Cultural and Political Barriers to Mariculture in Rhode Island

 Kristen Cammarata

As a result of overharvesting, poor management, and abuses of technology, many of the world's wild fisheries are approaching their maximum sustainable yield. The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United Nations maintains that by the year 2000, the demand for fish will have surpassed marine catches by 20-30 million tons per year. Aquaculture, the cultivation and harvesting of fish and other marine species for food, is heralded as a possible solution to satisfy the demand as well as a potential means to conserve the resources of wild fisheries and allow stocks to repopulate.

Rhode Island, despite having a 418-mile long coastline, a world-renowned marine research institute, and a history of a managed fishery has been unable to develop an aquaculture sector. While forty-eight other states have managed to develop profitable industries, particularly neighboring states Massachusetts and Connecticut, Rhode Island has been unable to develop a competitive industry.

Does aquaculture make sense for the most densely populated and the smallest state?

Why are some people so vehemently against the development of a sector that many claim offers economic development and prosperity for Rhode Island? What would the development of this sector mean for the traditional capture fishing industry? What kinds of issues need to be worked through with the opponents and proponents of the sector?

In order to address some of these issues, this study took an ethnographic approach. I interviewed fishers, policymakers, scientists and aquaculturists to explore the existence of socio-cultural barriers to the development of a marine based aquaculture sector.

My conclusion, that there are socio-cultural barriers, will not come as a surprise to anyone familiar with the debate. The foundations that form these barriers and the ideologies behind them were the important findings. Concern for the environment was not a salient issue in this study while the usage of common property and mistrust of the legislature were identified as barriers by several participants. I hope this study has elucidated some of the points of contention and begun to illuminate the potential for consensus among participants.