What’s the story? Using news articles to examine resilience pathways and domains in the southern New England American lobster (Homarus americanus) fishery

Abstract

Understanding the resilience of fisheries systems is integral to enabling them to adjust to current and future environmental change. The American lobster (Homarus americanus) fishery in southern New England has experienced widespread declines in abundance since the late 1990s, with significant impacts on the people and communities reliant on this resource. Through an analysis of news articles from 1999 to 2021, we examined 76 lobstermen’s responses to these lobster population declines using a cope, adapt, transform typology and identified factors that affected their ability to respond and their broader resilience. Results from across southern New England show that lobstermen responded in a diversity of ways. These included staying in lobstering full time, diversifying fishing portfolios, diversifying income by taking on part-time non-fishing roles, and in many cases, exiting the lobster fishery completely to pursue other fisheries or alternative jobs. A range of factors were revealed to influence responses, including financial pressures, access to assets such as savings or community infrastructure, occupational attachment, emotional deliberations, regulatory restrictions, and individual or collective actions. Our results reveal the heterogeneous ways in which individual resilience is exhibited, which requires resilience planning to account for people’s diversity of behavior and actions in response to environmental change. The range of influential factors at multiple scales highlights the need for measures that act at different levels of the fishery system to support resilience. Together, these results encourage the need for more integrated, multi-scale approaches to understanding and managing resilience in fisheries systems facing uncertainty and environmental change.

INTRODUCTION

Fisheries are being impacted by an array of anthropogenic stressors including overexploitation, pollution, and climate change (IPBES 2019, IPCC 2019). Fishers, supply chain actors, and broader fishing communities are increasingly exposed to and must adjust to a range of environmental changes as a result, including degraded productivity of living marine resources and altered availability of target species through declining or shifting stocks (Bennett et al. 2014, Barange et al. 2018). Understanding how people adjust to environmental change and factors that affect their ability to respond can help identify ways to support their resilience to future impacts, a concept that has been gaining popularity within fisheries management, policy, and practice (Galappaththi et al. 2019, Leite et al. 2019, Ojea et al. 2020, Green et al. 2021, Kleisner et al. 2021, Mason et al. 2022).

As complex and adaptive social-ecological systems (SES), fisheries have multiple interactions, dynamics, and interdependent relationships between people and nature at varying scales, of which can both confer and undermine resilience (Folke 2006, Ostrom 2009, Levin et al. 2013, Cinner and Barnes 2019, Ojea et al. 2020). Individual fishers’ choices, behaviors, and resilience play a critical role in the wider fate and resilience of fishing communities and the broader fishery SES. Examining case studies of fishers’ lived experiences of and responses to environmental changes is integral to inform future fisheries research priorities and policy measures seeking to strengthen resilience to stressors such as climate change. Such work can provide insights to understand features and processes that confer resilience, while also exploring the extent to which existing resilience theories can be grounded to observed, lived experiences.

Resilience pathways and domains in fisheries

The concept of resilience has developed across multiple disciplines, from psychology and mental health, to engineering and ecology, to sociology and disaster response (Folke 2006, Martin-Breen and Anderies 2011, Berkes and Ross 2013, Brown 2016). Earlier narrow framings described resilience as the ability of systems (and those within it) to withstand change, maintain core functions and structures, and “bounce back” to maintain certain states of equilibrium (Holling 1973, Folke 2006, Martin-Breen and Anderies 2011). With the emergence of SES perspectives, which center on adaptive systems thinking that emphasizes change rather than equilibrium as a “normal” state, the concept has developed to encapsulate abilities for renewal and transformation (Folke et al. 2010, Magis 2010, Davidson et al. 2013). Including transformation therefore considers that while systems can absorb disturbances as well as incrementally adapt and change, some circumstances may exceed thresholds that necessitate more significant change, renewal, and reorganization for the system to survive (Magis 2010, Biggs et al. 2015). Within this study we examine social resilience within a SES context and view resilience as encapsulating coping, adapting, and/or transforming responses and capacities (Walker et al. 2004, Béné et al. 2016, Brown 2016, Galappaththi et al. 2019, Ojea et al. 2020), thus including actions ranging from the incremental to more substantial.

Capturing persistability (coping), adaptability, and transformability within resilience framings is important when considering the social realm of SES resilience, which has arguably been less theorized compared to ecological components, and particularly in fisheries contexts (Folke et al. 2010, Cote and Nightingale 2012, Berkes and Ross 2013, Brown 2013, Galappaththi et al. 2019, Ojea et al. 2020). Social actors and structures actively respond and/or shape changes experienced within the system, influencing not only social pathways but also broader SES trajectories (Folke et al. 2010, Cote and Nightingale 2012, Berkes and Ross 2013, Brown 2013, Béné et al. 2016). Placing emphasis on adaptability and transformability rather than just stability allows for consideration of more diverse and dynamic responses of actors, which can more fully characterize broader response pathways (Folke et al. 2010, Magis 2010, Himes-Cornell and Hoelting 2015, Galappaththi et al. 2019, Ojea et al. 2020).

