Crisis of Meanings in the Oceans: Experiences from Victoria, Australia

Between the devil and the deep blue sea – Negotiating ambiguous physical and social boundaries within the shark fishing industry of Bass Strait, Australia.

Tanya J King

Submitted in total fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

July 2006

School of Anthropology, Geography and Environmental Studies

University of Melbourne

This thesis addresses questions of identity and ontological legitimacy within the commercial shark fishing community of Bass Strait, Australia. I consider the implications of competing discourses for the integrity of fisher identity, environmental conservation and public narratives on environmental ‘crises’. I draw upon ethnographic material developed with commercial fishers and, to a lesser extent, fisheries ‘experts’, to explore ambiguities in understandings of individuality and perceptions of the marine environment. Informing this analysis are theories of practice, particularly notions of embodied relationships and knowledge, the role of ‘luck’ in enabling a particular expression of ‘individuality’, the ‘skipper effect’, a consideration of nation-state sanctioned and popular media representations of the environment, and the peculiarly Australian experience and representation of individuality, both as performance and as trope. These themes are considered against a backdrop of the physical and social activities involved in commercial fishing, and the 2001 nation-state-initiated introduction of an Individual Transferable Quota management system.

A thematic link throughout the thesis is the role played by perceived boundaries in physical and social environments. I describe how commercial shark fishers and fisheries ‘experts’ encounter boundaries, and how they are strategically created, dissolved, enforced and ignored in the realisation of agency. The demarcations which are particularly salient in the range of contexts considered are those which bound the ‘individual’, and those which distinguish between human and non- human environments.

While small-scale fishers explicitly venerate ‘individuality’, the productive reality demands a level of cooperation. Many Australian commercial shark fishers ‘pick partners’ in order to locate and track fish, while attempting to maintain enough secrecy so that shoals are not iii shared among so many boats as to be economically unviable. By strategically claiming individuality, fishers are tactfully and legitimately able to withdraw from particular partnerships, freeing them to invest in alternative relationships. Within a community of like-minded others, it is precisely the ambiguity of inter-personal boundaries that facilitates the agency of fishers, enabling them to variously privilege individuality or sociality as the productive context demands.

The paradox between professed individuality and serial cooperation has been addressed in the Australian context through descriptions of ‘mateship’ as a trope for rendering ambiguity innocuous. In emic narratives on individual success, Australian and international small- scale fishers often refer to ‘luck’ rather than to collectively enabled performance. In etic depictions of individual fishing success also, most notably in the ‘skipper effect’ literature, anthropologists have referred to ‘luck’ in contexts where a consideration of collective activity might have yielded a more accurate explanation of individual success. While ‘individuality’ is a vital component of small-scale fisher identity, it necessarily operates as a component of sociality.

Though fisheries ‘experts’ also negotiate ambiguous boundaries strategically, their interpretive licence is restricted by the rigidity of the parameters they encounter as agents of the nation-state: as civil- servants. The context of their experience is vastly different to that typically encountered by fishers. Centralised bureaucratic management systems rigidly define the ocean, commercial fishers and civil-servants according to criteria that tends to be generic, demonstrable, replicable and quantifiable. From a nation-state perspective, those features which are salient to the management of commercial fishing are different to those perceived by commercial fishers themselves. As nation-state authority affords ontological legitimacy to bureaucratic decrees on ‘the iv marine environment’, fishers are increasingly compelled to defer to the authority of this tangible domain in their role as ‘citizen’. In the process, however, the ambiguity of various boundaries is compromised and the efficacy of fisher ‘individuality’ is attenuated.

These groupings – commercial fishers and fisheries ‘experts’ – are not unproblematic. However, the domains of experience encountered by these two groups are different enough to occasion the development of significantly distinct categories of meaning. Adding complexity to the situation is the investment by all of these people in a more general cultural domain manifest in media representations of ‘the environment’. I explore some of the complexities and disruptions which emerge when commercial fishers and national fisheries regulators come together to discuss an ocean and a group of people which they experience – understand – in distinct ways. Towards the end of the thesis I draw together emergent themes such as individuality, agency, ambiguity, boundaries, experience and ontology, and consider these themes in relation to the ethnographic material My purpose is not to merely highlight these differences, but to consider the durability of particular ways of seeing the world, and to muse over what can happen when those with minority perspectives are compelled to adjust their behaviours, understandings and identities in response to boundaries and categories that do not correspond to their existing systems of meaning.

This is to certify that:

(i) the thesis comprises only my original work towards the PhD except where indicated in the Preface,

(ii) due acknowledgement has been made in the text to all other material used,

(iii) the thesis is less than 100,000 words in length, exclusive of tables, maps, citations, bibliographies and appendices.

Even when we are able to go beyond the stereotypes, and acknowledge that essentially every sector of industry, government, science, policy, and management have contributed to the current states of fisheries, many genuinely hard problems remain to be resolved ….We need to abandon our stereotypes about others. We need to be honest but forgiving about the short-comings of every participant in the entire process. We need to know how we are imperfect, and what those imperfections imply. Then we need to get on with doing the most perfect job possible with imperfect people and imperfect processes. It’s a lot like the rest of life.

– Jake Rice, Finlayson Revisited – What has changed since Fishing For Truth was published? (2001:9).

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Dedicated to the memory of Dylan and the Ripple III

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1 Acknowledgements: An inevitably inadequate attempt to thank those who have made this thesis possible

At the beginning of 2001, I moved to the fishing port of Port Albert, where l lived for a further two years. I spent a lot of time in other ports, mostly in the state of Victoria, particularly Port Welshpool and Lakes Entrance. However, the attendance at various management meetings also took me to the states of South Australia, Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory. My time was divided among talking with local fishermen, attending meetings between fishermen and various official bodies (particularly AFMA), both locally and interstate, going on fishing trips, and working as a waitress at the Pier Port Hotel in Port Welshpool. I also spent a week observing the operation of the shark sector of management at the offices of the Australian Fisheries Management Authority, in Canberra.

At the beginning of 2003, I returned to Melbourne to begin the arduous task of writing about my experiences, impressions, understandings and all of the things that people had told me. I moved into a house in Clifton Hill with two friends – Claire and Julian – who were also working on PhDs. I claimed an office in the School of Anthropology, Geography and Environmental Studies and eased back into the vibrant and supportive community of colleagues – staff and fellow students – at the University of Melbourne.

1 All sea creature images courtesy Dover Publications Inc. (2002). ix

At the beginning of 2004, after a year of churning out ghastly drivel, which my ever-patient supervisors diligently read, I colluded with Simone Blair, a fellow maritime anthropologist, to make a break for it. Setting our sights inland we headed for central China. A landslide or two later, my love of the sea was reinvigorated and I returned to Melbourne with a story to tell.

Edging toward the end of 2006, I have my story. Now I am confronted with the task of thanking those who have supported me through the last six years, who have shared their lives with me, shown me generosity, professionalism, patience, kindness, friendship, humour, resilience, perspective, well-deserved criticism and wisdom.

To all of the fishermen and industry-based people I have met – I thank you for the enormous amounts of time and knowledge you so generously shared with me and the faith so many of you have in me. Though I take full responsibility for the shortcomings contained in this document, this amazing story is yours, and I feel priveledged to have been allowed to try to capture it in words: a futile goal, I know, but here is my best attempt. I hope that when you recognise yourself in the stories below you will take it as a sign of my gratitude.

A special thanks must go to the owners, skippers, crew and families of those vessels I was welcomed aboard, including the Daryl R, Margaret Goulden and Maasbanker. To Fat, Sal, Danny, Loaf, Stu, Brian, Mark, Busky, Bushy, Brocky, Yvonne and to the Hobson, Pinzone, Carrison, LeBlanc, Beaton, Blank, Malisakis and Michelson families: thanks for giving this ‘rural woman’ a go. To skippers and deckies encountered on the wharf: thanks for taking the time to talk to me, for the coffee, the insights, advice, laughs, and for not teasing me too much. A special x thanks to Jack Hicken, for his wicked grin and for showing me the value of time machines.

To the townsfolk of Port Albert and surrounds – I could not have stumbled into a more welcoming, interesting and entertaining community. My memories are those of a home. RIP Bundy.

To the inlet fishermen who shared their stories and offered another perspective of Corner Inlet and the challenges of making a living in that particular physical and bureaucratic environment.

Thanks to past and present shark, non-trawl, trawl, scallop, GAB and SESS MAC members, who allowed me to attend and record so many hours of meetings and post-meeting gatherings.

Thanks to the staff, past and present, of those government departments that assisted me. A special thanks goes to AFMA, particularly those people in the shark and non-trawl management sectors. I thank you for your patience with me. Though I question the wisdom of the bureaucratic system you labour within, your personal and professional views have given me some much-needed perspective on the challenges you face in the performance of your roles.

I am deeply endebted to Monica Minnegal, Peter Dwyer, Roger Just and Simone Blair, without whom this thesis would have been neither started nor finished.

Many others have been kind enough to engage thoughtfully with my work, offering advice and direction, including Kay Milton, Pascale Baelde, Chris, Lissa and Blue Finlayson, Anthony Marcus, Thomas Reuter, Guy Wright, Mary Patterson, Violetta Schubert, Monique xi

Skidmore, John Cash, Rosemary Robbins, Rom Harré, John Gatewood, Veronica Strang, Sandy Toussaint, Jane Dowling, Karen Turner, Julian Lee, Cass Green, Rita Reuter, Kalissa Alexeyeff, Josephine Wright, Trina Paevere, Julia Sant-Mire, Gillian Tan, Mae Goh, Pam Freeman, Barbara Wigley, Isabelle de Solier, Buck Rosenberg, Michael Crestani, Maree Pardy, Fleur Smith, Yaning ‘Stormy’ Goa, Geraldine LaRoux, Richard Sutcliffe, Melanie Thomson, Alecia Bassett, Natalie Myers, Juan Dominguez, Emmaline Schooneveldt-Reid, Leo Caucauld, Ben Killingsworth, Rufus Akindola, Mike Fabinyi, Helvi Apted, Claire Knowles and Alison Huber.

Thanks to my friends and, especially, to my family.

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Table of Contents:

Prologue: A tale of two fields, or, the shifting field of fieldwork 19

1 Context, Background and Introduction: Fieldwork and the shark fishery of Bass Strait 27

Boundaries, ambiguities and individuals 31 The ‘community’ 41 Shark fishing in Bass Strait 49 The crew 49 The fish 50 Boats 52 Gillnets 57 Shooting the gear 60 Laying off the gear 62 Hauling 63 Heading in 65 Selling the fish 66 Thesis in context of other material 67 Plotting the way ahead 78

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2 Background to the Administration of Australian Fisheries: Centralised administration and Individual Transferable Quotas 85

The increasingly centralised management of Australian fisheries 85 From input to output 96 The Fischer case 115 Conclusion 120

3 Environmental Realities: Ambiguous boundaries in physical space 123

The ambiguous ganka 123 At sea and on land 130 Time 132 “and you don’t know until you go to sea!” 134 Football 136 Women 140 Above and below 145 “What is under the water?” 147 Lines on the water 150 Official boundaries 151 Unofficial territoriality 153 Where official and unofficial boundaries overlap 163 Conclusion 171

4 Physical Realities: The motion that binds them on the ocean 173

Deckies and their (bad) habits 176 The Deckies Lament 177 Doing what Danny does 179 ‘Bad habits’ 181 Seamless motion, seamless bodies 182 Prosthetic relationships 187 Invisible and peripheral 189 Prosthetic 194 Power and rites of passage 196 Teasing 200 Being ‘prosthetic’ and being ‘a man’ 202 xiv

The flow of information among skippers 208 Hunters 209 Background information 210 Current information 212 Reading the gear 213 Reading the community 214 Conclusion 217

5 Negotiating Ambiguity: Sharing information among shark boat skippers 219

‘Individuality’ and Australian ‘mateship’ 222 Heroes 226 Pick a partner 235 Establishing trust 238 Sharing 241 Competitors as ‘rugged individuals’ 245 A competitive game 247 Cooperation versus ‘poaching’ 252 The Mega-MAC 256 Conclusion 262

6 Luck, Skill and the ‘Skipper Effect’: Locating the source of skipper skill 265

Luck in fishing literature 268 Superstition and luck in Bass Strait 270 Lucky socks and smoking marijuana 274 The ‘skipper effect’ 282 Luck in the ‘skipper effect’ and in Bass Strait 291 Conclusion 299

7 The Cartesian Spectre: The ambiguity of ‘individualism’ in centralised management 301

Descartes and state centralisation 308 The Nation-state 311 Bureaucracy 314 Fishermen in Bureaucracy 318 Tragedy of the commons 319 Civil-servants 325 Ideal-type bureaucrats 325 Shortcomings of ideal-type bureaucrats 328 xv

Phantom pain 330 Eradicating the ‘bad habits’ of Civil servant 42 333 Relieving phantom pain 337 Conclusion 342

8 Crisis of Meanings: Divergent experiences and perceptions of the marine environment 345

Divided experiences 352 Spheres and Globes 354 The Public - media(ted) representations 356 Finding Nemo 357 Background to MPA issue 363 The campaign 365 Public discourse and nation-state management 371 Commercial fishermen – ambiguous experiences 377 Eating Nemo 378 First-hand experiences of reality 381 Conclusion 387

Bibliography 391 xvi

Figures and Tables:

