a ways that runs against the dominant narrative. It is about blending tradition and innovation to create a new harmony that supports artisanality and autarky.