In this study, we draw from the cope-adapt-transform resilience typology outlined by Ojea et al. (2020), excluding the “remain” response (i.e., inaction for very low-level impacts) to focus on the active responses of individual fishers experiencing a fishery decline in a manner that is suited to the data used in our analysis (see Methods). Coping responses are often reactive and short-term, which mobilize people’s ability to draw on existing and available resources, skills, and experiences to buffer and absorb shocks or stressors so they can resist change and persist within a current state (Himes-Cornell and Hoelting 2015, Béné et al. 2016, Galappaththi et al. 2019). Fishers’ coping strategies can include adjusting catch levels or moving fishing grounds in response to declining species, “waiting it out” for stocks to recover, downgrading operations, or reducing crew sizes (Oestreich et al. 2019, Ojea et al. 2020). However, coping may also promote longer-term innovations and creativity, such as particular fishing strategies or technologies (Johnson et al. 2014), and some may view themselves as “defiant survivors despite the odds stacked against them” (Korda et al. 2021:89).

Adaptation goes beyond attempts to maintain the status quo, instead making incremental adjustments and changes that are typically (but not always) more proactive and anticipatory (Béné et al. 2016, Galappaththi et al. 2019, Ojea et al. 2020). Adapting responses can be varied but often focus on diversifying portfolios or incomes, through actions such as switching target species, utilizing new fishing gear and technologies, participating in fisheries further away from their home community, and diversifying livelihoods to supplement their fishing incomes (Coulthard 2012, Himes-Cornell and Hoelting 2015, Ojea et al. 2020, Korda et al. 2021, Samhouri et al. 2024).

Finally, transformational responses represent the most radical and substantial changes people may make (Béné et al. 2016, Galappaththi et al. 2019). Transformation generally challenges existing and current system structures, requiring new characteristics and functions, and it typically occurs when existing absorptive and adaptive capacities are overwhelmed by a shock or stressor (Béné et al. 2016, Galappaththi et al. 2019, Ojea et al. 2020). Examples of transformational responses at the fisher level can include exiting a fishery or changing livelihoods, which may occur “in-place” or entail moving to a new community depending on available alternative employment and livelihood options (Coulthard 2012, Ojea et al. 2020, Fisher et al. 2021). Importantly, however, individual transformational responses could have negative social, psychological, and health impacts if alternatives are not comparable or available.

Pathways of resilience can be shaped in ways that underpin, undermine, or affect overall individual resilience (Cinner et al. 2018, Cinner and Barnes 2019, Green et al. 2021, Mason et al. 2022). These factors, or domains, can stem from multiple scales from the individual through to the governance system (Ojea et al. 2020, Mason et al. 2022). Two recent fisheries reviews have identified six overall domains of social resilience (Cinner et al. 2018, Cinner and Barnes 2019). The first domain, “Flexibility,” centers on individuals’ and organizations’ ability to switch and diversify adaptation strategies, and it generally arises from having greater capacity, options, and opportunities. The second domain, “Organization,” focuses on the formal and informal networks and relationships between individuals and/or institutions, which can affect connectedness and cooperation between actors, knowledge exchange, and access to resources. Thirdly, “Assets” comprises individual or public resources such as financial, technological, and services that people have access to during times of change. The fourth identified domain, “Learning,” captures peoples’ ability to recognize change and process information, both experientially and experimentally, and to analyze and assess potential responses. “Agency” is the fifth domain that captures people’s power and freedom, as well as their own beliefs, to actively shape their future through their own and collective actions. It can be an important mobiliser of other resilience domains. Finally, the sixth domain identified “Socio-cognitive” constructs such as risk attitudes and perceptions, cognitive biases, personal experiences, and perceived social norms.

Given the increasing challenges fisheries face, understanding resilience pathways and domains is critical for informing future management and policy. In this study, we examine the social resilience of individual lobstermen in the context of American lobster (Homarus americanus) declines in southern New England in the Northeast United States. Since the late 1990s, the stock has been undergoing a substantial decline and has persisted at low abundance, resulting in significant impacts for lobstering communities throughout the region. Using news articles to explore individual lobstermen’s resilience, we seek to understand (1) how lobstermen responded to the stock decline and (2) what factors may have shaped their responses.

Study area: southern New England lobster fishery

American lobster is the second most valuable fishery in the United States, and has significant social and cultural importance to many coastal communities along the Northeast U.S. coastline (NMFS 2022). The stock is split over two main regions: (1) Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank (GOM/GBK) and (2) Southern New England (SNE), which for the purposes of stock management, extends from southern Massachusetts down to North Carolina (ASMFC 2020). Most landings from the SNE stock occur in Rhode Island (47%), Massachusetts (25%), Connecticut (5%), and New York (5%; ASMFC 2020).

The SNE stock has declined since the late 1990s, with the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) classifying it as “significantly depleted” in 2020 (ASMFC 2020). Catches peaked at 21.8 million pounds (lbs) in 1997 and remained at high levels until 1999, but since then the stock has undergone substantial declines (ASMFC 2020). In 2018, landings were at their lowest level of 2.7 million lbs, equating to 12% of 1997 landings and representing just 2% of overall US lobster landings (ASMFC 2020). Scientific evidence suggests these persistent declines are predominantly thought to be driven by warming waters, which exceed critical physiological thresholds and affect recruitment success, and an increasing prevalence of lobster shell disease (Glenn and Pugh 2006, Wahle et al. 2009, Wahle et al. 2015, Le Bris et al. 2018, ASMFC 2020, Goldstein et al. 2022).