Figure 1 Regional map 20 Figure 2 South East Australian States and Territory 20 Figure 3 Ocean regions area relevant under SESS fishery 34 Figure 4 Ocean regions areas relevant to shark fishing 34 Figure 5 Corner Inlet – amateur fishing guide 42 Figure 6 Bass Strait, 20 September 2004 46 Figure 7 Furneaux Group 48 Figure 8 Busky 64 Figure 9 View from the bow-roller 64 Figure 10 Bushy spooling 64 Figure 11 Simple prevailing fishing dynamics model 72 Figure 12 Licence requirements before and after ITQ SFRs 108 Figure 13 Lakes Entrance fishing spots 161 Figure 14 Early days 180 Figure 15 Loaf, Danny, Tanya 180 Figure 16 ‘Slipper skipper’ 185 Figure 17 Tisha's Presentation at Rockhampton 229 Figure 18 Proline Fishing Charters 230 Figure 19 ‘Gorgeous George’ as fisherman, Billy Tyne 232 Figure 20 National Oceans Office promotional postcard 367 Figure 21 Deep Blue promotional postcard 367 Figure 22 Marlin and Dory in Finding Nemo 367 Figure 23 National Oceans Office promotional sticker 367

Insert Nautical chart – Bass Strait Insert Nautical chart – Bass Strait Oil Rigs

Table 1 Shark licence net unit changes 59 Table 2 Gummy and School Shark, TAC figures 2001-2005 101 Table 3 Conversions: ITQ, TAC, carcass weight 106 Table 4 Under and overcatch provisions 110 Table 5 Warehousing 111 xvii

†

Prologue: A tale of two fields, or, the shifting field of fieldwork

A peculiar aspect of doing fieldwork 'at home' is that one is never quite sure where 'home' ends and 'the field' begins. I was raised on a beef and cereal farm in north-east Victoria, Australia, and, like many of my friends, moved to the city of Melbourne in 1995, when I was 18, in order to further my studies. When, at the beginning of 2001, I moved to the coastal town of Port Albert, in south-east Victoria and began talking with those involved in commercial fishing, I adjusted to the small, primary industry focused community with ease (Figures 1-2). Despite not really knowing anyone in advance, the move to Port Albert was more like a ‘homecoming’ than an exploration of an exotic ‘other’. The people and practices I encountered were somewhat different to those I had grown up with, and yet they were strangely familiar. I found that I shared many of the assumptions of the fishermen1 with whom I spoke, or that I recognised perspectives I had encountered in my youth. While all fieldworkers experience periods of adjustment, my fieldwork was

1 The vast majority of those who commercially fish the waters of Bass Strait are male. Commercial fishing is generally regarded as a ‘male occupation’ by both men and women in the fishing community. Even those few women who fished regularly insisted that they be referred to as ‘fishermen’. I use the masculine throughout, except where I refer to the depersonalised, generic category of ‘fisher’ as defined within a bureaucratic discourse. 19

characterised by tensions between trying to 'fit in' with the community, maintaining a sense of 'professional distance' from the project, and trying to reconcile the mixed feelings elicited during this strange period of homecoming.

As part of my undergraduate diet of Malinowski and Evans-

1 Regional map Pritchard, I had digested a

sense that ‘participant observation’ demanded both personal engagement as well as a certain level of ‘detachment’. In Evans- Pritchard’s reflections on his own fieldwork he comments: “One enters into another culture and withdraws from it at the same time…. One lives in two different worlds of thought… in categories and concepts and values which often cannot easily be reconciled” (Evans-Pritchard 1937:243).

2 Satellite photograph – South East Australian states and territory (Breaking News 24/7 2006). 20

I was unprepared for the lack of clear markers of difference between 'home' and 'field', and between 'me' and 'them’. At times, I was resentful of the world that bled across the neat categories I had naïvely anticipated, blurring the boundaries that helped to make sense of both ‘their’ lives and ‘my own’. However, working with folk with whom I had more in common than I had with many of my colleagues in academia, it became necessary to remeasure the 'professional distance’. The prospect of going native did not pose much of a personal dilemma, and throughout my fieldwork I struggled to maintain a sense of perspective on those ‘categories, concepts and values’ that melded so easily with my own. Even after a considerable period 'out' of 'the field', my life still seems inseparable from the fishing industry.

Of course, the reification of physical and conceptual categories, such as ‘us’ and ‘them’, ‘home’ and ‘field’, is a process replicated by all people in all societies. Although life proceeds in a continuum, we experience and understand our lives in relation to various categories that help to create a sense of order. Indeed, imagining a separation between 'home' and 'field' has enabled me to construct a representation of a community of fisher-folk that is not overshadowed by my personal experiences. In fact, this thesis is largely concerned with processes of categorising the world, and, like much of anthropology, makes an academic consideration of the similarities, differences and incongruities among various categories and different versions of order. However, I have written the thesis with another boundary in mind, one between the information produced for academic purposes and the application of that information in public, political and other non-academic domains.

The increased mobility of many in the West, the globalisation of media and communication and the subsequent scale at which common issues are discussed, makes it hard for modern anthropologists to present 21 themselves as being detached from the legal, political, economic or social impact of their research. Of course, anthropologists have never been truly ‘detached’. For example, Malinowski’s diary entries during his fieldwork in the Australian colony of Papua New Guinea in the early part of last century describe sexualised encounters with various local women. Though tortured with guilt, Malinowski expresses no fear of official retribution, and indeed, attributes his behaviour to “a desire to impress the other fellows” (Malinowski 1967:268). Today’s anthropologists have a more heightened awareness of the politicised contexts in which they conduct their research and, moreover, present their findings.

Among the most notable of recent Australian examples is the Hindmarsh Island Bridge case. University of Adelaide anthropologist, Deane Fergie, was employed to consider the impact of a proposed bridge on local indigenous communities. Based on sensitive information gathered from Ngarrindjeri women she determined that the construction would result in significant cultural damage. Her findings were publicly challenged, most notably by another group of Ngarrindjeri women who dismissed the existence of so-called ‘secret women’s business’. The case attracted considerable media attention and speculation over what – if anything – ‘secret women’s business’ might comprise, as well as the political, legal, social and economic implications of the possible outcomes. When the credibility of her informants was publicly scrutinised in a Royal Commission, Fergie refused to disclose the sensitive information of Ngarrindjeri elders. Fergie found herself embroiled in a very public debate in which the validity of anthropological techniques, and the authenticity of the knowledge she claimed to be protecting, were ridiculed. In addition to the emotional, professional and financial duress Fergie (and her supporters) suffered, the financial assets of the University of Adelaide were threatened by the 22 ensuing legal repercussions of her stance. The affair extinguished any innocence that remained in the Australian anthropology community of the 1990s. Anthropologist (and Fergie’s husband) Rod Lucas (1996:51), wrote:

The anthropological profession in Australia has failed to convey an adequate account of the nature of fieldwork, the type of knowledge which it produces, and the politics which shape that knowledge…. For an inquiry which was conducted in a media spotlight… mainstream anthropology has failed to develop a recognised role in public debate, and failed in its broader educational and humanistic aims of having its knowledge count.

Thankfully, while my own research has not been as dramatic as Fergie’s, the Hindmarsh Island case certainly reflects the politicised arena in which many anthropologists work. My experiences as an ethnographer reflect Melanie Wiber’s (2002:8) description of her own research with fishers in Scotia-Fundy, Canada:

While the project began as an exploration into methodological innovation and local management of resources, it very quickly also became about communication and about political alliances and questions of representation – of knowledge, of agency, of actors and their impact on the environment, and of competing management paradigms.

When I began fieldwork research, I too had visions of investigating the ‘local management of resources’: bobbing around in glorious Bass Strait, sitting cross-legged in piles of nets talking about local understandings of the environment, and other such fancies. I quickly discovered an acute incongruity between the motion of a boat and the contents of my stomach. However, my reasons for shifting my research 23 direction towards issues of environmental representation, the relationship between physical and social organization and also communication in natural resource management, had more to do with the social field in which I was immersed upon arrival than my landlubber constitution.

I found myself in a political war-zone, where numerous battles were simultaneously being waged among multiple, and sometimes overlapping, interest groups: commercial fishers, conservation organisations, state and federal management bodies, marine scientists, recreational fisher lobby groups, local and federal political parties and anthropologists. The issues, circumstances and participants in these battles – some of which, and some of whom, will be described throughout this thesis – were complex, incorporating multiple economic, environmental, and cultural concerns. What was common to all, however, was the passion of those involved.

In the beginning, I struggled to understand what was happening, to learn the discourse, let alone to compose a meaningful line of enquiry. I often had the feeling that my academic agenda had been appropriated by my research community, and that my project was developing in a manner over which I had limited control. Indeed, it would be unfair not to credit many of the people I ‘studied’ with strategic agency in the development of my research and, further, to fully support and legitimise that agency. In highly volatile political fields where high stakes – lives, livelihoods, environments – are under threat, academic interlopers who have the potential to comment, perhaps influentially, upon a situation are unable to sit quietly to one side but are, necessarily, drawn into the proceedings. Past debates among anthropologists have tackled the idea that researchers can choose to be actively involved in the happenings of their field site, or to affect an objective detachment (eg. D'Andrade 1995, 24

Scheper-Hughes 1995). A more fruitful debate may focus on how anthropologists are to manage the inevitability of immersion in politically volatile field sites.

Editing the anthropologist from the story does not omit her from the fieldwork, and my role in the communities and events I will describe are incorporated into the tale. For anthropologists working in fields where policy implications may directly or inadvertently result from their representations, there is a need to carefully consider the personal and political influences on, and repercussions of, their research. This is necessary if anthropologists are to comment responsibly upon ecological trajectories. As our skills as anthropologists allow us to observe, it is our qualities as people that allow us to participate in rich, mutually meaningful relationships, embedded in mutually relevant fields of experience. While these social processes may inadvertently compel anthropologists to continuously negotiate their position as researcher in consultation with the subject pool, this does not invalidate their work. Rather, it demands a tempered reflexivity, a declaration of how and where one has been embedded in the shifting field of fieldwork.

Context, Background and Introduction: Fieldwork and the shark fishery of Bass Strait

People garner an understanding of themselves and their world through iterative performances that variously (and often simultaneously) emphasise and challenge salient boundaries in physical, social and cosmological space. These boundaries act as reference points by which groups of people orient and understand (or do not understand) their performances and the performances of others. Boundaries act to connect, as well as to divide, and it is often in the maintenance or violation of these boundaries – an evocation of the relationships between elements – that meaning is enabled (Barth 2000). Adding further complexity, the precise composition and role of boundaries transform in accordance with shifts in, for example, productive conditions, social mores, political and economic systems, and contexts. Changes in one element of life may bring a hitherto taken-for-granted boundary into focus. It is often the unintentional or strategic transgression, or the studied maintenance, of a boundary that prompts people to attend to it, question it, reaffirm it, adjust it, or dismiss it, and to behave accordingly. While epistemic change may occur incrementally, organically, imperceptivity, over many years, people are continuously faced with minor choices about how to negotiate the 27 world. The choices people make are influenced by dynamic clusters of disparate and sometimes conflicting forces. Despite the imagery of boundaries as solid, their efficacy derives from their malleability, permeability, ambiguity, or rather, the potential this enables for people to negotiate and renegotiate particular categories strategically, facilitating outcomes that are both generally comprehensible and personally desirable. Like Battaglia (1997:508), I recognise “a positive value for ambiguation, one that allows the gaps and ruptures between epistemologies the possibility of positive value”. In a call for a greater focus on ‘ambiguity’ as a positive cultural artefact rather than an anachronistic glitch in need of explanation, she continues (ibid:508-9):

Such gaps reveal their function accordingly as incentive for connection across differently situated knowledges and across experiences…. An anthropology of ambiguation also breaks from models that take ambiguation as a textual problem rather than as a practice of removing or disturbing those constraints on human relations that categories and boundaries impose.

It is the ambiguity of conceptual boundaries that enables agency.

The commercial fishermen who hunt shark in the waters of Bass Strait, off the south-east coast of Australia, articulate and perform relationships with themselves, one another and their natural environment, in keeping with various categories of meaning which emerge from the dynamic social and productive demands of their occupation. A vital component of ‘being’ a commercial fisherman, particularly a shark hunter, is the ability to negotiate personal boundaries strategically, variously emphasising individuality and group membership, depending on context. Through shared experiences and an overlapping recognition of when, where, how and by whom perforate boundaries can be legitimately contorted or breached, fishermen 28 strategically negotiate the world in a way that is meaningful to other group members (Battaglia 1997, Ingold 2000a:224-5). In this thesis, I consider ambiguity as a positive artefact vital to individual and group agency. Through the stories of Bass Strait commercial fishermen (particularly shark hunters), I consider the strategic negotiation of natural and personal boundaries and explore the implications of these notions of self as they encounter broader Australian, and particularly bureaucratic notions of the ‘individual’ and the ‘environment’.

Though many delineations are regarded by those who acknowledge them as a priori – for example, land and sea, man and woman, alive and dead – groups of people imprint the world with meaning according to their sense of the past, the imperatives of their present, and sometimes their predictions for the future. As Ingold stresses in relation to the anthropological comparison of ‘cultures’, “Real people are indeed whole [and] the world in which they – we – dwell is not divided into blocs but is continuous” (Ingold 2000a:230 original emphasis). Indeed, in many Western depictions of human perception, phenomena are only comprehensible when imagined in relation to an organic labyrinth of other salient items. However, despite the conditional, sometimes ephemeral, qualities of the world around us, particular categories of meaning do emerge with some consistency in relation to enduring patterns of behaviour and experience. Those who share experiences – such as, say, geographical circumstances, social and cosmological systems and language – may feel that their membership in a particular class, gender, culture or category, is a constitutional reality. Indeed, their position may appear so entrenched as to be beyond consideration, to go without saying (Bourdieu 1977:18). Such taken-for-granted distinctions may only ever become apparent in descriptions of a ‘culture’ by those who do not count themselves as a member: what Bourdieu has referred to as ‘outsider-oriented discourse’ (ibid). 29

(Certainly in the past, anthropology has played a notable part in articulating categories and comparing the ‘organic labyrinths’ of various ‘cultures’). Alternatively, in the event of vastly different experiences and categories of meaning, sufficiently distinct social groups may have trouble recognising many of the salient boundaries of another. It is when a particular inchoate labyrinth of meaning is considered from the perspective of those who do not share the same experiences and understandings, that meaning can become skewed and attempts at communication can falter.

