Resilience of an inshore fishing population in Hong Kong: Paradox and potential for sustainable fishery policy
Introduction
The inshore waters of Tokyo, New York and Hong Kong were once substantial fisheries, but only vestiges remain after they were degraded by expansion of the built environment, infrastructure, land reclamation, pollution, and overfishing [13], [65], [59], [72], [89]. Fisheries research has overlooked these metropolitan inshores in favour of addressing the urgent sustainability issues confronting small-scale and industrial fisheries typical to rural peripheral areas and the high seas. There are reasons, however, not to forsake metropolitan fisheries as inevitably lost to rural-urban transformation. Foremost, these metropolises are endowed with greater occupational diversification opportunities and greater resources available to support sustainable fisheries. Metropolises can provide a new model of a sustainable fishery—a counterpoint to their roles as markets that commodify fish resources and induce industrial fishing. A sustainable metropolitan inshore fishery may also offer insights into the potentials and limitations more typical to small-scale fisheries with regard to social reproduction, occupational diversification, identity and values, and adoption of sustainable practices.
The vestigial metropolitan fishery investigated in this paper is the inshore fishery of Sai Kung (SK) in Hong Kong. The fishers of this area followed the familiar path of overfishing their inshore and then embarking on more distant exploitation. Although HK's offshore fleet remains large at 4000 fishers, SK's fishers have retreated to their inshore, continuing fishing, but improving their well-being through alternative businesses. Values of self-reliance and entrepreneurialism have been key to adapting to the high-cost, high-income metropolitan economy and to the fishing community's social reproduction.
The paper begins by situating SK fishers within a degrading marine ecosystem and the challenge of an enveloping metropolis. A theory section explains why the SK fishers’ dilemmas should be addressed through a resilience and coastal marine socio-ecological system (CM-SES) framework [45], [58], why values as slow-moving variables are important [14], [42] and how a values perspective can reveal new insights for the livelihood approach to fishing communities [9], [36], [40]. The methodology section explains the evolution of the research strategy from a deductive approach focused on revealing common pool governance mechanisms [37], [74] to using grounded theory methodology [43] in order to reveal new mechanisms of resilience. A results section shows how entrepreneurial values originated, then underpinned several livelihood adaptations. The penultimate section discusses the paradoxes for marine policy when the values that underpin a fishing community's resilience to metropolitan pressures weaken linkages to fishing. The conclusion considers implications of SK's case for other fisheries.
Section snippets
Context: limited fisheries management and dramatic urban development
The fishery of Sai Kung is set in a large bay on the east side of HK's New Territories. The bay is ringed by nine traditional anchorages/homeports with the largest, Sai Kung, located at the Bay's northwest (Fig. 1a and b). Most fishers now live on shore in the town of SK, which has become a gateway to countryside recreation and a bedroom community. The population of 200 fisher households (fisher association president estimate) must generate livelihoods in the context of living and working among
Theory: resilience in a metropolitan coastal marine socio-ecological system?
In sustaining marine livelihoods within the HK metropolis the SK fishers have demonstrated the persistence, adaptability and transformability that invite a resilience-based interpretation of their accomplishment [42], [101]. This section discusses the resilience framework used for the research, perspectives on resilience of particular relevance and the study's contributions.
A foundation for the resilience interpretation is the CM-SES perspective because it examines the mutual dependency between
Methodology: linking value outcomes to origins
Research began as a deductive investigation using an interview survey guided by common pool resource (CPR) concepts [37], [73], [74], resilience [14], [42] and CM-SES theories [45,48]). The strategy was to determine what methods of collective self-governance fishers used in the past and their willingness to engage in co-management for a sustainable fishery. Restauranteurs were also interviewed to explore the potential for sustainable fisheries by adding value to the local catch. Initial
Findings
The findings describe how fishing generated values that enabled SK fishers to make successive adaptations and generate a diverse marine-based economy. Fifty-nine people with fishing backgrounds were interviewed, of these: 8 had been both fishers and fish farmers, 16 had been both fishers and junk charter operators and 9 had been fishers, fish farmers and junk operators. Six fishers had also become restauranteurs, 4 kaito operators, 5 fish-hawkers and 5 others work on private yachts,
A value basis for metropolitan fishery resilience
On the premises that a sustainable fishery requires a resilient fisher population and that resilience in a metropolitan fishery can offer insights into fishery management in general, this research sought to explain the resilience of the fisher population in SK. Although SK fishers have proven resilient to environmental change, their path to resilience does not accord with approaches to resilience portrayed in meta-studies of CM-SESs [45]; [48]) or as exemplified in studies of community-based
Conclusion: implications
What lessons can be drawn from the experience of these metropolitan fishers for other fisheries? SK fishers have proven that marine-based livelihoods can prosper in advanced metropolitan economies by generating business niches, a success that is underpinned by the slow-moving variables of self-reliance and entrepreneurialism. The values have been key to developing resilience pathways distinct from fishing-based adaptation strategies such as changing catch portfolios and locations [31] or
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