Over time, the fishery also experienced several mortality events that have differed in their severity and extent, including a large die-off in 1999 alongside smaller, more localized events such as in 2002, 2010, 2019, and 2020. The Long Island Sound (LIS) die-off in autumn of 1999 effectively shut down the fishery overnight and resulted in substantial social and economic impacts, particularly in the western and central basins where mortalities were highest. In early 2000, a federal fishery disaster was declared and disaster relief was provided to support compensation to affected fishers (NOAA [date unknown]). Stressors thought to have contributed to this die-off include anomalously warm water temperatures, depleted oxygen levels, pathogens (Neoparamoeba pemaquidensis), and-most contentious among different stakeholders, pesticides that leached into the Sound following the occurrence of a tropical storm (De Guise et al. 2004, Pearce and Balcom 2005, Balcom and Howell 2006, Seara et al. 2022). Several court cases have been brought forward by the lobster industry to sue pesticide chemical companies, with varying outcomes (Seara et al. 2022).

Within the Maine lobster fishery (to the north of southern New England), there has been much work undertaken to understand the socio-cultural and economic aspects of the fishery, from seminal work examining social dynamics in the fishery and dependent communities as well as fisheries governance and management interactions (e.g., Acheson 1975, Acheson 1997, Hall-Arber et al. 2001, Wilson et al. 2007), through to more recent work exploring adaptive capacity, resilience, and social-ecological system dynamics in light of contemporary challenges the fishery has experienced (e.g., Acheson and Steneck 2011, Henry and Johnson 2015, Nash 2021, Stoll et al. 2022, Mason et al. 2024). However, few studies have examined the social and economic impacts of the lobster population declines within southern New England specifically (i.e., not including Maine), and how people involved in the fishery have adjusted and responded. Stock assessments suggest that some of the lobster fleet has shifted from fishing inshore to further offshore and making overnight trips, but data to further understand this pattern are lacking (ASMFC 2020). Some research has examined the social impacts to the die-off event in LIS, which include financial and investment losses, psychological impacts and diminished job satisfaction, strains on families and loss of community ties, loss of a future pipeline of new lobstermen into the industry, and changes to community structure and wider industry dynamics (Dyer et al. 2002, Seara et al. 2022). Seara et al. (2022) also describe some of the adaptations lobstermen made in response to the LIS die-off through moving into other fisheries, such as whelk and shellfish, and the role of governance regulations and assistance in these decisions, such as difficulties in accessing permits to other fisheries and insufficient or delayed disaster relief funding. We build upon this valuable work to examine in greater detail the multiple ways in which people have responded to these declines, providing a valuable opportunity to not only understand resilience within the SNE fishery, but also inform resilience and adaptation planning in fisheries more broadly.

METHODS

A news analysis provided a novel approach to examine individual lobstermen’s experiences across a large region and long time period, as well as explore the value of using a secondary data source to inform resilience-related questions. Resilience research has proliferated within the Northeast U.S. region in recent years, and while undertaking interviews provides fundamental understanding, ascertaining the usefulness of secondary data sources can provide helpful insights for future social research at a time when stakeholder fatigue is of concern (Maltby et al. 2023a). News media have been used in several fisheries contexts, from examining narratives on particular issues to understanding perceptions of fishing activities altering with changing sea temperatures (Stoddart and Sodero 2015, McClenachan et al. 2019). News and media articles in both regional and national outlets have widely reported on the SNE lobster declines. Critically, this analysis was not to understand change in narratives or public perceptions, but rather to extract information reported within articles to answer our central research questions regarding the types of responses undertaken, and the factors shaping them.

Sourcing news and media articles

News and media articles were obtained from two international news databases, Gale General OneFile and Global Newstream, chosen based on the breadth of article coverage provided and the authors’ institutional access (Fig. 1). Both databases provided local, regional, and national resources, including periodicals, journals, newspapers, and multimedia sources. We searched for articles from 1995 onward to capture events leading up to, and since, the lobster decline. Search terms used are shown in Figure 1, resulting in a total of 656 articles. We then searched two freely accessible fisheries news websites (National Fisherman and FisheryNation.com) to find articles that were more fisheries specific, and Wrack Lines (a Connecticut SeaGrant Magazine) and the SeaGrant library, which have reported on research projects and outputs in the region. Regional lobster association or fishing organization websites were also examined (Appendix 1).

Articles in this initial set (n = 731) were further reviewed for their relevance and value to our research topics. Duplicate articles and/or those that did not have the lobster declines or die-off as the main or major article narrative were removed, resulting in 447 articles. Articles covered many topics including: specific mortality events; the lobster die-off in LIS; causes of the declines and stock status; resulting scientific research and debates; impacts from the declines on lobstermen and the wider industry and supply chain; court cases associated with die-off events; and state and federal management or governance implications and wider political involvement in declines. Although some articles focused on specific issues, often articles covered multiple issues.

