Applied Geography 59 (2015) 56e59

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Applied Geography
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/apgeog

Marine resource management: Culture, livelihoods, and governance

Arielle Sarah Levine a, b, *, Laurie Richmond c, David Lopez-Carr d
a
Department of Geography, San Diego State University, 5500 Campanile Drive, San Diego, CA 92182-4493, USA
b
I.M. Systems Group contractor to NOAA Coral Reef Conservation Program, USA
c
Department of Environmental Science and Management, Humboldt State University, Arcata, CA 95521, USA
d
Department of Geography, U.C. Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-4060, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The management of marine resources is a politically and culturally driven process, shaped by human
Available online 27 February 2015 livelihoods and perceptions, where notions of both space and place shape policies and decision-making
in fundamental ways. An emerging sub-field within geography critically explores geographic aspects of
Keywords: marine resource management. However, there has been little work to fully articulate this field and to
Marine management describe the contributions of geographic methodologies and lenses to understanding marine resource
Coastal management
management processes. This special issue provides one of the first collections of geographic papers
Marine protected areas
focused on the socio-cultural and socio-spatial dimensions of marine resource management, empha-
GIS
Marine spatial planning
sizing research that has or can be applied to management and policy discussions. The papers in this issue
Human-environment dynamics cover critical topics within this emerging field, examining the combined influences of social, ecological,
cultural, political, economic, historical, and geographic factors on how marine spaces and resources are
used, perceived, and managed. Important themes include: emerging spatial approaches to marine
resource management, human dimensions of marine protected areas, the roles of mapping and GIS, the
integration of quantitative and qualitative data, and the varying ways in which marine spaces and places
are conceptualized by marine resource users and managers. Issues of marine resource governance,
community engagement, and vulnerability also play key roles in the future of marine resource man-
agement. The papers in this issue shed light on space, place, and human-environment interactions in
coastal marine systems, making it clear that questions about stakeholder inclusion and representation,
particularly in spatial forms, will continue to dominate the field for some time to come. Future research
in this field will be fruitfully informed by core geographical heuristics of space, place, and human-
environment dynamics.
© 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND
license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Geography is paramount to coastal and marine resource man-
agement. Although marine resource management is often viewed
as a field that is rooted in the biophysical sciences, the management
of marine resources is fundamentally a politically and culturally
driven process, shaped by human livelihoods and perceptions,
where notions of both space and place shape policies and decision-
making in fundamental ways. A wide range of approaches are
currently used to manage marine resources. These include
centralized approaches, such as ocean zoning, limiting ocean access
through permits or the establishment of marine protected areas,
regulating gear use or species harvested, or enforcing fish catch
limits. These also include community-based approaches and
informal or traditional management regimes, as well as a hybrid of
techniques dependent on local social-ecological contexts.
* Corresponding author. Tel.: þ1 619 594 5600.
E-mail address: alevine@mail.sdsu.edu (A.S. Levine).
While geographers have long examined physical coastal pro-
cesses, a sub-field within geography has emerged more recently that
critically explores geographic aspects of marine resource manage-
ment. However, there has been little work to fully articulate this field
and to describe the contributions of geographic methodologies and
lenses. This special issue provides one of the first collections of
geographic papers focused on the socio-cultural and socio-spatial
dimensions of marine resource management, emphasizing research
that has or can be applied to management and policy discussions. The
papers in this issue cover critical topics within this emerging field,
examining the combined influences of social, ecological, cultural,
political, economic, historical, and geographic factors on how marine
spaces and resources are used, perceived, and managed.
Increasingly, marine resource managers are embracing spatial
approaches. Many management agencies now focus on ocean
zoning and marine spatial planning (Agardy, 2010; Douvere, 2008),
which emphasize the regulation of ocean spaces (such as protected

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.apgeog.2015.01.016
0143-6228/© 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
 A.S. Levine et al. / Applied Geography 59 (2015) 56e59
areas), as opposed to ocean uses (such as catch or gear). There is
also an increasing push to delimit spaces in the ocean for energy
creation e whether it be from off-shore wind, wave, or offshore oil
drilling e in ways that do not conflict with other ocean uses
(Conway et al. 2010). These approaches require that managers have
access to spatial information. While biophysical information
regarding the ocean environment is often available, spatial infor-
mation about human uses of and connections to marine places is
generally limited. Given this need for improved spatial information
and understanding, the field of geography can provide critical
insight towards documenting and theorizing marine spaces to
better inform management strategies.
Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), for instance, are a particularly
central spatial management tool that has received increasing in-
ternational emphasis over the past few decades, with an interna-
tional goal of 10% ocean coverage by 2020 established by the
Convention on Biodiversity (http://www.cbd.int/sp/targets/). MPAs
have been promoted to conserve biodiversity and to safeguard
sustainable fish harvests (Lubchenco et al., 2003; Toropova et al.,
2010). Yet MPAs have not always been successful when applied
without appropriate stakeholder participation (Mascia et al., 2010;
McCay & Jones, 2011). Research is increasingly demonstrating that
social factors are key determinants of MPA success (Rossiter &
Levine, 2014). Human engagement in MPAs presents a fertile
research opportunity for geographers, as spatial approaches to
analysis present an opportunity to combine human dimensions
with ecological research for a more integrated approach to
research.
