Managing change in fisheries: a missing key to fishery-dependent data collection?

Change is an important feature of commercial fisheries; yet the fishing industry, including fishers, fishery management authorities, and other stakeholders, is, in many respects, highly resistant to change. Examples of this include the application of conservation engineering solutions to bycatch problems and transitions towards ecosystem-based fishery management. A key reason for this resistance may be conditioning, cultural conservatism, and uncertainty. Change is often considered uncontrollable and unpredictable and a threat to established processes and systems that forces individuals to face an unknown future. In the business world, many models of change management have been applied to assist individuals and corporations in responding to an ever-changing environment. While fragments of these models have been applied in a fisheries context, the deliberate application of entire models has not. The application of these models could help to improve many aspects of fishery-dependent data collection such as using fishery-dependent information in stock assessment, implementing technologies such as vessel monitoring systems and electronic logbooks, and sharing information that is traditionally not shared. We present a well-known model for change management and describe how its application in a fisheries context can guide change initiatives and produce enhanced outcomes. We also explore how competing commitments and big assumptions influence a fisher's resistance to change, including conservation engineering initiatives, and posit how this can influence their involvement in the collection of fishery-dependent data.