Creating an article subset to analyze

The 447 articles were further reviewed for direct insights that were most relevant to the research questions (i.e., how have lobstermen responded to the lobster population decline and what shaped these responses?), such as needing to contain specific descriptions of potential cope, adapt, or transform responses. Descriptions could be focused on individuals, such as highlighting how a particular named lobsterman may have switched part time to clamming, or descriptions of general trends about how the wider industry was responding. These descriptions could form the main topic of the article, or a smaller part of the broader narrative. This resulted in a subset of 89 articles, representing 20% of the wider article set (Appendix 2). Articles were checked to ensure that narratives covered within the subset were reflective of the general narratives of the original set.

Qualitative analysis

Examples of individual lobstermen’s responses were extracted from articles into an Excel spreadsheet. Information collected included: article identifier, article quotes of the response made, the context of this response, and if available, the name, home port or state, and age of the individual lobsterman. Responses were then categorized within Excel into one of three discrete responses: cope-adapt-transform. Because of assumed journalistic bias toward more lobstermen being interviewed who had actively responded to resource declines than those who had not been impacted or altered their behaviors, we excluded the “remain” (i.e., inaction) response from the Ojea et al. (2020) typology. Cope responses were identified by descriptions of and quotes from lobstermen staying within the lobster fishery, often accompanied by information about changes to lobster fishing practices or business operations, and/or language such as “hanging on” or using savings or partners’ incomes to supplement their income from lobstering, typical for coping responses as described above. Adapt responses were identified by descriptions of diversifying incomes, fisheries, or jobs. These descriptions also mentioned how lobstermen were continuing to lobster in some way, such as altering fishing practices. Transform responses were similar to adaptation responses described above, but contained information that indicated that these lobstermen had exited the lobster fishery to pursue them. Descriptions such as selling boats or their homes or using terms such as “given up” were common. In some cases, a response was categorized based on the information about an individual from one article. In other cases, individuals were featured in numerous articles through time: in these instances the most recent article and response they made was categorized. As such, one response category was assigned to one individual.

We caveat that categorized responses reflect time of reporting or interviewing, not necessarily the time at which the response occurred. We also emphasize that a lack of other responses by an individual does not mean absence in reality; because of journalistic reporting, individuals may only have been asked about particular actions and not others, or they may have discussed multiple actions during the interview and only certain actions were included in the story. In addition, biases in how individuals were identified for interviews may have resulted in those displaying other responses not being interviewed and thus not captured in our analysis. Further, individuals may have responded in multiple ways over their life, but news reporting may only have captured a moment in time at which individuals were interviewed, and so it was not possible to tell the full duration with which lobstermen undertook responses. For these reasons, within our results we only describe responses undertaken by individuals, rather than comment on their frequency, prevalence, or representativeness across the broader lobster industry or by state. As such our results represent examples of the types of responses individuals may make when facing resource declines, but not necessarily their only responses or the full range of possible responses.

Generalized descriptions of responses at large across the lobstering community and across all 89 articles were thematically analyzed using NVivo (Release 1.7) to provide additional details and context. A semi-inductive thematic analysis approach was undertaken (Braun and Clarke 2006, Bryman 2012) through grouping data into similar themes (e.g., alternative fisheries and alternative jobs, informed by literature including Cinner and Barnes 2019, Ojea et al. 2020, Green et al. 2021), but not into discrete cope-adapt-transform typologies because the descriptions did not always provide sufficient information to robustly inform that categorization.

Factors influencing responses were also examined through semi-inductive thematic analysis so that results could be interpreted against pre-existing resilience frameworks (i.e., Cinner et al. 2018, Cinner and Barnes 2019) while also capturing additional emerging themes. After familiarization with the articles, the lead author developed an initial list of codes representing potential factors. These codes were grouped into initial broader themes, and then discussed between all authors. Further subsequent rounds of coding examined if other codes or themes had been missed or emerged, and to further merge or re-arrange themes as appropriate into a final list. Author 2 then separately coded a subset of articles (representing 10% of articles) using the final theme list to cross-check and validate the themes identified. Once finalized, the themes from this list were then categorized against Cinner and Barnes (2019) resilience domains framework to highlight where our findings aligned (or not) to the wider extant literature. Because of limitations outlined above, we do not link specific factors to specific responses because of a lack of detailed information from journalists eliciting this from their interviewing. We therefore view these results as highlighting the multiple considerations that may shape people’s resilience responses, as outlined in Cinner and Barnes (2019), but do not attempt to infer causality directly.

RESULTS

Articles

A total of 89 articles were analyzed, spanning 1999 to 2021, and published in a range of local and national newspapers and sites such as The New York Times, Boston Globe, The Washington Post, and Bangor Daily News (Fig. 2). The year 2000 saw the most published articles (15), being the year immediately following the large-scale LIS die-off event and fishery disaster declaration. Just over half (52%) of articles were related to the LIS die-off, with the other half documenting lobster declines in other SNE areas and issues associated with them.

Responses

Responses from a total of 76 individual lobstermen across the states of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, and (for one individual) Delaware were extracted from the news articles (Fig. 3). Coping responses, whereby resilience is represented by persistability, were identified across 21 individual lobstermen (Himes-Cornell and Hoelting 2015). Coping responses were generally typified by people deciding to stay within lobstering full time, but altering their fishing or business practices. For many lobstermen, the uncertainty surrounding whether the declines in the lobster stock would continue or improve complicated the decision as to whether to hang on, or try and do something else. As one Massachusetts lobsterman said:

“Of the nine guys who fished out of this harbor, there are only three of us left ... And I think it’s going to come back. You just have to find some way to hang on until it does.” (Boston Globe, 21 September 2003).