In addition to a study of commercial fishermen, my research brought me into contact with people who staff the government body charged with regulating the commercial fishing industry: the Australian Fisheries Management Authority (AFMA). Of course, these groupings – ‘commercial fishermen’ and ‘fisheries managers’ – are not unproblematic, as they are differentiated internally, contested, ascribed meaning via ’outsider-oriented discourses’, shift in meaning according to changing contexts, they overlap, break-down, contradict and enforce other categories of meaning. However, the domains of experience encountered by these two groups are, I contend, different enough to occasion the development of significantly distinct categories of meaning. I explore some of these differences, and the disruption which results when commercial fishermen and national fisheries regulators come together to discuss an ocean which they experience – understand – in distinct ways. My purpose is not to merely highlight these differences, however, but to consider the durability of particular ways of seeing the world, and to muse over what can happen when those with minority perspectives are compelled to adjust their behaviour and identity in response to categories that have no place in their existing system of meaning, adjustments that may demand behaviour that directly contradicts the imperatives of their core ‘reality’. 30

In a final application of the notion of boundaries and categories, I explore the implications of permeable boundaries and incongruous realities in terms of the ‘environmental crises’ that have come to dominate discourses about the natural world in the last 25 years. The argument progresses along lines forged by those such as Heidegger (1962), Bourdieu (1973) and Ingold (1992, 2000a), who rightly stress the subjectivity, and the apparent inherency, of shared categories of meaning. Much of my work is indebted to their valuable insights into the iterative nature of human understanding and action. However, while Heidegger, Bourdieu and Ingold (arguably the most successful) emphasise the continuousness (Ingold 1993a) of the world and everything in it, my emphasis in the final chapters is on the capacity of social categories to render the world deeply, tangibly, fractured. While I do not advocate a revival of cultural taxonomies, I stress the need for a careful consideration of how people classify the world, particularly when a clash of perspectives can have deleterious social and environmental implications. If social categories influence our behaviour in the world, then we may be wise to focus on understanding the boundaries that people acknowledge, rather than attempting to explain them away.1

Boundaries, ambiguities and individuals

Over the last 20 years in Australia, there has been a rapid growth in the intervention of the nation-state in commercial fisheries. Previously, Australian fishermen had been able to exist almost entirely in the context of the community of fishers encountered in local ports and at sea, as well as those involved in the marketing of their product.

1 Of course, neither Heidegger, Bourdieu nor Ingold asserted that symbolic boundaries could not contribute to very ‘real’ consequences for people. Bourdieu’s (1977:190-2) notion of ‘symbolic violence’, for example, powerfully evokes the potential of ‘ideas’ to influence patterns of interaction. My stated preference for emphasising the rigidity of social form reflects the point in this anthropological conversation, so to speak, at which I have intruded my comments. 31

Relationships among crews, skippers and fishermen of different ports were – and still are – negotiated through the complex and ongoing processes of ‘impression management’ (Goffman 1959). In other words, when individuals encounter particular people and situations they employ their dramaturgical skills to present themselves in a particular way, depending upon contextual cues and their desired outcomes. Increasingly, those in the commercial fishing industries have been compelled to negotiate a range of contexts and characters that have only become salient relatively recently. Various management structures, and the government agents who create and impose these structures, are features commercial fishermen must now negotiate. Additionally, greater public and political interest in marine resources has brought commercial fishing, and fishermen, under increased media scrutiny. As harvesters of a public resource, commercial fishermen are indirectly accountable to the public, and must be mindful that their depiction in the media does not compel members of the public to protest their continued access to the resource. At the 2005 Seafood Directions conference in Sydney, one of the key issues identified by commercial fishermen was the importance of presenting an ‘environmentally friendly’ public image. The contexts in which fishermen assert their identity have become increasingly complex.

My fieldwork began during the summer of 2000 and 2001, at a time when major management restructuring of Australia’s Southern Shark Fishery (SSF) (as it was then known) was being implemented by AFMA (Foster et al. 2005, Lockhart and Purcell 2003, Sachse and Richardson 2005, Vince 2006). The shark fishery was managed as part of the South East Fishery (SEF), which incorporated other species including scallops, ling, blue grenadier, and crayfish. The official jurisdiction of the shark fishery extended eastwards from the border of Western Australia and South Australia, incorporating waters surrounding 32

Tasmania, to the Victoria and New South Wales border. However, most shark fishing took place in Bass Strait, the shallow and notoriously treacherous area of water between the coast of Victoria and the southern island state of Tasmania (Figures 3-4).

Until 2001 the shark fishery was officially managed by regulating the amount of fishing equipment – the length of net or the number of hooks – each boat could use (input controls). In 2001 management changed to a system of Individual Transferable Quotas (ITQs) that limited the amount of fish each licence holder was allowed the opportunity to catch (output controls). The transition to ITQs was controversial, and, throughout 2000, discussion among shark fishermen was dominated by the impending changes.

Towards the end of 2000, I attended a public protest meeting held at Trades Hall, in central Melbourne. The meeting was organised by a small, politically active group of commercial fishermen, and formed part of a campaign to prevent the implementation of ITQs. Many of those fishermen were members of the Southern Shark Gillnet Fishermen’s Association (SSGFA). The SSGFA operated with a strong focus on raising public awareness, using the media to convey the message that commercial fishermen were not the environmental vandals they were often portrayed as, that the ITQ system was fundamentally flawed as a conservation measure, and that other, far more destructive, environmental hazards were being ignored by the government. A strong focus was placed on the importance of facilitating fish habitat and food-web integrity. A lot of time and money was also invested in garnering the support of those with perceived political influence, including politicians, international scientists, media personalities and academics. 33

3 Ocean regions relevant under post 2003 SESS fishery (Commonwealth of Australia 2005).Note: original published without scale.

4 Ocean regions within the SESS relevant to shark fishing (Commonwealth of Australia 2005). Note: original published without scale.

This strategic impression management presented an image that differed considerably from the Commonwealth sanctioned commentary on issues pertaining to the marine environment. Like the majority of Western nation-state media representations of the oceans, the Australian government promotes a mood of impending environmental collapse. As Beck (1992) has written, modern governments are often compelled to direct their attention towards averting environmental calamity, rather than governing proactively. The currency of nation- state environmentalism is in the avoidance of risk, or the avoidance of resource depletion or environmental calamity, rather than in the governance of existing resources (ibid:21-3). Indeed, the basic Western model of public policy development begins with the identification of a ‘problem’, progressing cyclically through the development of a course of action, its implementation and an assessment of the situation for further, or unresolved, ‘problems’ (Davis and Bridgman 2003:23). The merit of governments are often measured (in part) by the level of activity, and funding, directed towards allaying potential disasters. Beck (1992:21) describes this style of governance as “politically reflexive”. He also suggests that because environmental risks are intangible they are subject to speculation, and manifest – exist – in ways consistent with state-legitimated representations. “Hence, the mass media and the scientific and legal professions in charge of defining risks become key social and political positions” (ibid:23). Australian government media releases in the period before ITQ management was introduced asserted that the ‘best available scientific information’ had been used to devise a plan for tackling the ‘problems’ of overfishing. It was asserted that ‘hard decisions’, ones that would result in the expulsion of some people from the fishing industry, were necessary to avoid calamity. By officially identifying commercial fishermen as a problematic influence on the ocean they were positioned publicly, as an environmental threat. 35

The stories I heard at Trades Hall, in late 2000, conveyed a picture quite different to that portrayed by the government and in the media. That night I was introduced to a group of people who had experienced, appreciated and understood the ocean in ways that were different to the experiences and understandings of most other Australians. Correspondingly, the salience and meanings associated with these experiences were also different. Though they were aware of their negative public image, and familiar with the broadly held values that they were charged with compromising, these people valued the marine environment in additional ways. For me, this evening was the beginning of a much more intense education on the commercial shark fishing industry of Bass Strait: the alternative perspectives presented that night highlighted the diverse ways in which groups of people may perceive a common environment. While a great deal of Australian anthropological work has been directed towards understanding indigenous modes of comprehending the natural environment, this thesis includes a consideration of minority perspectives held by those of largely European decent.

In 2002, at another public meeting in the fishing port of Lakes Entrance, I was able to witness something of the disruption caused when multiple, competing perspectives on the ocean – and on the commercial fishing industry – converge. The gathering was organised and attended by staff of AFMA, and was intended to provide a forum in which fishing industry stakeholders – primarily fishermen and their families – could discuss issues arising from various management changes that had recently taken place. During that time, AFMA staff were conducting a series of ‘port visits’ in southern and eastern Australia, explaining the new system of management to a range of fishermen who worked in a variety of productive and ecological circumstances. 36

The meeting itself was held in the street-front conference room of a local hotel, with smartly dressed AFMA staff seated almost entirely on one side of the square arrangement of tables and chairs. The industry stakeholders, as well as members of the local and regional press, my colleague Simone Blair and I, were seated and standing around the rest of the room. Looking through the window and across the street we could see the fishing fleet of Lakes Entrance. Beyond the wharves lay the channel that could be followed west to the bar, across which lay the fishing grounds of Bass Strait.

The themes and tone of the discussion were typical of such meetings. The commercial sector predominantly expressed uncertainty, fear, scepticism, anger and frustration. Variously frustrated and resigned fishermen, and their families, sought answers as to how particular changes would effect them, personally, and appealed to AFMA managers to consider the affect these changes would have on the lives of those in the room. The fisheries managers present answered questions and explained changes by referring to the bureaucratic structure of the management system, and the rights and responsibilities of fishing licence holders within that management system. The management focus was on the official, documented aspects of the fishing industry and of the fishing licence holders, while the productive circumstances of particular fishermen were not prioritised. One veteran fisheries manager was so impervious to the lengthy diatribes of frustrated fishermen that some referred to him as “the ice man”.

Amidst an afternoon of personal tales, accusations, suggestions and explanations that yielded little in the way of satisfaction for the commercial sector, one seemingly innocuous comment hinted at how changes in the management of the fishing industry were impacting not 37 only business viability but also notions of personal and group identity. The comment came from a fisherman who expressed his grievance by stammering, “You’re treating us like, like, like individuals!”2

At first, this comment appears to be something of a contradiction. In the context of their profession, those who take to Bass Strait in search of fish proudly assert that they are ‘individuals’. Indeed, most of the fishermen I met during my fieldwork worked their own hours and explicitly deferred to few when making decisions. One of the greatest slights that one fishing boat skipper could make against another was to suggest that he was unable to catch fish without the assistance of other skippers. Furthermore, many fishermen perpetuated an image of themselves that somewhat coincided with the stereotype of the rugged, sea-faring hero. As one shark fisherman glowingly described his colleagues: "[They are] so individual and so self reliant! They don't need anyone else”. Even their appearance conveyed a sense of the self- reliant individualism so valued in the fishing industry. Their tanned, wind-worn faces, strong hands and arms, stoic expressions and typical uniform of sturdy work clothes – often stained with oil and dirt – reflected the rugged individualism characteristic of romantic depictions of Australian men.

Stereotypes, however, can neither be regarded as an accurate depiction of a group of people, nor as a completely baseless attribution of

2 Many quotes have been modified slightly to omit standard repetition and hesitation in speech. Most of those people represented in this treatise will be very familiar with others in the community – their personal details, speech patterns, relationships – and, as such, the anonymity of participants is difficult to achieve. Pseudonyms have been used in some, but not all, stories. In some cases, multiple pseudonyms have been used in order to denote a single person, while in other cases the same name has been used to denote more than one person. In some cases, details such as the port in question, the boat name or other details have been changed in order to mask the identity of those concerned. None of these changes compromise the illustrations being made with the stories.

38 characteristics. Rather, the image of fishermen as ‘individualists’ must be read in the context of performance, taking into account how the image is employed, by whom it is claimed, and to whom it is ascribed. For example, the valorisation of independent decision-making reflects the importance of the concept of ‘individualism’ within the fishing industry. However, in certain contexts, the same fishermen who talk about ‘not needing anyone’ will refer to the ‘fishing community’, to ‘Straitsmen’, to the ‘brotherhood of fishermen’, and to ‘us’. In other contexts, certain fishermen will identify certain other fishermen as members of an exclusive group: ‘Big Boys’, ‘Corner Inlet Boys’, ‘B’s’, ‘Diversified Fishermen’, ‘Quota Dogs’, ‘Westernport Boys’.

To simultaneously assert individuality and membership within a group is a contradiction common to human societies. Rather than seeking an inherent truth about individuality or group membership, anthropologists have long sought to describe the contexts in which people assign boundaries between and within groups, and to show how these boundaries shift with changing circumstances (Kapferer 1979). Evans-Pritchard (1974:147-8) notes in relation to the Nuer:

the political system is an equilibrium between opposed tendencies towards fission and fusion, between the tendency of all groups to segment, and the tendency of all groups to combine with segments of the same order.

The delineations people recognise are not fundamental. Rather, they are highlighted in relation to fluctuating social, productive and ecological demands. Particular circumstances demand that people operate as cooperative members of one or another group. Other situations compel people to behave as ‘individuals’. A certain degree of interpretive flexibility is required in order for people to negotiate the various contexts of their lives. It is the ambiguity of distinctions among 39 groups, and between individuals, as well as the ability of single people to present themselves in a range of ways, roles or personas – recognising and positioning themselves in relation to various boundaries accordingly – that imbue these categories with efficacy. Without interpretive flexibility to create, reinforce and transgress boundaries in response to changing conditions, to redefine who is ‘in’ and who is ‘out’, structures of social organisation would soon cease to correspond to the shifting circumstantial imperatives. For example, resilient anomalies such as the Australian Head of State (the British Queen) persist as a diplomatic token of a formally consequential nation- state relationship between Australia and the British monarchy.

