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Institutional Differences among Marine Fisheries Scientists' Views of their Working Conditions, Discipline, and Fisheries Management
Author(s) -
Wilson Douglas Clyde,
McCay Bonnie J.,
Rowan Veronica,
Grandin Barbara
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
fisheries
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.725
H-Index - 79
eISSN - 1548-8446
pISSN - 0363-2415
DOI - 10.1577/1548-8446(2002)027<0014:idamfs>2.0.co;2
Subject(s) - fisheries management , fisheries science , fishing , fisheries law , marine fisheries , work (physics) , fishery , discipline , service (business) , state (computer science) , fisheries research , business , political science , fish <actinopterygii> , engineering , marketing , biology , computer science , law , mechanical engineering , algorithm
We surveyed 349 U.S. marine fisheries scientists to ask them about their working conditions, their opinions about the state of the discipline of fisheries science, and their views about fisheries management. Fisheries scientists were largely engaged in applied work, with only a fifth of them significantly engaged in pure research. Among scientists working in management agencies, state scientists were more directly and immediately involved in a wide range of management tasks than were scientists working for the National Marine Fisheries Service. Although their views of both disciplinary issues and fisheries management reflected the problems they confront in their day‐to‐day work, the degree of consensus found among fisheries scientists on many issues was quite high. For example, there was both strong and broad support for the precautionary approach to management. Some areas of systematic disagreement were found, however. Scientists working in management agencies were somewhat more positive about working with the fishing industry and more negative about using predefined management standards than were scientists working in conservation groups and universities. State scientists were found to be at the edge of the spectrum of several variables related both to working conditions and fisheries management.