Another spoke to a “surviving against the odds” mentality of some lobstermen:

“I’m not giving up,” he said. “The lobsters are survivors. They are very hardy, and so am I.” (The Wall Street Journal, 30 October 2000).

Several changes were described in terms of lobster fishing behavior. These included lobstermen moving fishing grounds, such as fishing further east (where declines were not as severe compared to in the western basin of LIS) or further from shore in deeper waters. Others included changes to fishing practices, such as using more or fewer traps, fishing for longer, reducing crews, and/or downgrading their boat. One individual invested and upgraded their boat to go offshore. There were also examples of lobstermen using direct sales of lobster such as selling directly to the public and tourists at the dock or selling through a lobster shack they set up-as a way to generate more money for their catch.

Adapting responses were identified for 34 individual lobstermen. Here, lobstermen remained lobstering but also diversified their fishing catch portfolios through fishing for other species and/or diversified their income through additional non-fishing jobs. Similarly to those remaining in the lobster fishery full time, these individuals adapted their lobster practices to account for reduced catches. This included moving fishing grounds (including further from shore), leaving gear out for longer, using more or fewer traps, and fishing alone or with reduced crew. Moving into direct sales of lobster was also undertaken. For those choosing to fish for additional species, these included conch/whelk, black sea bass, Jonah crabs, clams, and oysters. For some, species that were previously overlooked or viewed as “trash” or low value became an important source of income. As one Rhode Island lobsterman described:

“I can’t survive on lobster alone. But when I can haul in enough of all three species, I’m good to go.” (The Portland Press Herald, 07 April 2019).

Other lobstermen diversified into non-fishing jobs, which could be seasonal or year-round. Jobs were both marine-based and non-marine based. Marine-based jobs included running fishing charters, a retail fish store, and working at local marinas. For those undertaking non-marine based jobs, the types of work varied and included doing manual labor or construction, trucking, ploughing snow, and growing Christmas trees. For example:

“This year I might get 1,000(lbs) if I’m lucky,” Mr. Samson said, adding that he has taken a job driving an oil truck, and can afford to fish only part time. (The New York Times, 31 July 2000).

Transforming responses were identified for 21 individual lobstermen. Transformational responses centered on lobstermen moving into another fishery full time or moving into an alternative job full time, many of which are described above. Conch and clamming were popular fisheries to move into for those within LIS in particular. Some lobstermen decided to leave their communities, including to Florida and New Hampshire. Continual declines in the lobster resource meant that, for many, staying in the fishery was no longer an option. For example, according to one lobsterman who left to go clamming, and then to start a seafood restaurant:

“There just wasn’t enough resource left to make a living” he said. (Boston Globe, 03 December 2017).

Another article highlighted the difficulties in making such choices to exit the fishery:

A third man, Mr Fernandes, who fished for more than 20 years in western Long Island Sound, sold his home and his three-year-old boat and moved to North Carolina, where he and his wife now own a restaurant .... “I wish my life were back to normal,” said Fernandes. “No matter what happens here, I’m always there, back on Long Island. When you do something for 20 years, it’s tough to leave everything and go away.” (Newsday LLC, 30 July 2000).

Generalized descriptions providing context into the impacts of the lobster declines, lobstermen’s choices to switch fisheries, and/or move to alternative non-fishing occupations also arose in the article narratives describing the fishing community at large. For many, particularly those in New York and Connecticut, the severity of the lobster declines meant that many lobstermen sold their boats and equipment, leaving the fishery and their fishing business. As one article summarized:

Each year since 1999, lobstermen have headed out, waxing hopeful, but returned heartbroken, with more and more abandoning the business. (The New York Times, 2 July 2007).

Article narratives also highlighted examples of lobstermen selling their houses and/or moving out of state to pursue new opportunities. Generalized descriptions also provided further examples of the jobs lobstermen turned to instead of fishing, such as pilot boat work, nursing, welding, carpentry, delivery truck driving, and desk jobs. For example:

As the old lobstermen culture of Connecticut withers, desperate fishermen are hanging up their rubber waders to become boat mechanics, plumbers and landscapers. (The Washington Post, 7 October 2007)

Factors and domains influencing resilience

We identified 20 overarching factors influencing lobstermen’s responses to declining lobster resources, which were categorized against five of the resilience domains outlined within the Cinner and Barnes (2019) framework (Fig. 4 and Table 1). Frequencies of articles describing these domains indicate that financial flexibility and occupational flexibility were most common, followed by agency and collective action, socio-cognitive emotions, social organization, access to assets, and institutional flexibility.

Financial flexibility

The most discussed domain was lobstermen’s personal financial flexibility, categorized into three main factors. The first, financial pressures, highlighted the personal, household, and fishing-related financial obligations lobstermen had, such as mortgages, rents, bills, and debt payments. These pressures strained lobstermen in the choices they could make under harder financial circumstances because of declining catches, and their levels of financial risk. The intersecting reality of reduced or zero lobster catches and thus reduced incomes combined with large and/or rising costs such as bait, fuel, and permits, meant lobstermen struggled to make a living and further constrained their flexibility. A final limiting factor to lobstermen’s flexibility to exit the fishery centered on challenges of being able to sell their boat and equipment (and thus recuperate some financial losses) because of a lack of people within the fishery itself or people wanting to come in to purchase their boats or equipment.

