MCA: Electronic Monitoring of Fisheries to Protect the Environment & Human Rights

Electronic monitoring (EM) has the potential to address environmental concerns around fishing, such as illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing (IUU fishing). Electronic monitoring is a system of onboard cameras that records fishing catches for later analysis, verification, and alignment with fisheries regulations. There is a link between environmentally harmful fishing practices and the exploitation of people, with dire consequences for workers at sea (e.g. working conditions, occupational health and safety, forced labor, and modern slavery).

Recent research indicated that the environmental data captured by EM may also reveal the social and labor conditions borne by workers and human observers on vessels. Some environmental groups and governments have articulated a vision of the potential of EM to save fish populations, while making the fishing industries’ work easier for data reporting, traceability, and subsequent profit increase.

However, this vision pits human rights to decent working conditions and fair treatment against human rights to privacy.

This project is an exploratory study to investigate the overarching research question: How is the global environmental imaginary and competing sociotechnical imaginary shaping the current use and futures of EM in fisheries? The methods of investigation are semi-structured interviews and documents analyzed with a grounded theory approach, participant observation, foresight methods, and qualitative systems mapping (QSM).

Constrained Choice Theory serves as a lens to identify emerging competing imaginaries and the drivers behind them. This project will: 1) contribute to the comparatively small literature of how institutions create imaginaries; 2) explore imaginaries at different scales from the global to local; 3) explore the drivers that lead to reconfigured imaginaries; 4) explore the socio-cultural and human dimensions surrounding EM; 5) and further develop the nascent method QSM.

Importantly, the research project will advance both theoretical and applied understanding that could help reduce human rights abuses, including modern slavery, in fisheries.

This project is jointly funded by the Science and Technology Studies program in SBE and Division Of Environmental Biology in Biological Sciences.

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.