Within a group of people who often explicitly emphasise their ‘individuality’, why was their treatment as ‘individuals’ deemed inappropriate? A possible answer to this question can be suggested by examining the social, productive and ecological circumstances of shark fishermen, and the changes introduced by the Australian government. While fishermen often claim to be ‘individuals’, this claim is made in the context of a social network of like-minded others. One can only be recognised as ‘an individual’ by those who share a common sense of the normative. As Foucault has impressed upon us, those who appear too dissimilar from ‘the group’ risk being pathologised, feared, mocked or incarcerated (Foucault 1977). To be ‘an individual’ among other fishermen is not the same as being ‘an individual’ as defined by the nation-state. In this thesis I consider what it is to be ‘an individual’ in these different contexts and what happens when actual people are compelled to negotiate these contexts simultaneously. I do so by exploring the strategic negotiation of ambiguous boundaries within the commercial fishing community – indeed, the active maintenance of such ambiguity – and by considering the repercussions of the rigid and externally imposed categories defined under the Individual Transferable 40

Quota management system.

The ‘community’

Though I lived in the town of Port Albert from early 2001 to early 2003, my research was multi-sited. In 2002, I only barely spent more nights in Port Albert than I did in other Southern ports, Canberra, at sea, or somewhere in between. After Port Albert, I spent the majority of time in the Victorian towns of Port Welshpool and Lakes Entrance. Attendance at various management meetings also took me to the states of South Australia, Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory, where I spent considerable time with various fisheries ‘experts’. My time was divided between talking with local fishermen, attending meetings between fishermen and the agents of various official bodies, particularly AFMA, both locally and interstate, going on fishing trips, and working as a waitress at the Pier Port Hotel in Port Welshpool. I often encountered the same people in a variety of locations and contexts. I also spent a week observing the operation of the shark sector of management at the offices of AFMA, in Canberra. Hence, the following description of actual towns and places merely sets the scene for research that spanned a large number of locales, social contexts and physical domains.

Port Albert is located 209 km south east of Melbourne, at the shore of the body of water known as Corner Inlet (Figure 5). Established in 1841, Port Albert is the oldest port in the state of Victoria and was a major shipping port servicing the growing pastoral region and the goldfields throughout the next two decades (Collett 1994). By 1879 a railway was developed between Melbourne and Sale, and later further east, bypassing Port Albert and leaving it isolated from the major transportation route (Foster Mirror 1921:56). The development of other coastal ports and alternative transport systems saw the town and region 41

42 shrink considerably, to the present population of a little over 200 permanent residents.

Commercial fishing in the sheltered area of Corner Inlet began, in earnest, in the early 1900s and continues to the present, with many of the current seine fishermen tracing their genealogy back to the earliest non-indigenous fishermen. Port Albert’s maritime history has been furthered by the ongoing presence of the fishing industry, with a variety of fishing methods employed throughout the last century.2 Fishing for school shark in Bass Strait began with long-lines in the 1920s. Catches intensified during World War II when shark livers were prized as a source of Vitamin A, and the government encouraged the fishing industry to provide a reliable source of wartime food. During the 1960s a more effective method of catching shark was developed, using monofilament gillnets, and production rates rose rapidly, peaking at nearly 4,000 tonnes in 1969 (Commonwealth of Australia 1992:241). Catches declined during the 1970s, but a triplication in fishing effort3 resulted in catches rising significantly through the 1980s. During this time, a variety of factors, including concerns over mercury levels in large school shark, changing abundance, altered market preferences and alterations to technology, led to a change in focus from school shark (Galeorhinus galeus) to gummy shark (Mustelus antarcticus) as the primary target of shark fishermen.

At one time there were 15 shark boats operating out of Port Albert. When I began fieldwork in 2001 there were four shark boats, though at the time of writing only one full-time commercial shark boat remains:

2 The small town has an impressive maritime museum. 3 Fishing “effort”, as it is applied in fisheries management literature, may be calculated by manipulating various figures that give an indication of the amount of fishing gear that has been used in a given area over a given time period. 43 the Margaret Goulden.4 During the period of my fieldwork there were also four inlet fishermen, a fledgling wrasse operation, a number of boats from neighbouring ports that fished commercially from Port Albert for a short time, multiple permanent pleasure crafts and three charter boats.

Though the fishing and dairy industries are no longer as significant as they once were, they remain sources of employment in the area, as has the timber industry and the nearby timber mill. These days, recreational fishing is extremely popular in the region, and weekends coincide with the arrival of anglers, who congregate with ‘the locals’, at the Port Albert Hotel, located opposite the wharf. There is a clear distinction made by locals between those who live in the town and those who visit. While several businesses benefited from the money spent by anglers, it was often said that the latter came to town with one shirt and a $10 note and they did not change either all weekend. They were regularly referred to disparagingly as ‘blow ins’, ‘amateurs’, ‘townies’, ‘weekend warriors’, ‘yachties’, or ‘WAFIs’ (Wind Assisted Fucking Idiots). ‘Locals night’, (during my fieldwork) generally occurred on a Tuesday. The distinction between locals and visitors was somewhat blurred, however, by the large number of holiday homemakers, and the frequency with which recreational fishers moved to the town seeking a permanent sea-change, or upon retirement. Indeed, the population is aged. In 2001 there were only around one dozen adults under the age of 30.

Also bordering Corner Inlet are the small fishing villages of Port

4 Three of the shark boats operating from Port Albert in 2001 supported full-time fishing operations using gillnets: the Margaret Goulden, Rodondo and Jupana. The owner of the fourth shark boat, Seapride, supplemented his small long-line fishing operation by chartering out his vessel for anglers, scientific bodies and other organisations. 44

Franklin and Port Welshpool, plus villages at Mann’s Beach, Robertson’s Beach and an Esso/BHP facility at Barry’s Beach which services the oil and gas rigs of Bass Strait (Figure 6). Port Franklin, with a little over 100 residents, is the smallest of the fishing ports. The town is built on the edge of the Franklin River, and does not actually border the deeper waters of Corner Inlet. Marine traffic is restricted to boats of small draught, and hence, Port Franklin’s commercial fleet is limited to small bay and inlet fishing boats. Port Welshpool, by contrast, features a large wharf, the only operational slipway in the region, and has the deepest access channel leading to Bass Strait. There were six active shark boats and four inlet boats operating out of Port Welshpool in 2001. However, several other boats, including scallop, purse seine and squid boats also operated out of Port Welshpool for extended periods during my fieldwork. The township itself is slightly smaller than Port Albert in terms of population, though it, too, fluctuates due to the flow of anglers.

The closest major fishing port is Lakes Entrance, around two hours drive east of Port Albert. Lakes Entrance has a population of over 5,500, and supports a much larger number of fishing boats than the ports of Corner Inlet. There were 13 shark boats with gillnets operating out of Lakes Entrance in 2001, together with scallop boats, inshore and offshore board trawlers, a Danish seine fleet and others giving a total of 65 boats fishing the waters of Bass Strait. About 19 fishermen were licenced to fish the waters of the Gippsland Lakes. In addition to the larger number of boats operating out of Lakes Entrance, the township has a much more developed fishing industry infrastructure, including several local processing operations, a mechanised cooperative where ice is loaded and fish unloaded, a large slipway, a maritime certificate training centre, and a variety of commercial fishing equipment outlets. All boats that venture to the port, however, are forced to negotiate the 45 treacherous Lakes Entrance bar, the shallow and dangerous entrance to the sheltered port.

To the west of Port Albert is San Remo, with a population exceeding 2,200. Located on the shore of Western Port Bay, San Remo is considerably closer to Melbourne than the more eastern ports (Figure 6). Unlike Port Albert, Port Welshpool and Lakes Entrance, the entrance to Western Port Bay is not restricted by a shallow bar, and hence, the fishing fleet at San Remo is more dynamic. Commercial shark fishermen operating permanently from San Remo during the early stages of my fieldwork fluctuated around six, though at the time of writing that number had dropped to two.

6 Satellite photograph – Bass Strait, 20 Sept 2004 (CSIRO and MAR 2004).

There are many islands scattered throughout Bass Strait, including 52 in the Furneaux Group (Figure 7 and Inserted Maps). This predominant cluster of islands once formed part of a connecting land mass between Tasmania and the mainland which was partially submerged by rising ocean levels. The administrative centre of the Furneaux Group is Flinders Island, home to some 850 people. Cape Barren and Clarke Islands have a combined population of 64. The other major land mass, and the only other island boasting a stable population, is the more isolated King Island, to the West, home to around 2,500 people. While King Island does host a significant crayfish fleet, as well as giant crab and abalone industries, neither King nor Flinders Island are accessible enough (or have the infrastructure) to lure a large number of commercial fishermen permanently. However, both islands are regularly noted by commercial fishermen, as they are significant determinants of currents and fish movements, they act as navigational landmarks, they represent safe places to berth during inclement weather, and many rate a night out in Lady Baron, on Flinders Island, as one of the more exciting, action-packed and unpredictable experiences one can have in Bass Strait.

The community upon which this thesis focuses does not correspond to a particular town, or place, but rather, encompasses those who venture out into Bass Strait, primarily those who search for shark. Though there are certain areas that are targeted more often than others, there are no specific ‘grounds’ towards which fishermen uniformly direct their vessels when embarking on a shark trip. Rather, boats from different ports in Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia all have access to the same stretch of water. The crews of these boats all encounter similar conditions and experiences. Most fishermen can identify Bass Strait boats from an impressive distance, and can provide a history of the

7 Furneaux Group (adapted from Wilkins Tourist Maps 2000). Note: no scale in original.

48 owners, crew, and target species. While at sea, many skippers carry on radio or phone relationships with men from other ports even though, in some cases, they have never physically met. Thus, the community of interest here is without well defined geographic limits, without a common residency, and lacking in regular face-to-face contact among members. I resist the term ‘virtual community’ (Rheingold 1993), as it implies something insubstantial or ephemeral, though it is often used to describe social groups with strong, demonstrable and ongoing connections. Furthermore, I would prefer to avoid implying that the community of fishermen is akin to groups of people who communicate via the internet, groups for whom the term ‘virtual community’ was originally intended. Rather, the community of Bass Strait shark fishermen creates and maintains links through a demonstration of common experience that is manifest as gossip and storytelling and in the cooperative act of hunting shark.

Shark fishing in Bass Strait

The crew

The composition of a shark boat crew is usually one skipper and one or two deckhands, or deckies. Skippers must hold formal qualifications for which they are eligible to apply only after accumulating a significant amount of sea time, usually completed as a deckie. The testing comprises both written and practical examinations, covering a range of topics including navigation and safety. There is an increasing push from some official groups and some in industry to introduce a comparable qualification for deckhands. Though ‘deckie courses’ do exist they are not mandatory and many deckies are still employed on the wharf.

The fish

Almost 90 percent of the fish captured by shark fishermen in Bass Strait are gummy shark or school shark. While the scientific evidence is not conclusive regarding the migration and breeding patterns of these shark, it is known that shoals of females tend to give birth to pups in shallow, coastal, waters, so as to reduce the risk of predation from larger creatures. Shark can give birth to as many as 40 live young, although the average is 14 (New South Wales Department of Primary Industries 2004:221). The physiological aspect of the shark most relevant to its capture is that it does not have a pocket of air that regulates buoyancy: the ‘swim bladder’. In other fish species, sound waves from electronic fish-finding technology detect this swim bladder and alert the watchful skipper to the presence of fish below. Lacking a swim bladder, shark are undetectable using such technology, and fishermen must rely on other signs to locate fish. These techniques are described in greater detail in Chapters 3 through 6.

The current catch of school shark is approximately 20 percent of that of gummy shark. Less valuable species include demersal shark species such as bronze whaler (Carcharhinus brachyurus), broadnosed sevengill shark (Notorynchus cepedianus), mako (Isurus oxyrinchus) and angel shark (Squatina australis). Fishermen working further to the west tend to catch a slightly higher amount of scale-fish as by-product. Close to 10 percent of the landings, however, are of two low value species: saw shark (Pristiophorus nudipinnis and P. cirratus) and elephant fish (Callorhinchus milii). These species are not typically targeted by fishermen, but rather, are caught by chance as ‘by-product’. There are no current stock concerns for either fish, and indeed, their occasional glut combined with their consistent low market value makes them a disappointing catch for some deckhands, who are required to process 50 the fish despite their low return relative to gummy shark. An occasional and highly prized by-product is a boarfish variety referred to as ‘duckfish’5 (Pentaceropsis recurvirostris). Though ‘duckies’ fetch a low price they are widely regarded among the fishing community as exceptionally good eating.

The two most common ‘by-catch’ species (unmarketable species encountered unintentionally) taken in Bass Strait are draughtshark, or, ‘skunkies’ (Cephaloscyllium laticeps) and Port Jackson shark (Heterodontus portusjacksoni). Both were regarded with annoyance and some level of disgust, and were widely described as unmarketable due to their ‘inedibility’. Compared to other species, skunkies and Port Jackson shark are remarkably resilient to the process of capture, and can almost always be released in good condition (Walker 1999:secn.1.3). In a survey of 29 skunkies and Port Jackson shark captured during a shark fishing trip in the summer of 2002, 100 percent were returned to the water alive and active. They are more of a nuisance to deckies who must expend valuable time and effort throwing them off the boat.