Given the proliferation of efforts to develop marine protected
areas throughout the globe, many papers in this special issue deal
specifically with the human dimensions of MPA planning and with
the resulting outcomes for marine-dependent communities
following the development of MPAs. Richmond and Kotowicz
(2015), for instance, examine the development of a large marine
protected area in the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas
Islands (CNMI). They gathered oral histories to understand the
cultural and economic connections that residents of the CNMI have
with the protected waters and to consider the potential cultural
impacts that the implementation of the MPA could have on the
community. Similarly, Guenther et al. (2015) examine how the
implementation of an MPA in the Channel Islands of California has
changed the behavior of lobster fishermen, finding that their fish-
ing effort is redirected in ways that were not expected based on a
perception that fishermen would simply “fish the line” after MPAs
were established. Chen and Lopez-Carr (2015) develop an index of
sea urchin fishermen's vulnerability to the impacts of MPA estab-
lishment in California, examining how this varies across space.
Levine and Feinholz (2015), Rossiter et al. (2015), and Quimby
(2015) each advocate for an improved understanding of actual
human perceptions, behavior, and use of marine spaces before
management measures (such as MPAs) are implemented.
Documenting and understanding the complex and nuanced
ways that humans interact with, relate to, and rely on marine
spaces and places is a cross-cutting theme of the articles in this
issue. Mapping and GIS present one useful method for under-
standing spatial human use patterns, as well as for obtaining a
sociocultural understanding of marine and coastal environments.
While GIS is commonly used within the field of geography to
illustrate spatial patterns, mapping marine spaces presents a
unique set of challenges. Marine spaces are dynamic, and remotely
sensed data cannot be easily used to document marine habitat,
changes in resource status, or ocean uses. Levine and Feinholz
(2015) posit that in data poor contexts (which is often the case
for marine resources), resource users represent the best source of
data. Their work uses participatory mapping to engage local
57
resource users and residents to document the range of human uses
and activities taking place in areas deemed critical for coral reef
management in Hawaii. Sullivan et al. (2015) also draw directly
from resource user knowledge, combining information from
existing GIS layers with information gathered from stakeholder
interviews and focus groups to generate a more complete under-
standing of the complexity of marine space, diverse uses of the
marine environment, and potential conflicts with proposed
offshore energy development in coastal areas of the US mainland.
Similarly, Guenther et al. (2015) incorporate information derived
from fishermen interviews to better understand the reasons
behind unexpected changes in use patterns observed in GIS data
derived from fishermen's catch reports before and after the
establishment of MPAs in the Channel Islands.
Several authors in this issue take a novel approach of combining
pre-existing or quantitatively derived data with more qualitative
information obtained directly from marine resource users. Their
work represents an effort to address an emergent tension in the
field of marine resource management. A host of geographers, an-
thropologists, and social scientists critique contemporary fisheries
management for its overreliance on technocratic and quantitative
information that may oversimplify, misrepresent, and in some
cases ignore human relationships to the marine environment
(Campbell et al., 2009; Johannes, 1978; Nader, 1996; St. Martin,
2006, St Martin & Hall-Arber 2008). Yet many others are simulta-
neously developing methodologies and products that seek to
represent human connections to the marine environment in tech-
nical and quantitative forms that can be integrated into current
management practices (Kittinger et al. 2014; Klein et al. 2008;
McLain et al. 2013). Levine and Feinholz (2015), Sullivan et al.
(2015), and Guenther et al. (2015) all use methodologies to repre-
sent human connections to the environment in GIS-ready spatial
formats that are easily combined with data collected on biophysical
aspects of the marine realm. Chen and Lopez-Carr (2015) use a
quantitative index to assess fishermen's vulnerability in ways that
can be also be easily incorporated into technocratic approaches to
management.
While these approaches remain useful, many aspects of marine
resource management prove difficult to quantify. For example, Beitl
(2015) statistically analyzes return rates to both open access and
commonly managed fishing areas in Costa Rica, but concludes that
understanding resource use patterns is shaped by more than a
simple optimization of returns. Marine spaces are socially pro-
duced, and many scholars document a culture of mutual respect
and avoidance that can shape natural resource use patterns (Berkes
et al., 1989; McCay & Acheson, 1990; Singleton, 1999; Woodhatch &
Crean, 1999). Both Beitl (2015) and Quimby (2015) find an unspo-
ken moral code and informal rules-in-use that must also be un-
derstood in order to predict fishermen behavior and determine
appropriate management actions. Their work, as well as that of
Barnett and Eakin (2015), highlights the importance of individual
relationships and decision-making in understanding ocean use.