Occupational flexibility

Four factors affected lobstermen’s flexibility to move occupations away from lobstering. The first focused on the strong attachment lobstermen had to lobstering and the way of life and personal identity it provided. In some instances, those unable to leave the water completely got marine-based jobs or moved into other fisheries to provide some connection to the sea. Secondly, moving into alternative fisheries or non-fishery jobs was not always as financially rewarding as lobstering could be, making it a hard decision to leave the fishery. A third factor centered on the potential requirements of individuals to learn new skills, retrain or get formal qualifications, making a transition out of lobstering challenging, particularly if they lacked experience in that new job or fishery. A fourth factor was lobstermen’s age. Older individuals found it harder or were reluctant to leave the fishery and move on, and some benefited from having greater savings, retirement money, or pensions to get through, enabling them to persist with lobstering. Younger lobstermen had longer careers to plan out, and in some instances, young families, which made choices of whether to cope, adapt, or transform difficult.

Agency and collective action

Articles precluded us from determining with sufficient depth the extent of lobstermen’s perceptions and beliefs about their own or collective sense of agency. However, articles did describe examples that suggest that many lobstermen did not passively accept the realities they were experiencing but rather undertook a range of individual or collective actions to shape their, or the lobsters’, futures more broadly. These actions were grouped into four categories. The first, legal, focused on the lawsuits undertaken surrounding the LIS die-off event. Through fishing associations, some lobstermen filed lawsuits to sue chemical companies regarding pesticide impacts on lobsters and to provide financial compensation for their losses. The second category was informational actions, such as lobstermen attending town meetings with industry and state officials or government agencies to share information on the stock decline, press for financial relief or particular types of research to identify causes of declines, or assistance applying for aid. Thirdly, many lobstermen participated in scientific research projects to study the lobster stock status and attended scientific conferences to share information and learn about new regional research. In one instance, lobstermen independently hired a scientist to investigate the cause of the LIS die off, because of their differing opinions regarding the causes of the declines. Fourth, some lobstermen represented the industry on boards for committees and councils to share industry views of future lobster management regulations or proposals. One article described lobstermen filing a lawsuit against the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management over their “right to fish.” Another showed lobstermen developing a “Bill of Rights” because of growing management interventions.

Socio-cognitive: emotions and mindsets

Articles also highlighted that decisions surrounding whether to remain in or leave the fishery extended beyond economic or practical considerations to also invoke emotional deliberations. For some lobstermen, being hopeful and having an optimistic mindset about the future encouraged them to stay on in the fishery, as they believed things may improve. Conversely, others expressed hopelessness and pessimism about whether lobster stocks would come back, leading them to question whether to continue in the fishery or do something else. Further, the lobster decline also meant that many people felt fearful over their prospects within the fishery or industry and worried or stressed about the future.

Social organization

Lobstermen’s families provided both pressure and support whilst navigating decisions surrounding declining lobster resources. For some, the financial pressures to support a family meant lobstermen had to diversify or leave the lobster fishery. Paying for children’s education, family healthcare, and other costs, combined with the emotional burden of providing for the family, formed a component of lobstermen’s decision making. In other instances, family members lent support. Often, partners’ incomes enabled lobstermen to continue fishing in increasingly difficult circumstances or afforded extra time for lobstermen to decide how to respond.

Access to assets

Three assets-based factors were identified, two of which were financial in nature. The first centered on aid payouts that were distributed to Connecticut and New York lobstermen from the $7.3 million economic relief fund that was appropriated in 2001 after the LIS 1999 die-off event was federally declared a fishery disaster. Although beneficial, within the articles such payouts were viewed as being inadequate in covering their economic losses and/or delayed. A second factor centered on people, often those who displayed “cope” responses, having savings, loans, and pensions that could help them to hang on and remain in the fishery. Others described how lack of these savings or other financial resources meant they had to leave and sell out of the fishery.

The third factor identified was infrastructure based. High urban densities around lobstermen’s mooring sites in New York meant that many lobstermen had limited options to store lobster traps they no longer needed. In Huntington town, space in the town’s landfill site was created to provide trap storage at a lower rent, enabling lobstermen to save money on storing traps in other locations at higher prices. The program was ended 20 years later in 2020 when town officials observed many of these traps had remained generally untouched since the early 2000s.

Institutional flexibility

Regulatory requirements also constrained some lobstermen to move from lobstering into another fishery. Switching to a new fishery is constrained by the need to have or obtain permits, or to have sufficient “fishing history.” For example, transitioning to catch fluke, scup, or black sea bass requires having a valid permit, which many lobstermen did not have, because of their prior reliance on lobstering only. Other fisheries, such as conch, had limited entry of new individuals into the fishery, effectively locking out lobstermen from being able to participate. Alternative fisheries, such as cod and monkfish, may have low limits on catches or quotas, making these species hard to make a living off of full time.

DISCUSSION

This news article analysis revealed that lobstermen have responded in multiple ways to declining lobster resources in southern New England, and that navigating these decisions of how to respond can be influenced by a range of complex factors.