Several other, more destructive, creatures concern a skipper and his crew while at sea. The most loathed creatures, ones that invariably emerge on a trip, are ‘sea-lice’ (Isopods and Copepods). These crustacean parasites are typically one to two centimetres long, and have a pale, armadillo-like slatted back and many legs. However, their size and appearance changes with their habitat.6 They easily enter the notoriously tight orifices of dead and dying fish, and consume the flesh

5 The nick-names by which these fish are known vary between fishermen of different regions, although most names are broadly recognised. I use the names I encountered most often in the region by the fishermen with whom I was most familiar. I do not suggest that one name is more legitimate than another. See Serdy (2004) for a discussion of problems encountered in the management of species with ambiguous nomenclature. 6 A louse of almost 13cm was shown to me on the wharf in Lakes Entrance one day, brought back from deep water by an incredulous fisherman. 51 with ghoulish efficiency. The remains of devoured fish resemble the skeletons that are scavenged in rubbish bins by animated alley-cats. The havoc wreaked by lice is such that fishing operations are structured so as to minimise lice damage. Lice are typically more active in the dark, hence fishing in daylight and strong moonlight is greatly favoured. Nets remain in the water long enough to maximise the chance of fish being caught, but not long enough for them to be ruined by lice. Whereas ‘undamaged’ or ‘good’ shark could be sold for approximately $8.00 to $8.50 a kilo in 2001, ‘damaged’ shark were considerably less valuable, though their value varied in accordance with both the extent of the damage and the negotiating skills of the buyer and seller.

Australian fur seals (Arctocephalus pusillus doriferus), which are abundant in Bass Strait (Zoological Parks and Gardens Board of Victoria 2004:1), currently cause less of a problem to shark fishermen, but can still be costly.7 The agile creatures regularly swim around the nets when they are being hauled (see below), and may tear the livers from those shark that are tangled in the net.

Boats

The majority of early commercial fishing in south eastern Australia was restricted to bays, inlets and coastal areas. Boats tended to be quite small, around five or six metres in length, and, particularly in shallow regions like Corner Inlet, had a minimal draught (Kerr 1985:49-51). Whaling was a prominent industry in the century after British invasion

7 While a number of seal species – including the Australian fur seal – were hunted to near collapse by commercial sealers in the late 18th and early 19th Centuries, the Australian fur seal population has rebuilt quickly. Indeed, concerns have been raised as to the impact of an exploding seal population on the existing ecosystemic dynamic: investigations have been commenced by the Australian Fisheries Management Authority into options for avoiding competition between fur seals and commercial fishermen in the near future (Arnould 2003). 52

(1788), though it did not last long, and in the second half of the 19th Century many whaling boats were bought by commercial fishermen seeking to go offshore in search of crayfish and barracouta (ibid:9,49). The ex-whaling boats, as well as those commissioned especially for offshore fishing, were necessarily considerably larger than the bay and inlet boats, at between seven and eleven metres. Indeed, when larger commercial fishing boats were built (thirteen metres), many were modelled on whaling vessels, particularly those in Tasmania where there were more than twenty whaling stations (ibid:9). Boat designs and, particularly, on-board working equipment have continued to evolve in response to new technology, trials, errors, innovation, environmental and productive demands. However, few boats are longer than twenty metres, as the size can hamper the manoeuvrability of the vessel and add excess mass thus increasing fuel costs. Also, as will be explained below, it is only practical to carry a limited amount of gillnet, as longer lengths are more difficult to work with and their use can compromise the quality of the catch. Before describing the fishing equipment in detail, however, I will say something more about the boats themselves.

The composition of the south eastern Australian commercial fishing fleet is dynamic. Changes in environmental conditions or markets may compel fishermen to change their target species in a matter of hours by changing the onboard gear. More significant changes may also be made to assist the fishing operation or to add comfort to the boat. Few boats have been commissioned in recent decades, and many of the boats in the current fleet have, at some point, been used to hunt shark.

The hulls are typically fashioned from either steel or wood. Some more recently constructed vessels are made using synthetic materials such as fibreglass. While most of the boats have a straight stern, some are ‘double-ended’, meaning that both the bow and the stern taper to a 53 point. The boats are built to draw mere metres, which is vital considering they typically have to cross a shallow bar twice every trip: a large catch of fish is worth little if the boat is weighed down so far that it cannot reach the shore to unload.

The deck of a fishing boat is divided into a number of locations where different activities are performed and equipment is stored. The arrangement described below is meant as a guide only, and is based upon the boats I had the fortune to explore.

The majority of the deck is reserved for the task of fishing. A small structure, the wheelhouse, sits atop the deck, though the precise deck location, design and degree of comfort of the wheelhouse varies from boat to boat. The operating centre of the boat is the bridge of the wheelhouse, from where the skipper navigates and drives the vessel, coordinates the technical and mechanical fishing equipment, and communicates with others at sea. Located slightly behind and below the bridge is the galley, where food is prepared and eaten, television watched, books and magazines perused, gallons of coffee consumed and countless cigarettes smoked. The skipper may sleep (or doze) in a bunk in the galley so that he is close to the bridge in case of an emergency. The rest of the crew may be bedded in a section of the wheelhouse also, or may have quarters in the fo’c’sle, located below the deck of the bow. This area will typically contain simple bunks, the few personal belongings brought by the crew, their wet-weather gear and some safety equipment. Deep in the hull of the boat is the engine room: a source of tremendous noise. Also below deck are storage spaces and, of course, the fish-hold. Many boats operate with brine tanks, located below the deck, where cleaned fish are stored in refrigerated brine. Even at the wharf, brine tanks can be kept refrigerated by connecting to mains power. However, in the early 2000s, some boats were still using ice, 54 loaded before departure, to store cleaned fish at low temperatures. Necessarily, boats using the ice method were restricted in terms of the period they could fish before their initial catches deteriorated too far to sell, though the expense of installing a brine tank placed this technology beyond the reach of some.

Fishing boats themselves are extremely important cultural icons for the commercial fishing community. The aesthetics of boats are regularly commented upon. The criteria against which a boat is judged are difficult to pinpoint, but certainly have something to do with the relative proportions of the boat and the way it sits in the water, more so than superficial qualities such as paint work. While the appearance of a boat can be described in terms of its design characteristics, appreciating a boat on the water requires an ‘eye’ for dimensions. Just as a skilled horse trainer can detect a potential winner in an untrained gelding, the apprehension of a boat requires more than mere sight, but also experience, trained attention to subtle detail and a keen interest and investment in boats generally. My understanding of what made a ‘beautiful’ boat was developed (ever so slightly) through many hours spent watching boats, listening to the appraisals of fishermen, making my own comments and assessing the response. Some are referred to as “ugly”, “horrible looking”, some have a wheelhouse that is described as a “monstrosity” while others are said to look like they’ve “been picked up in the middle and then dropped back in the water”. Other boats are “beautiful”, “nice”, or have “a good line in the water”.

Important to note is that the beauty or otherwise of a boat is typically judged on its own merits, the relationship between the owner and the judge being relatively insignificant. Two friends, for example, will not necessarily deem each others’ boats beautiful. Many of the boats were built by professional boat builders, not fulltime commercial fishermen, 55 perhaps circumventing the direct correlation between particular designs and particular owners. Also significant is the tendency for fishermen to work upon many different boats throughout their career, and, indeed, for boats to change owners several times. As such, few boats can be characterised through reference to a single crew, and even fewer men can claim a relationship with only one vessel. I am aware of only one commercial fisherman who has spent the entirety of his long career on one boat.

To suggest that a boat is not necessarily defined by its current owner or skipper does not imply that there is no sense of personal connection between fishermen and boats. Contrarily, fishermen maintain a strong connection to the boats they have owned and upon which they have worked. For example, before a visit to Hobart in 2002, I was asked by Stu, a local deckie, to take a photo of a beloved boat he had once worked upon, and which now fished out of Hobart. I remember feeling as though Stu had asked me to remember him to an old friend. Fishermen talk about boats as though they are children, pets, living creatures, with personalities, physical peculiarities and histories intricately woven into the people and places of Bass Strait. As described by Dwyer et al. (2003), Victorian boats are regularly named according to human relationships, bonds that remain even after the boats have been decommissioned, sold or wrecked. Regularly, the names refer to important relationships that the namer has, in some way, contributed to creating (ibid). Wives and children are popular subjects. For example, Mark Goulden, owns and skippers the boat Margaret Goulden, named after his mother. Mark bought the boat from his father, who had named the boat after his wife.

Naming boats after terrestrial and social relationships act to socialise the ocean to some extent, though founding relationships fade from 56 salience over time as new relationships – between the boat and the crew, the boat and Bass Strait, the crew of one boat and another – supplement the original sentiment. And, of course, a boat, its name and history, can have various ‘meanings’ for different people, and over time. Regardless of the cargo, however, commercial fishing boats act as vessels of social meaning, a residue of contextually embedded history trailing behind them as they steam around Bass Strait, ducking in and out of coastal ports, laden with both fish and fishermen. “The names of boats”, explain Dwyer et al. (2003:15) “provide information within a public domain about the person who named the boat – information that is known to, and becomes the common property of, the community of fishers who encounter the boat and her crew”. Drawing upon Akinnaso (1980) they suggest that “the names of boats ‘serve as an open diary by providing a system through which information is symbolically stored and retrieved’” (ibid). Capturing the way in which knowledge of boats, including their names, helps to form a collective history that contextualises further interactions within the fishing community, they continue, “Private and public domains, expressions of individuality and sociality, articulate to create a community of fishers whose linkages are formed, at least in part, through the boats they know” (ibid:16).

Gillnets

More than 90 percent of shark catches are made using pink or green monofilament gillnets. Though shark fishing was initially conducted using demersal long-lines, this method was superseded in the late 1960s by gillnets, although there were still around 30 active ‘long- line’ licences during the early 2000s (compared with approximately 57

100 gillnet licences) (Lockhart and Purcell 2003:6).8 In the early 2000s, the nets varied in length between 1200m and 4200m, depending on the class of licence held, though the vast majority of the catch was taken by A class licence holders who were entitled to use the longest nets (Table 1). However, by the mid 2000s all shark gillnet fishing licence holders were eligible to use 4200m of gillnet to catch their quota.9

The nets are set on the bottom of the ocean, and migrating shark swim into the net and are caught by the mesh around the gills, hence the name ‘gillnet’.10 Unable to move forward, an activity that enables them to breath, the sharks die. The nets are impressively size selective, with each fish caught in the east of Bass Strait weighing close to 2.5 kilos.

8 Demersal long-line gear (set on the sea floor) is used by some fishermen to hunt shark and other species. (A pelagic long-line hangs in the upper water column and is used for hunting species such as tuna). Throughout my fieldwork there was a subdued debate between net and hook fishermen which centred around which method was more ‘environmentally friendly’. According to some proponents of hook fishing, nets cause damage to the ground upon which they are set, and the large fish that are said to ‘bounce off’ the nets (see below) are actually entangled, die, and 'drop out' as the gear is being hauled through the water. The counter-claim from net fishermen is that the ‘drop-out’ theory is wrong, that hooks are not size selective for sharks, that they are more likely to catch school- shark rather than other species and that they hook sea-birds and turtles. These accusations emerged rarely throughout my fieldwork but typically aroused considerable passions. Though it would be wrong to say that shark fishermen were 'united' in their response to perceived threats from 'outside' institutions, differences between net and hook fishermen were often overshadowed by more pressing issues such as the introduction of ITQs. 9 Following the introduction of ITQs in 2001, a number of B class licenced fishermen appealed to AFMA for the relaxation of net restrictions, arguing that such limitations were unnecessary because the fishery was now managed by output controls. Indeed, by restricting the ability of some fishermen to catch their quota with as little effort as possible AFMA was contravening their legislated objective to facilitate the ‘economic efficiency’ of the industry. By the mid 2000s all shark gillnet licence holders were eligible to use 4200m of gillnet. However, as many smaller operations did not have the quota to justify further investment, the relaxation of net restrictions has, at the time of writing, not resulted in a significant increase in net use. 10 The distance between two opposing corners of a taut diamond represents the net gauge. In the Eastern part of Bass Strait, “six-inch mesh” (15cm) is typically used to catch smaller, younger fish, while fishermen from the Western end tend to fish with slightly larger mesh to catch slightly larger and older fish with six and a half (16.25cm) inch mesh. South Australians once used larger nets again, but an upper limit of 16.5cm was imposed in 1997 (Lockhart and Purcell 2003:7). 58

Licence 1991 Unit 1991 Reduced Reduced 1993 Unit 1993 Class Allocation Net Unit Net Allocation Net Length Allocation Length Length A10 10 6000m 7 4200m 10 4200m A6 6 3600m 4 2400m 6 2520m B5 5 3000m 3 1800m 5 2100m B4 4 2400m 3 1800m 3 1800m B3 3 1800m 3 1800m 3 1800m B2 2 1200m 2 1200m 2 1200m

Table 1 Shark licence net unit changes.

The explanation offered is that small fish swim through the nets, and fish that are too large to fit their heads into the mesh, ‘bounce off’ and swim away.

The net is tied, or ‘slung’, between two ropes, the buoy-line, or head- rope, and the lead-line.11 As the names suggest, the lead line, a thick rope, is pulled to the bottom of the ocean by lead weights, while the buoys on the slightly thicker head-rope hold the net vertical in the water. The gear should rest in such a way as to maximize the depth of water column netted. A net that lies down or over in the water has reduced efficiency. In order to facilitate the evenness of the net, the lead-line is slightly longer than the head-rope to account for the mounds across which the lead-line may have to rest on the sea floor. There are variations to net design: configurations of length and depth

11 Net making, including net slinging, is a land-based profession that requires skill, dexterity and patience. The net comes in bales from a supplier and the task of the net-maker is to tie the net to the lead and head-lines with slinging cord. While some fishermen reportedly used to make their own nets – or have their employees do it for them – net making is now typically outsourced to a centralised individual. (Net making is not to be confused with net mending, which fishermen do themselves). 59 can be adjusted, nets can be slung to alter the tautness of the net in the water12 and mesh size can be chosen to favour specific size- classes of shark.

