Developing equity-oriented data practices for small-scale fisheries

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2). This award was provided as part of NSF's Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowships (SPRF) program. The goal of the SPRF program is to prepare promising, early career doctoral-level scientists for scientific careers in academia, industry or private sector, and government.

SPRF awards involve two years of training under the sponsorship of established scientists and encourage Postdoctoral Fellows to perform independent research. NSF seeks to promote the participation of scientists from all segments of the scientific community, including those from underrepresented groups, in its research programs and activities; the postdoctoral period is considered to be an important level of professional development in attaining this goal.

Each Postdoctoral Fellow must address important scientific questions that advance their respective disciplinary fields. Under the sponsorship of Dr. Jenny Goldstein at Cornell University, this postdoctoral fellowship award supports an early career scientist investigating the social benefits and barriers to integrating new data and technologies in fisheries science and management.

Overfishing threatens global fisheries sustainability, yet policies to reduce the impact of fishing are said to be limited by critical data shortages. Digital technologies, such as cameras and geospatial tracking devices, have emerged as low-cost tools for collecting data on fishing activity. However, despite the widespread proliferation of data collection technologies, little research has examined the relational practices through which fisheries data are developed and deployed.

This research examines data sharing practices between non-governmental organizations (NGOs), fishers, and other environmental governance actors to understand how digital fisheries data is collected, shared and applied in environmental decision-making. Whereas previous research has focused on planetary-scale environmental data networks, this study foregrounds the quotidian embodied practices of collecting and applying data and the complex interdependencies between the global and the local.

This project advances knowledge in key ways by theorizing the linkages between data justice, gender and environmental equity in the Blue Economy, and by exploring gendered experiences with environmental data, particularly in the context of rural and resource-based livelihoods. The results can help inform policies and institutional practices that empower women while also improving fisheries sustainability with technology.

This study employs a multi-sited case study of a new digital fisheries data collection program. This research asks three questions: 1) How do new data streams and data collection technologies enable or constrain fisheries participation, and in particular the participation of women? 2) In what ways do the design and development of data infrastructure and fisheries management strategies mutually inform one another? 3) How can data practices support equity in the Blue Economy?

The research objectives are to: i) explore how fishers and women from fishing households perceive digital fisheries data, its role, importance and value, particularly in relation to their fishing livelihoods and; ii) evaluate how fisheries scientists and managers use new data streams collected with digital technologies. The Fellow will collect data through semi-structured interviews with fishers, fisheries scientists and managers, and stakeholders from the technology industry and through participant observation.

The research will result in the development of two actionable tools: 1) a data-sharing protocol co-produced with fishers that NGOs can use to increase data accessibility and 2) recommendations for equity-oriented data practices which will be disseminated to policy-makers, NGOs and fisheries scientists and made publicly available. The results of this study will inform key ocean policy debates about fisheries data governance and provide empirical evidence for how gendered access to fisheries data impacts fishing participation.

The novel fisheries data equity framework produced through this study has the potential to transform research on the Blue Economy by shifting focus from extractive technologies to data technologies as avenues for advancing more equitable participation in fisheries and oceans governance.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.