While many authors in this issue document and communicate
empirical information about the use of marine space, others focus
more theoretically on the ways that marine space is conceptualized
by managers and researchers. Rossiter et al. (2015), draw on new
materialist theory to critique the way that United States fisheries
legislation and management regimes conceptualize and manage
marine space, arguing that fisheries managers oversimplify human
uses of and connections to marine space, failing to account for the
complex linkages and interactions between the human and
nonhuman elements of what they refer to as “marine assemblages”.
Both Rossiter et al. (2015) and Levine and Feinholz (2015)
communicate the need to examine intensive spaces of human ac-
tivity and meaning within extensive spaces designated for marine
58 A.S. Levine et al. / Applied Geography 59 (2015) 56e59
management. Quimby (2015) and Beitl (2015) both highlight the
importance of understanding socially produced spaces influencing
the self-organizing properties of marine resource use and man-
agement systems.
Governance of marine spaces represents another critical theme
in this issue. Whitty (2015) examines governance institutions and
activities for coastal and aquatic resource management in multiple
case study sites in Southeast Asia, exploring their potential to
contribute to mitigating cetacean bycatch in the region. Beitl
(2015) illustrates the benefits of mixed property rights systems
for shellfish harvesters in Ecuador's coastal mangrove swamps,
which provides a safety net for fishermen and incentives for
conservation. Barnett and Eakin (2015) illustrate the important
ways in which actors in a multi-species fishery in Nova Scotia
influence their institutional environment in a context of rapid
change.
Vulnerability is another important consideration in marine
resource management, particularly in examining fishermen's live-
lihoods. Chen and Lopez-Carr (2015) and Barnett and Eakin (2015)
take different approaches, using fishermen interviews to define and
examine vulnerability from a fishermen's perspective. Chen and
Lopez-Carr develop a quantitative index to assess vulnerability in
response to the establishment of MPAs, using a framework based
on exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity. Barnett and Eakin
develop a qualitative assessment of vulnerability to economic
fluctuations and the impacts of climate change. They take a novel
approach, combining Ostrom's social-ecological systems frame-
work (Ostrom, 2009), focused on institutions and resource exploi-
tation, with political ecology, which incorporates the influences of
social relations, power, agency, and larger scale political and eco-
nomic processes.
Each of the contributions to this issue highlights, in some way,
the importance of community engagement in marine resource
management. While marine resource management agencies
commonly emphasize the importance of stakeholder involvement
in management processes (Pomeroy & Douvere, 2008), they are
generally silent on issues of power and whose voices are heard
during participatory processes. Rossiter et al. (2015) problematize
stakeholder involvement of fishing communities called for under
National Standard 8 of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation
and Management Act, specifically the power dynamics and cultural
practices that continually inform and negotiate community iden-
tities. The research conducted by Sullivan et al. (2015) and Levine
and Feinholz (2015) actively tries to engage local communities in
coastal and marine mapping to inform ocean planning, but these
authors also note the challenge of gaining community trust, as well
as problems inherent in generating static maps of mobile species,
complex human behaviors, and cultural significance.
A connecting thread in this emerging field, which runs through
each of the papers in this issue, is the need to include resource
users' voices and interests in marine management decision-making
through improved information and a better understanding
regarding their perspectives, behaviors and needs. The authors
contributing to this issue, as well as the marine stakeholders who
agreed to participate in their studies, are motivated by a central
concern: if they do not develop tools to depict human relationships
with the marine environment that are compatible with the
ecological data relied upon by managers, will social and economic
considerations then be ignored or overlooked in decision-making
processes? In these papers we see a clear trend towards devel-
oping new quantitative indices, models, and technical spatial tools
to bring information about resources uses to the management
arena. The effort to better map, quantify, and describe human
cultures, livelihoods, and governance in relation to marine space
has benefits in terms of ensuring that these aspects of the marine
environment are given due consideration during management
decision-making. However, as the field continues to develop it will
be important for researchers and practitioners to consider what
might be lost when nuanced information regarding human con-
nections to marine spaces and places is converted into formats and
terms that are largely dictated by scientists and managers who
control the decision-making process, particularly when the scope
and scale of human interactions with marine resources rarely fits
neatly into the boundaries of management units. An important
future direction in this field is examining how these new tools and
products for depicting human uses of and relationships to marine
space are utilized in decision-making, as well as how marine
resource users and stakeholders perceive management processes
and outcomes based upon these tools. The papers in this issue shed
light on space, place, and human-environment interactions in
coastal marine systems, making it clear that questions about
stakeholder inclusion and representation, particularly in spatial
forms, will continue to dominate the field for some time to come.
Future research on coupled human-environment sustainability in
marine and coastal environments will be fruitfully informed by
core geographical heuristics of space, place, and human-
environment dynamics.
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