Shooting the gear

The net is kept on the boat, wrapped around a ‘spool’ or ‘reel’ which resembles a large, mechanised, cotton reel. When the time comes to ‘shoot the gear’, one end of the net is fitted with heavy weights and thrown over the side. To assist the crew in finding the net again, a buoyant flag or a flashing light is attached to the end of the net (depending on the light conditions expected when the gear is to be hauled). The skipper carefully drives the boat so as to lay the net at the best angle in relation to the tide and the contours of the bottom. There is an air of subdued excitement when the gear is being shot, attributable to the possibility of the nets dropping into the path of a large shoal. A deckhand is positioned at the spool to supervise the unravelling of the net, to ensure both the integrity of the gear as well as those on board. The spool is large, powerful and spins quickly during shooting, and in the noisy, unstable and cramped conditions it presents a considerable danger. Many fishermen have a story about being snared by a tendril of net and dragged into the mechanism: “going round the spool”. Some have been seriously injured.

12 Variation in nets can be achieved by varying the slinging ratio of net meshes to lengths of rope. For example, if six-inch mesh is slung at 3/11, this means that three meshes are stretched over 11 inches (27.5cm) of head-rope and tied with slinging cord. When stretched, the surface area of net attached to every 11 inches of head-rope would be 18 inches (45cm) wide. If the net were slung at 4/11, there would be 24 inches (60cm) of stretched net tied to every 11 inches of head-rope. The net slung at 4/11 would necessarily be more bunched up, and more likely to tangle and hold larger fish. 60

The net is not shot all at once, but in two or three ‘fleets’, connected at each end by a length of rope and more weights. This method has several advantages. First, should a continuous length of net become snagged on something during hauling, the entire net might be torn before the gear can be unhooked or retrieved. When a net is separated into fleets, the length of un-netted rope and two sets of weights that connect fleets are likely to de-snag the gear before all the net is destroyed. In 2001, it cost approximately $20,000 to replace 4,200m of net (with lead-lines and floats). Tearing half or one third of $20,000 worth of gear is not as financially devastating as ruining all of it. As one fisherman explained to me, “So Marko’s got $20,000 worth of nets sitting on that reel. How many other people do you know that throw $20,000 in the water and see if it comes up again? Ha Ha!”

Another advantage to having two or three sections of net is that, should the hauling of the first fleet indicate that shark are close by, the first fleet can be ‘shot back’ to try and intercept the shoal. By the time the entire fleet is hauled the shark may have changed direction, or moved too far away to track. A third advantage also relates to finding fish, or to the ‘searching power’ of the nets. If the fleets are positioned at slightly different angles, nets can intercept fish coming from a greater number of directions, increasing both potential catch and the information that can be inferred from the direction in which the fish seem to be swimming. As will become clear in the next chapter, this immediate information is crucial to finding and tracking fish.

Laying off the gear

After dropping the last set of weights and flag from the stern,13 completely detaching the gear from the boat, the time comes to ‘lay off the gear’. The nets are left to ‘soak’, or to accumulate fish. The boat steams some distance away and the deckies drop the ‘pick’, or anchor, and slowly feed the anchor rope out, being mindful not to let it tangle. Care must be taken to ensure that the boat is positioned in relation to the tide and the gear so that it does not disturb the nets, nor drift over the anchor rope itself, tangling the rope in the ‘prop’ (the working part of the boat). There is a calmness associated with this period in the cycle of fishing, as it signals the end of a shot and the beginning of a rest period before the gear is hauled again.

The length of time the nets are in the water varies somewhat, depending on various circumstances, but generally there are one and a half to two complete cycles of shooting and hauling per day, meaning fishermen lay off the gear for approximately 6-8 hours per shot. Primarily, this is because it is favourable to work in ‘slack’ (weak) tides, which occur twice per day. Unskilled skippers who try to put nets into narrow channels with particularly strong currents might find that their $20,000 worth of gear rolls up as a knotted bundle. Skippers carry, and regularly refer to, a tide book, which tells them exactly when and where slack tides are to be expected.

It is during the rest period that the crew can have some time to themselves. This is a time for eating and other bodily functions,

13 Switching target species and gear can occur temporarily, repeatedly, and quickly, usually in response to an environmental or market trigger. A boat’s productive history can be inferred from its design peculiarities, such as the orientation of the wheelhouse and the gear. Shark boats vary in design, but typically, nets are shot from the stern. 62 watching television, reading, repairs, chatting to other crew and, finally, sleeping. It is a time when the motors are turned off and the noise of the ocean closes in around the boat. For the persistent anthropologist, it is a time when tired, patient and good-natured crew can be plagued with questions.

Hauling

When time comes to haul the gear, the loud slapping of the waves against the hull is broken by a call or whistle from the skipper, or simply replaced by the sound of the motors roaring into action.

The ‘pick’ is ‘pulled’ (hauled) with the automated spool, the flag is located and retrieved with the gaff – a long stick with a hook on the end14 – and the rope end of the first fleet is attached to the spool. The sound of the weights crashing onto the deck is soon followed by the clack, clack, clacking of the plastic buoys as they rattle out of the deep and over the edge of the boat.

The skipper sits in the wheelhouse and drives the boat along the line of the net, as the spool winds the gear slowly back into its original position. The 4200m of net (or less, depending on the licence class) must be fed back onto the spool with precision, and this task, ‘spooling’, or ‘stacking the net’, typically falls to the ‘number one deckie’ (see Chapter 4). The uneven lengths of rope must be wound in tandem, ensuring the net maintains a perfect diamond shape and does not stretch and tear. The lead-line and head-rope must be fed backwards and forwards across the face of the spool to prevent them bunching up

14 Gaffs can be long or short, and may be used for hooking larger than average fish. If netted loosely, these large fish are at risk of falling out of the mesh, and someone is sometimes stationed at the bowroller to hook large fish under the gills and aid them on board (Figures 8-9). 63

and tangling during subsequent shooting. To this end, immediately before the net reaches the spool, it passes across a ‘spreader bar’, a horizontal piece of metal with vertical teeth. The ropes run Figure 8 Busky at the bow-roller watching for emerging fish. between these teeth and are shifted back and forth by the person spooling, a task requiring considerable strength and endurance as well as skill. On spreader bars with high teeth, the weight of the worker’s body must be Figure 9 The view from the bow-roller. thrown into pulling or pushing the taut ropes back and forth, and some deckies seem to vibrate as they do so (Figure10). Many deckies have heavily muscled forearms and shoulders from the repetitive activity of Figure 10 Bushy spooling. The ‘teeth’ on this spooling. In addition to ‘spreader bar’ are very small compared to those on some other boats. spooling, the number 64 one deckie must repeatedly stop the reel with a switch, remove fish from the net, and start it again. If there is another deckie (or an anthropologist), he or she may be gutting fish, helping take fish from the net, or standing at the bow ready to aid any precariously netted fish on board (Figure 8).

The gear is not pulled directly over the bulwarks, but is wound over a small (generally less than half a metre in diameter) wheel, a ‘bow-roller’, located, as the name suggests, on the bow of the boat. The bow-roller represents the first point at which the skipper can see the gear from the wheelhouse, and glean some sense of what is happening under the water. I will return to this point in Chapter 3, where I discuss how skippers come to understand the underwater environment.

During hauling, everyone keeps a steady count, as the number and quality of fish directly determine the take-home pay of the crew. The mood of the crew is highly dependent upon this count, especially for those with financial worries.

The temperature of the gutted fish is initially lowered in a cooling tank on the deck of the boat, before they are transferred to brine tanks or ice-rooms.

Heading in

Fishing trips vary in duration, but their length is always the prerogative of the skipper. If you ask a shark fisherman how long a shark trip is, he will likely tell you ten days. While some boats stay out for ten days, maximizing their fishing time without compromising the quality of their product, many come in earlier. The key reason for shortening, postponing or abandoning a trip is bad weather. However, the personal 65 circumstances of the skipper have a considerable impact on the length of the trip. In the past, before the cost of entry to the fishery became restrictive, the career of an owner-operator shark fisherman corresponded with a decreasing slope in intensity. Young owner- operators, with unrefined skills and straining under the financial pressure of a large capital investment, were more likely to ‘bounce off the wharf’ (come home, unload and return to sea immediately), maximizing their fishing time. As their ability improved, along with their catch rates, their skills could be plied more efficiently, allowing for more time on land with growing families. As their children became independent, their finances more resilient and their bodies less so, they could scale down their efforts, perhaps hire a skipper, or retire to a less demanding type of fishing, such as netting in bays and inlets.

Selling the fish

Many fishermen have established relationships with buyers who offer stable prices for fish, and who are deemed trustworthy.15 Relationships between fishermen and those who buy their fish are often negotiated in a similar way to relationships among fishermen themselves: through informal interactions with an eye to the economic (see Chapter 5). I asked one fisherman why he and his family sold to a particular buyer

15 Some fishermen market their product through a third party, who negotiates the best price with buyers in exchange for a small commission. An interesting anomaly is the Danish seine fleet of Lakes Entrance, where the sale of fish is organised through the local fishermen’s cooperative. Species targeted by Danish seiners are subject to quota restrictions and fishermen were allocated their ITQ for these species in the early 1990s. At Lakes Entrance, much of this quota is ‘pooled’ – although fishermen retain rights over their individual allocation – and administered by the co-op, for a fee. Co-op staff liaise with buyers to assess the market situation and may advise fishermen on how much fish to catch. The total fleet catch is then divided in such a way as to maximize the potential of the market and to avoid the low returns associated with market gluts. Fishermen receive their money via the co-op. One of the main advantages of ‘the pool’, according to some members, is that it releases fishermen (or their wives) from the enormous task of administering quotas and fish sales. 66 and not another. He recounted a story about his father as a young man, going to an auction and bidding on some fish bins. Another man – a processor – was casually bidding against him, driving the price higher and higher until the fisherman was forced to stop bidding. The processor was reported as remarking that he did not actually need the bins, but simply did not want a fisherman to have them. “But he didn’t know who Dad was!” grinned the young man. “Dad just said, ‘Right, I’m never selling my fish to him’. And he hasn’t. So neither do we”.

Most shark is sold to the Melbourne fish market where it is processed and sold as ‘flake’ to be used in ‘fish and chip’ shops. Some shark is sold to the Sydney fish markets. Only a very small amount of shark is exported, although several hundred tonnes are imported each year, primarily from New Zealand and South Africa, almost all of which is consumed within Victoria (Shark Advisory Group 2004:21-2).

Thesis in context of other material

Wrangles over natural resources are always more than a battle for control of a physical product. While subsistence, productive and economic concerns are always relevant to these debates, other concerns, such as identity and belonging, add complexity to the issues. Indeed, because we view natural resources through a lens of culture, it is unsurprising that anthropologists have commented extensively on the ways in which people encounter ‘nature’ (Flint and Morphy 2000, Harré et al. 1999, Merlin 1998, Milton 1993, 1996, 2002, Mulcock et al. 2005, Satterfield 2002). Compared with land-based environments, relatively little is known about what occurs off-shore and under the sea, and the way that the ocean is imagined tends to be heavily informed by social categories developed in terrestrial environments (King 2005, Pálsson 1990, Smith and Free 1996:6-8). Maritime anthropologists consider 67 communities in which oceanic themes are highly salient (Jacob et al. 2005), and whose members come to know the world in the context of interactions with particular physical, social and productive ‘environments’.

Australian commercial fisheries share many institutional and economic characteristics with other Western commercial fisheries, though anthropologists have devoted comparatively little academic attention to the Australian industry (cf. Dwyer et al. 2003, King 2005, Larcombe et al. 2002, Minnegal et al. 2003, Stella 1996, Wright 1992). Most of the literature drawn upon in this thesis focuses on North American and European fisheries.

Many anthropological studies of people and the sea have resembled classic ethnographies, focussing on understandings of the environment within localised and primarily subsistence-focussed communities, incorporating factors pertaining to the particular cosmology, kinship and social organisation of the groups (Boas 1888, Brogger 1992, Firth 1946, Fraser 1966, Jackson 1995, Malinowski 1922, 1926, O'Meara 1990). Western industrialised fisheries have also been subject to their share of ethnographic accounts (Acheson 1975, 1988, 2003, Anderson and Wadel 1972, Kerr 1985, nd., Menzies 1994, Palmer 1990a,b, 1991, Pálsson 1990, 1991a, 1994, Pálsson and Durrenburger 1983, Sinclair 2001, Stella 1996, Wright 1992). The recent introduction of a cash- economy to formerly subsistence-based communities has captured the attention of both maritime anthropologists (Berkes 1987, Cole 1991), and those interested more generally in political ecology (Bryant 1997, Dwyer and Minnegal 1997, Paulson and Gezon 2005, Shiva 1991, Toke 2000). The scope of research by maritime anthropologists has expanded to include those ‘outside’ localised communities or fishing regions, as well as those involved in nation-state fisheries management, 68 marine biology and maritime law (Crean and Symes 1996, Dawson 2006, Finlayson 1994, Hilborn and Ledbetter 1985, Jentoft and Davis 1993, Latour 2004, Le Floc'h and Fuchs 2001, McCay 1998, McCay and Jentoft 1998, Pálsson 1991a, Paredes 1985, Taylor 1987, Vlaming 2001). These more recent studies have tended to incorporate the role of fisheries managers, as well as processors, transient workers, suppliers, financiers, and so forth, in their description of fishing communities.