Results show that lobstermen demonstrated persistability, adaptability, and transformability, and therefore responded in heterogeneous ways despite experiencing the same declining lobster resource. Resilience is therefore borne out in different ways, shaped by individual circumstances as reflected in individual choices. Management actions and policies that do not treat a fishery as a homogeneous group but rather support and strengthen heterogeneity, flexibility and complexity among actors and their behaviors and response pathways will be critical for effective resilience planning under future environmental change and uncertainty (Fulton et al. 2011, Ojea et al. 2020, Andrews et al. 2021a, Green et al. 2021, Schadeberg et al. 2021, Villasante et al. 2022). Neglecting to recognize and support multiple pathways, including transformation, can result in policies and regulations that (intentionally or not) constrain options or direct people down particular routes, leading to potential maladaptation, unintended consequences, and inequitable outcomes at individual or broader scales (Ojea et al. 2020, Papaioannou et al. 2021, Schadeberg et al. 2021, Villasante et al. 2022). Importantly, despite our results showing these pathways as relatively discrete (because of the nature of news article reporting), distinct pathways may be complementary, overlapping, and changeable (Leite et al. 2019). Consequently, research to understand how responses may alter over an individual’s lifecourse would therefore be valuable.

We also highlighted the complex circumstances and contexts that lobstermen navigated in their decisions of how to respond. A range of factors spanning multiple scales (e.g., individual, household, community, institutional) were identified, which aligned to the broader domains outlined by Cinner and Barnes (2019). The “Learning” domain of this framework was missing from our analysis, but we suspect may be embedded implicitly within certain factors such as occupational flexibility, where the requirement to have particular skills or qualifications limited some individuals moving into another job (unless individuals learned them; e.g., Marshall et al. 2007). Results revealed the influence of emotions in peoples’ decision making, highlighting that individual choices under change are not simply driven by rational and economic motivations (Grothmann and Patt 2005, Cinner and Barnes 2019, Andrews et al. 2021b). Emotions remain fairly under researched in their application to fisheries adaptation, but have important implications not only for resilience pathways but also for well-being (Scyphers et al. 2017, Andrews et al. 2021b), e.g., continued hopelessness may lead to depression (Liu et al. 2015). Indeed, Seara et al. (2022) describe the physiological stress, depression, anxiety, and despair that occurred among many lobstermen after the LIS die-off event in 1999. Together, this highlights the need to consider how resilience intersects with well-being, and broader evidence indicates that increased resilience does not always result in increased well-being and vice versa (Armitage et al. 2012, Coulthard 2012, Chaigneau et al. 2022).

Attributing specific domains to response pathways forms a useful component of a deepened understanding of resilience at the individual scale. Varying levels of detail within news articles precluded robustly inferring causation, but our results do provide some insights into how pathways and domains may interact. One example centers on the higher frequencies of financial flexibility and occupational flexibility, highlighting their important roles in influencing pathways and their potential differential effects depending on how individuals decide to trade off their practical, economic realities with deeper attachments and connections to lobstering. Broader evidence demonstrates how despite diminishing returns or challenging circumstances, fishers often choose to remain fishing to uphold their job satisfaction and personal identity (Pollnac and Poggie 2008, Johnson et al. 2014, Korda et al. 2021). Others that left fishing completely to seek better economic outcomes may have faced grappling with losing their sense of identity and connection to fishing, as shown by Seara et al. (2022) through lobstermen describing their “loss of a way of life” after stock declines. Although this analysis provided a valuable way to highlight some of these issues, future work to understand these nuances, trade-offs, and social-psychological tipping points between resilience domains and pathways would be useful (Grothmann and Patt 2005).

A secondary motive of this study was to explore the usefulness of news articles to inform our social resilience research. There are limitations of using news analyses, including some of the inherent bias of who is interviewed and how, to the narratives and framings that are developed within articles (e.g., Brown et al. 2020, Diamond et al. 2024). We sought to mitigate some of these limitations through providing descriptions of resilience responses and dimensions rather than inferring prevalence, representativeness, and/or causation, and using articles from multiple databases that reflected local to national coverage, captured themes discussed across the original article set, and had geographic spread of individuals across the affected states to capture multiple narratives and experiences. Our analysis provides an entry point into understanding resilience pathways and dimensions in the SNE lobster fishery and indicates that further research, such as through oral history interviews, would be particularly beneficial to provide deeper insights into the full range of responses, choices, and motivations people have or make when facing environmental change and how this may or may not change throughout their lives. Although news articles cannot provide the depth of understanding that can be obtained through primary data collection on these topics, this analysis highlights that valuable information can be gained from such an approach, which can be particularly helpful for additional context setting and gathering information for studies intending to engage with communities or stakeholders.