Academic studies of industrial, Western fishing communities regularly note the often fraught relationship between fishers and fisheries managers (Crean and Symes 1996, King 2005, McGoodwin 1990). Many researchers seek to redress the communication problems by facilitating the exchange of knowledge and understanding between local users and nation-state fisheries administrators, and particularly marine scientists (Arbuckle and Drummond 1999, Durrenberger and Pálsson 1987a, Dyer and McGoodwin 1994, Gatewood and McCay 1990, Iudicello et al. 1999, Johannes et al. 2000, Just 1995, Kalland 1994, Karlsen 2001, King 2005, McCay and Jentoft 1998, Neis and Felt 2000, Palmer 1993a, Pálsson 1991a, Pinkerton 1989, Trigger 1995). Some have commented insightfully, though pessimistically, on the challenges faced by those attempting to liaise between people who have vastly different understandings of the world. Maurstad (2002:159), for example, poses a complex conundrum:

Fisher knowledge is embedded in a social and cultural context and [the] transfer of knowledge is relational…. [When] transferring fisher knowledge to science and management, the question is what it implies for fishers to have their knowledge moved beyond its traditional borders.

Holm (2000:1-2) depicts an even bleaker path ahead:

I suppose it might be possible to establish a position somewhere between realism and constructivism. But at the moment, it seems that the argument for the validity of such a position is not very well developed. My suspicion here... is that the TEK [Traditional Ecological Knowledge] model is trying to combine positions that remain contradictory. How can local knowledge, if it is different yet equally valid as scientific knowledge, supplement the latter? While this may be possible when seen from a relativist position, it would seem very difficult from the normal (positivist or realist) scientific position, in which there can only be one truth about nature.

Despite an explicit desire to mediate between fishers and fisheries ‘experts’ (usually managers and scientists), social scientists seem unable to overcome the epistemological distinctions embedded in their own understandings of the world, as alluded to by Maurstad and Holm. There is still a tendency to focus on grass-roots institutions, with fisheries management institutions, and fisheries ‘experts' themselves, often regarded as features in the life-world of fishermen (Berkes 1987, Jentoft et al. 1998, Ostrom 1990, Pálsson and Helgason 1996, Paredes 1985, Pinkerton 1989). Within this life-world, commercial fishermen are subject to increasingly restrictive regulation, either justified or imposed by fisheries ‘experts’. Accordingly, anthropological depictions often posit fisheries ‘experts’ as the bad guys who impose ‘grossly inadequate’ (Paredes 1985:177) policies which subsequently rupture the social integrity of the original fishing community (Berkes 1987, Crean and Symes 1996, Dyer and McGoodwin 1994, Hersoug 1996, Jentoft et al. 1998, Pálsson 1991a, Pálsson and Helgason 1996, Paredes 1985:177, Pinkerton 1987:367-8, Pinkerton 1989, Rettig et al. 1989:277, Sandberg 1996, Stolpe 1991, Wilson 1982:417, Wilson et al. 1994). Often, the suggestion is made that management strategies must 70 take into account the understandings and perspectives of grass-roots stakeholders, and that management programs should be designed in ways that reflect the existing cosmological and productive categories of fishermen.

In response to these sorts of understandings, there has been a boom in maritime anthropology directed at the relationships between Western commercial fishers and nation-state fisheries administrative institutions and their agents. This focus has occurred in the context of a burgeoning sense of environmental anxiety, a social malaise described most notably by Beck (1992), and addressed further in Chapter 8. Without going into premature detail, this ‘environmental anxiety’, or “risk society” (ibid), can be described as a social context in which people perceive, and try to manage, the risk of environmental decay, and seek to lay blame for perceived environmental ‘problems’ on a human culprit. This anxiety tends to manifest in relation to environmental threats that are largely imperceptible. Beck refers frequently to acid rain and radioactivity as examples. The discourse of the risk society draws upon notions of fragility, culpability and responsibility that are generated in a social environment that is largely removed from the physical environment under consideration. Jentoft and McCay (1995:227) describe how modern fisheries management is socially constructed within a society that is seeking ‘solutions’ to environmental ‘problems’:

Rarely is the task of fisheries management defined in biological terms only. There are also social and economic concerns. The reason is obvious…. Little can be done about the non-fishing causes of changes in reproduction, growth and mortality of fish. Consequently, it is fishermen who are subject to regulatory measures.

As will be elaborated upon in Chapter 2, fishing has not always been the concern of Western governments. Fishing, for subsistence, 71 recreation or commercial profit, is no longer ignored, but has become integrated into nation-state institutions, mirroring the global trend to centralise natural resource management (Ingold 2000b, McGoodwin 1990:77-8, Milton 1996, cf. Wittman and Geisler 2005). This trend is described further in Chapters 2 and 7.

Given the scale of the 11 Simple representation of prevailing fishing management operations, dynamics model. models are regularly used to predict the behaviour of both humans and natural resources themselves. One such model is the ‘tragedy of the commons’ model, discussed in Chapter 7. Another widely cited model that approximates fishing effort and the response of fish stocks is the Gordon-Schaefer model, described by McGoodwin (1990:73) as "an icon in fisheries management theory" (also see Macinko 2001:2). The latter model is breathtakingly simplistic, with a bell curve indicating that economic returns from fishing effort increase to a Maximum Economic Yield (MEY), and then to a Maximum Sustainable Yield (MSY), before the stock becomes overexploited and fishing effort requires curbing lest the stock collapse (Figure 11). The failure to acknowledge any factor other than fishing effort as a determinant of fish stocks is characteristic of fisheries management literature. Dubbink and van Vliet (1996:499) note that “the basic problems [facing fisheries] are the threat of over- exploitation of the resource and over-expansion of the fishing fleet”. Factors such as habitat destruction, pollution, ballast water, temperature changes, recreational fishing and fluctuations in predator versus prey numbers, are all effectively ignored. 72

Not surprisingly, anthropologists have been particularly vocal in highlighting the inadequacy of theoretical models, and in drawing attention to the intimate social processes that can disrupt rigidly defined behavioural models and compromise attempts at conservation, preservation and development (Byron 1980, Ciriacy-Wantrup and Bishop 1975, Dey 1982, Durrenberger 1997, Gatewood and McCay 1990, Jentoft and Davis 1993, Lim et al. 1995, Maurstad 2000, Tang and Tang 2001, Vlaming 2001:10). Anthropological accounts that discuss modern fisheries management typically open by rejecting the ability of bio-economic and other theoretical modelling to predict complex social and environmental behaviour. Young et al. (1996:157) provide an example:

Much of the literature relating to fisheries management typically portrays fish producers as independent decision-makers, yet myopic by nature and homogenous in thought. Such assumptions are inherent in the ‘tragedy of the commons’ paradigm and in the seminal Gordon- Shaefer model of fishery exploitation.

Certainly, a strong theme in these accounts is to recognise the need for a firm grasp of community dynamics and local understandings of the environment. Many fishing-specific, as well as terrestrial, discussions of natural resource management, and of the role of local users, have advocated co-management16 between natural resource 'experts' and those who extract from the resource at a grass-roots level, such as

16 ‘Co-management’ often takes various labels in the literature, including ‘cooperative management’, ‘community management’ and ‘grass-roots management’. I am including all of these variations in my discussion of ‘co- management’. Perhaps more debatable, is my inclusion of the term ‘self- regulation’. Often, this term implies the autonomous control of a natural resource by local stakeholders, either driven by explicit attempts to conserve the resource, or as a behavioural by-product of a variety of economic, residential, spiritual or other factors. While I see problems with the separation of ‘conscious’ and ‘unconscious’ motivations for conservation, that is a discussion for another time. 73 farmers and fishers. Descriptions of existing co-managed resources have strongly supported the claim that a combination of formal and informal management measures is more effective than solely formal rules. Such collaboration facilitates self-regulation (compliance and enforcement), cost-effectiveness, community satisfaction, public satisfaction and the achievement of joint objectives (Berkes 1987, Berkes et al. 2001, Collaborations 2001, Degnbol et al. 2006, Dubbink and van Vliet 1996, Durrenberger and Pálsson 1987a, Jentoft 1989, 2000, 2004, 2005, Jentoft et al. 1998, McCay 1989, McCay 1996:14-6, McCay and Acheson 1987a, Ostrom 1990, 1992a,b,c, Pálsson and Helgason 1996, Pinkerton 1989, Salmi 2001, Wagner and Davis 2004, Wiber et al. 2001, Wiber et al. 2004. cf. Kruse et al.).17

A study of co-management necessarily requires that commercial fishermen are regarded as complex people embedded in social and physical environments and further embedded in a global economic and political context. In the past 40 years there has been a proliferation of studies from North America and Europe that consider informal social institutions, or “spontaneous institutions” (Wilson 1982:419), that operate within industrialised, Western fishing communities. In particular, there has been an increasing focus on how these institutions work in relation to the competitive economic elements of commercial fishing as well as with conservation efforts (Acheson 1975, 1998, Acheson 2003, Brogger 1992, Durrenberger and Pálsson 1987a,b, Jentoft and Kristoffersen 1989:355, Lobe and Berkes 2004, McCay and

17 Dubbink and van Vliet (1996) compare two attempts at management of a Dutch fishery, one based on theoretical market controls (a model) and the other on co- management. The comparison was produced by two people from the Rotterdam School of Management, and concluded that a co-management approach would produce a better result from a managerial point of view. Despite the scepticism with which co-management systems are sometimes appraised, there are nonsocial-scientists who dispassionately support co-management as an effective form of fisheries management. 74

Acheson 1987, Nespor 1989, Palmer 1993a, Wilson 1982:419).18 As noted above, many of these studies have bemoaned the refusal of formal fisheries management bodies to recognise these informal institutions as potential facilitators of common goals.

However, as the locally enforced systems necessarily operate without demonstrable economic justification, they are often regarded by neo- liberal economic governments as ineffective and inefficient (Arbuckle and Drummond 1999, Hardin 1968, McGoodwin 1990:49, Tambiah 1990). ‘Grass-roots’ or local knowledge employed to enforce conservative practices are typically similarly dismissed as inferior to more ‘scientific’ methods of conservation (Acheson 1987, Arbuckle and Drummond 1999, Berkes 1987, Frangoudes and Bailly 2001, Harkes 2001, McKinlay and Millington 1999, Pálsson and Helgason 1996, Wiber 2001:9). McGoodwin (1990:79) offers a discouraging description of how social science research is regarded by fisheries managers:

The available studies of fishing people… show little uniformity in terms of their methods and conclusions, and apart from the various studies known as social-impact assessments, they rarely have much quantitative salience. For these reasons, many fisheries scientists and managers are sceptical about their potential utility for fisheries management.

18 Acts of conservation motivated by a collective economic interest is often considered invalid by environmental activists. Several studies have noted that conservative grass-roots utilisation of a resource can be the side-effect of economic, geographical or spiritual motivations or a combination of these. For case-studies and discussion see, for example, Acheson (1975), Berkes (1987), Hønneland (1999:397), Natcher et al. (2005), Smith and Wishnie (2000), Trigger (1996) and Rettig et al. (1989). However, an understanding of the motivations for, and outcomes of, particular behaviours can identify those practices that promote the goals of multiple stakeholders. Consider the exchange between a Bass Strait fisherman and a member of a conservation body. The ‘conservationist’ was surprised to learn that the fisherman shared her passion for protecting mangroves and salt-marsh areas. “But you only want to look after the resource so that you can continue to fish there!” the conservationist chided. “Yeah! So what?” was the fisherman’s response. “We’re still trying to do the same thing, aren’t we?” 75

Perhaps in response to the proliferation of top-down fisheries management systems in European and North American fishing communities in the last three decades (Holm 2000:361), or perhaps in an attempt to make ethnographic information more relevant to fisheries 'experts', or perhaps simply reflecting the technological, legal and economic complexities of Western industrialised fishing, some maritime anthropologists employ the technical discourses of managers, legislators, economists and statisticians in their writing. In the early 1990s, Croll and Parkin (1992:6-7) noted that an increasing number of studies had begun to address “the relevance of the framework of global economic relations for the study of and protection of the environment”. There has certainly been a proliferation of ‘hard science’ technical contributions from maritime anthropologists, a tendency contrary to Evans-Pritchard’s (1950) vision of anthropology as a humanities discipline, and to Geertz’s (1973) promotion of socially sensitive, 'thick description’. For example, the structures of social institutions have been scrutinised in relation to degrees of market integration among fishing communities (Acheson 1994a, Haas 1989, McCay 1996:7-10, McKean 1992, Michie 1994, Ostrom 1986). There is much work that attends to the tenure and territoriality systems of marine focussed cultures, and how these systems impact on the behaviour of humans and the environment (Acheson and Gardner 2004, Durrenberger and Pálsson 1987b, Macinko 2001:1, Macinko and Raymond 2001, McKean 1992, Ostrom 1992c:243, Singleton and Taylor 1992). The legal intricacies of Western fishing has probably been most thoroughly explored by maritime anthropologist Bonnie McCay and her students, focussing on fisheries in New Jersey (1993).19 Certainly, these aspects of social life – institutions, tenure systems and legal issues – have traditionally been included in anthropological accounts of fishing cultures. However, instead of incorporating these elements of maritime

19 Also see McCay (1998), Bodiguel (2002), Rose (1985) and Vander Zwaag (1983). 76 culture into an anthropologically theorised, or ethnographically presented, account, the ‘anthropology’ tends to be moulded somewhat to fit the discourse of these 'harder' fields of inquiry. Articles of particular interest to (or even written by) social scientists appear with surprising frequency in fisheries journals, such as the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences (eg. Hilborn 1985, Hilborn and Ledbetter 1985, Mahon 1997, Ruttan 2003, Squires and Kirkley 1999), Land Economics (eg. Feeny et al. 1996, Schlager and Ostrom 1992) and Marine Policy (eg. Jentoft et al. 1998, Young et al. 1996).20

Reflecting Tambiah’s (1990) discussion of the incommensurability of some Western ‘scientific’ thought and some non-Western ‘mystical’ explanation, Holm et al. (2000:354) suggest that much of the co- management literature underestimates the complexity involved in moving between (let alone integrating) the institutions of fishermen and those of managers, experts and other non-fishers. I tend to agree. At the risk of seeming fatalistic, the perspective I present in this thesis suggests that melding the cultures of Bass Strait fishermen with current Australian fisheries management policy is impossible, without a fundamental reformulation of one or the other system. Holm (2000:10) explains that by conceiving of a binary structure of ‘our’ knowledge and ‘their’ knowledge, and by variously recognising what is real and what is constructed, a resilient repertoire of opposition is maintained:

20 For example, the July 2001 edition of Collaborations (2001), an on-line e-letter produced primarily for North American readers, presented the following information about a project designed specifically to render anthropological data more easily incorporated into official management structures:

David Bergeron of the Massachusetts Fishermen's Partnership is joining with Drs. Madeleine Hall-Arbor (MIT Sea Grant), and Bonnie McCay (Rutgers University) in a project titled "Institutionalizing Social Science Data Collection: A Pilot Project”. This community-based project's ultimate goal is the incorporation of socioeconomic data into the decision-making process "as the norm rather than the exception”. 77

so that a realist position is reserved for oneself and one’s allies (what I/we claim is true), while the knowledge claims of one’s adversary are taken as social constructions (your claims must be explained by reference to interests and politics).