Although the SNE lobster stock has been at low abundance levels for the last 20 years, there are still potential ways to support the resilience of those involved in the fishery. We contend that many lobstermen have shown resilience while navigating the changes they have experienced. Yet, our results show that individual resilience can be influenced by factors at other scales, including household (e.g., family pressure and support), community (e.g., community infrastructure and collective actions), and institutional levels (e.g., regulatory). Revealing these broader influences is important to prevent unnecessarily focusing recommendations for building resilience on the individual and their own actions: interventions at multiple levels and scales are necessary (Leite et al. 2019, Sultana et al. 2021). As management measures potentially become increasingly conservative as the lobster stock struggles to rebound (e.g., Groner et al. 2018, Le Bris et al. 2018, ASMFC 2020, Goldstein et al. 2022), enabling remaining lobstermen to effectively contribute to management decisions and the research underpinning them is critical, particularly given that evidence suggests there is eroded trust between lobstermen, managers and scientists (Hartley and Robertson 2006, Seara et al. 2022). Altering permit regulations to provide access to species such as black sea bass and scup, which industry also believe are impacting the lobster stock through increased predation, could facilitate diversification into other fisheries (Seara et al. 2022; Industry members, 2022, personal communication).

Further, the important influence of financial flexibility, occupational flexibility (especially age and alternative employment requirements), emotions, and access to assets highlight the need for support from groups such as non-profit organizations and community groups that may not typically be associated with resilience planning in fisheries management contexts, but can have critical roles in providing assistance and support services. Developing integrated approaches involving a wider diversity of stakeholders to help align different formal support (e.g., state governments) and informal support mechanisms (e.g., fishermen’s partners and community groups, non-profits) may provide a more holistic way of promoting resilience at multiple scales, aside from fisheries managers doing so alone (West and Hovelsrud 2010, Maltby et al. 2023b). Such approaches in part will likely depend on broader visioning for the future of the fishery, generated, for example, through participatory foresighting and scenario planning, to spur conversations, examine options, and identify interventions at multiple scales (Bennett et al. 2015, Gammage and Jarre 2021, deReynier et al. 2023). The Resilient Fisheries Rhode Island project (http://resilientfisheriesri.org/) offers a successful example of a bottom-up approach led by fishing communities to discuss and envision what the future of fisheries could look like in their state. Importantly, bringing together industry, fishing communities, managers, and scientists is much needed to co-develop a vision for the southern New England lobster fishery to strengthen and support its resiliency, and those within it, long into the future.

CONCLUSION

As fisheries face increasingly uncertain and changing futures, examining the resilience of these systems is critical to inform effective planning and management. Filling an important gap in southern New England American lobster research that has traditionally focused on ecological science, we demonstrate the importance of understanding how lobstermen have responded to declining resources and the factors influencing those decisions and pathways to affect their resilience. We highlight the need for more research into resilience at differing scales, intersections with well-being, and the role of social-psychological tipping points in determining responses and pathways. We show that individuals have demonstrated resilience in a diversity of ways, and that going forward, action at multiple levels of the fishery system and beyond, will be necessary for more integrated approaches to support resiliency. These approaches can be designed by first contemplating what the fishery could look like into the future, and co-developing and identifying ways of achieving priority goals.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We sincerely thank Dr Lisa Colburn for her valuable guidance, inputs, and suggestions throughout this work. We thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful review and feedback. K.M.M. and K.E.M. were supported by funding from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), administered through the Sea Grant program as part of the American Lobster Initiative, under award number NA19OAR4170398A.

Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and AI-assisted Tools

No AI or AI-assisted Tools were used in this study.

DATA AVAILABILITY

A list of news articles analyzed is provided in Appendix 2. Aggregated data supporting the analysis can be made available to interested readers on request.

Corresponding author:

Katherine Maltby

[email protected]

Table 1. Factors influencing responses and links to wider resilience domains. Numbers in parentheses represent the number of articles a factor arose in.

Resilience domain†	Factor	Description
Financial flexibility (Total = 52)	Financial pressures (25)	Pressure of paying bills, financial commitments, etc.
	Making a living (42)	Rising fishing costs and reduced incomes
	Ability to sell out (5)	Selling fishing boat and equipment
Occupational flexibility (Total = 35)	Occupation attachment and identity (23)	Fishing is a way of life, not just a job
	Financial rewards of alternative (8)	Transitioning to another job or fishery is not as lucrative
	Alternative employment requirements (11)	Leaving fishing may require retraining or learning new skills
	Age (10)	Age and stage of life
Agency and collective action‡ (Total = 34)	Legal (14)	Suing pesticide companies
	Informational (5)	Attending town hall meetings and seeking help from government officials
	Science (8)	Participating in research programs and conferences/meetings
	Management (14)	Attending meetings, participating in v-notch program, lobbying against proposals and filing lawsuit, creating bill of rights
Socio-cognitive-emotions (Total = 33)	Hopefulness (17)	Hope for the future that stocks can improve
	Hopelessness (13)	Lack of hope about future of stocks
	Anxiety (15)	Being worried and fearful about the future of lobstering
Social organization (Total = 20)	Family pressures (14)	Having family to financially support
	Family support (10)	Family providing financial and emotional support
Access to assets (Total = 16)	Receiving or accessing aid (11)	Financial aid from federal sources
	Having savings and loans (7)	Savings, loans, and pensions to enable people to “ride out” tough times
	Using community infrastructure (3)	Landfill site provided temporary storage of lobster traps (scheme ended 2020)
Institutional flexibility (Total = 10)	Regulatory requirements to switch fisheries (10)	Regulations and rules hinder diversification and entering new fisheries
† Totals may not match frequency within the “Factor” column because of multiple articles having multiple themes (factors) within them. ‡ These examples provide insights into the existence of agency and forms responses took, but not into strength or the factors determining agency or why certain forms emerged.

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