Conflict is institutionalised within the current dialogue between fishers and fisheries ‘experts’, because of the contradictory cosmological premises upon which each group base their productive activity.

Rather than forge another attempt to ‘translate’ between fishers and fisheries ‘experts’, this thesis presents an innovative approach to the ongoing problems of fisheries co-management. I do not seek to define a common point at which the perspectives of multiple resource users can converge – on a realist common ground – but to approach multiple understandings of the ocean as equally fabricated – on a fluid constructivist plane. Of course, social power manifests in such a way that not all people have an equal opportunity to promote their particular world view, which is why this thesis explores some of the less represented perspectives, while interrogating the construction of nation- state legitimated understandings. More complex than a breakdown in communication, more serious than a struggle for resource control, the challenges facing commercial fisheries co-management are epistemological, and indeed, ontological.

Plotting the way ahead

In Chapter 2, I provide a history and overview of the administration of Australian fisheries, generally, plus a more detailed description of the Individual Transferable Quota (ITQ) system. My research occurred at a time when this system was being implemented in the shark fishery. In Chapter 7, I analyse ITQ management in terms of the ethnographic 78 material and theoretical tools that have been considered in the earlier chapters.

The following three chapters focus explicitly on the fishermen of Bass Strait, particularly the shark fishermen. In these chapters I forge a representation that draws upon the notions of ‘boundary’, ‘ambiguity’ and ‘individuality’, the last being claimed proudly by those I encountered. These themes, developed in an ethnographic context, are vital to my story and continually re-emerge throughout the thesis. In Chapter 3, I introduce the notions of ‘boundaries’ and ‘ambiguity’ in the fishing industry, describing how the meanings generated between fishermen and their physical environment are circumstantial, and sometimes even contradictory. Though the worlds of shark fishermen are ordered by various physical and cosmological boundaries, it is their ability to variously emphasise and transgress these boundaries that enable them to move fluidly and meaningfully through physical and social reality. Fishermen inhabit a domain that is “not the proper abode of man” (Acheson 1981:276), and in doing so, they embody ambiguity.

In Chapter 4, I discuss the ambiguity of the boundaries among the crew of shark boats. The ambiguity arises in the context of a strong emic rhetoric about the ‘individuality’ of commercial fishermen, generally. In this chapter, I focus on shark boat skippers and deckies, describing their relationship as ‘prosthetic’ (King 2004). Deckies engaged in the act of catching shark resemble psuedo-bodily extensions of their skippers in ways that blur the divisions between these self-professed ‘individuals’. Particularly for skippers, there is a sense in which the parameters of ‘individuality’ can encompass those with whom they work and who facilitate their productive goals: deckies. Necessarily, the experience of deckies, as prostheses, complicates any depiction of their ‘individuality’, and is explored towards the end of Chapter 4. 79

In Chapter 5, I focus on the contradiction between claims to ‘autonomous individuality’ and serial cooperation among skippers as they go about the business of hunting shark. I describe the presence of ‘ambiguity’ as facilitating strategic alternation between cooperation and competition: one can assert one’s ‘individuality’ in order to extricate oneself from a cooperative relationship, leaving one free to invest in a different course of action. Such claims to ‘individuality’ are a trope, however, as shark fishermen are heavily implicated and deeply embedded in the lives of others, and inextricably bound to their own personal history, and that of their family and acquaintances. To perpetually and strategically, sometimes simultaneously, cooperate and compete, to maintain an aura of ambiguity, is a skill. Bass Strait shark fishermen are neither truly ‘individual’ nor explicitly cooperative, but rather, it is the very ambiguity surrounding their relationships with those things and people around them that enables them to move fluidly and meaningfully through physical and social reality. This manipulation of boundaries is tentatively termed ‘strategic ambiguity’, to distinguish it from ‘rigid ambiguity’, discussed in Chapter 7. It should be noted that these labels are somewhat problematic: the risk is that the very signifier of the equivocal – ‘ambiguity’ – will be reified. Rather, these terms – rigid and strategic ambiguity – require substantial situation within the ethnographic context, particularly in relation to the agency of the people considered.

Chapter 6 changes the tone of the story, somewhat, by considering one of the mechanisms used by both fishermen and academics to explain ambiguous activities and outcomes: the notion of ‘luck’. Relevant to an exploration of fisher identity, of ambiguous boundaries, luck can attribute the source of achievement beyond that of the individual, suggesting that individual fishermen are not reliant on other individual fishermen. Various superstitions observed during fieldwork are 80 considered. I then go on to introduce a crucial body of work in maritime anthropology that has dealt specifically with this notion of ‘luck’, or ‘unexplainable ability’: the ‘skipper effect’. I suggest that anthropologists have been distracted from talking about synergistic communities by the emic discourse of ‘individuality’ prevalent in many Western industrial fishing communities, and by their own tendency to regard the individual as the primary repository of skill. This chapter bolsters my argument that skill in fishing, and particularly shark fishing, functions as a product of synergistic activity.

In Chapter 7, I consider an alternative understanding of individuality, one that somewhat resembles Descartes’s Cartesian divide between mind and body, and which draws heavily on a Weberian conception of bureaucracy. In particular I examine the role of the state in defining individuals. Rather than considering individuals as actors in a network of other individuals, nation-state bureaucracy acts as a centralised mechanism which issues organisational directives to the periphery (like a ghost in a machine). That which comprises the ‘periphery’ (the citizens), are effectively anonymised by the process. They are regarded as homogenous and interchangeable extensions of the state, disembedded from the context of their lives. In this chapter I also consider the role of nation-state agents, and in particular, employees of AFMA, located in Canberra. I argue that the Cartesian split evident in the structure of state fisheries management presents a problem for fisheries managers who are required to engage directly with both contextually embedded fishermen and anonymous representations identified in nation-state administration. In order to negotiate this disjuncture, fisheries managers are compelled to present themselves as unambiguous agents of the state, devoid of emotional investment, in effect, to ‘split’ themselves into ‘personal’ and ‘professional’ fractions. This ‘rigid ambiguity’ contrasts with the ‘strategic ambiguity’ employed 81 by fishermen to facilitate their own agency, described in Chapter 5.

In the final, concluding chapter I draw together the material discussed in the rest of the thesis and consider the data from a perspective of a different scale. In order to contextualise the experiences and understandings of fishermen and fisheries ‘experts’ I consider those experiences of the wider Australian population: media representations of the marine environment. I discuss the popular 2003 film Finding Nemo (2003), and the media campaign that promoted the introduction of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) in Victorian waters during the period of my research. While my research did not focus specifically on this issue, many of the points considered in relation to the public perception of the fishing industry were exemplified during the pro-MPA campaign. By introducing this extra layer of perspective, and considering it in relation to the analyses contained in chapters 1-7, I suggest that there is a disjunction between the ‘marine realities’ of fishermen and those who are compelled to subscribe to a nation-state perspective on ‘the oceans’. It may seem that I am suggesting that one group holds a ‘legitimate’ (embedded) perspective and the other an ‘illegitimate’ (abstract) view. However, I argue that all ways of understanding the ocean are engendered through experience and that all experience is legitimate and produces legitimate realities. I consider the prospect of multiple realities and multiple identities in relation to the experiences and expressions of self by both fishermen and fisheries ‘experts’. Fishermen are compelled to negotiate the ‘legitimate reality’ in which they are posited as rigid and anonymous individual citizens, as well as the ‘legitimate reality’ in which they employ a trope of ‘individuality’ to facilitate their negotiation of their synergistic social and productive world. Fisheries managers must engage with complex, and socially embedded fishermen on a regular and ongoing basis, while acting as part of an administrative system that regards both fishermen and 82 fisheries managers as administrative data. Rather than identifying a resolution to the social and environmental issues encountered during my research, I suggest that the structural configuration of ITQ management will ensure that these problems will continue to plague Australian commercial fisheries into the future.

Background to the Administration of

Australian Fisheries: Centralised administration and Individual Transferable Quotas

The increasingly centralised management of Australian fisheries

Management of Australian commercial fisheries is currently centralised, operating from the Commonwealth capital, and administrative hub, Canberra. This Chapter provides a general overview of developments in the structure of fisheries administration and describes some of the particular administrative devices discussed throughout the thesis. Special attention will be given to the implementation of Individual Transferable Quotas (ITQs) in the shark fishery of Bass Strait, as this process was a key contextualising force throughout my fieldwork, and informs the theoretical discussion in Chapter 7.

In contrast to agriculture, forestry and mining, the role of commercial 85 fishing since the European occupation of Australia has been a peripheral concern for the Commonwealth government. Fishing developed largely in an environment unregulated by the government (Harrison 1991:1). At the Constitutional Convention that established the Federal Council of Australasia in 1883, delegates were content to leave the monitoring and development of commercial fisheries to the local States (ibid:5). Upon federation in 1901, the Commonwealth government knew little about Australia’s marine resources, nor their current or future potential for exploitation. Subsequently, and in keeping with the emphasis on ‘national development’ (Harris and Taylor 1982), efforts were made to establish directions in which fisheries could be discovered and expanded. As the following excerpt from the proceedings of Parliament in 1906 exemplifies, these efforts were influenced by prevailing categories of knowledge, behavioural precedents and social, political and economic imperatives (in Harrison 1991:11):

Senator Staniforth Smith – Dugong oil is said to be one of the most valuable oils for medicinal and nourishing purposes that is produced from fish.

Senator Drake – Would the dugong fishing benefit under the Bounties Bill, seeing that the dugong is described as a mammal?

Senator Staniforth Smith – I could not say. I know that it is a warm blooded fish.

Senator Playford – They cure it and make bacon of it.

Senator Givens – And even Jews can eat dugong bacon.

Senator Staniforth Smith – There should be great possibilities in that direction. 86

A Director of Fisheries position was established in 1906. A program of research was commenced but, in 1914, the Commonwealth research vessel was lost with all hands. The boat was not replaced and, thereafter, the Commonwealth allocated only minimal funding to the industry. Individual States reassumed the helm of fisheries development.1 The State governments started legislating on fishing matters around the 1930s, primarily to regulate early commercial marine industries such as whaling, sealing and oyster harvesting. It was not until nearly 40 years later that they moved to impose administrative structures (Harrison 1991:8). The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), a Commonwealth body, was established in Melbourne to facilitate the development of scientific knowledge in areas of industrial development. The later form of the body, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), was relocated to Canberra in 1971 (CSIRO 2004). Throughout the first half of that century there was ongoing tension between those who regarded the pursuit of marine knowledge as a scientific endeavour, and those who saw it as a means for developing commercial fisheries. There were also ongoing tensions between Commonwealth and State marine-focussed organisations, and among the States themselves. While the States resisted the control of the Commonwealth, individual States periodically sought the intervention of the Commonwealth to enforce the exclusion of bordering States (particularly Victoria and Tasmania) and of foreign fleets (primarily Queensland).

The Australian fishing industry first came under a coordinated, central management system during WW II, under the Fisheries Division in the

1 In the mid 1920s, the emphasis on general development was emphasised by the establishment of the Development and Migration Commission, which sought to promote the production and trade of Australian products over foreign products, and to coordinate Australian and British markets, skills and structures. 87

Department of War Organization of Industry. The Prime Minister, John Curtin, explained the imperative of centralised control:

During the war the fishing industry has been severely handicapped because there has been no central authority (to ensure) the most effective use of manpower, fuel, equipment and transport. Hitherto, State Governments have assumed a major responsibility for the development of the fishing industry and should continue to do so. It is intended, however, the Commonwealth Fisheries Authority should provide industry with one central reference point (in Harrison 1991:45).

Throughout the war the CSIR’s successor, the CSIRO, became the most powerful source of fisheries science and policy. A report from the Tasmanian Department of Agriculture noted that:

State Government sponsorship of fisheries research is inefficient… there tends to be overlapping of work done by various States and CSIR…. States cannot afford the expensive facilities… and their officers tend to become isolated and out of touch… the States cannot expect to get the best men available when posts with CSIR are less onerous and offer better prospects for career (ibid:46).

After the war, the CSIRO continued to play a significant role in fisheries management, though it underwent substantial internal restructuring. There were changes in the personnel and research priorities of CSIRO fisheries scientists. The changes were brought about partly by personality clashes within the organisation, and were fuelled by disagreements over the merit of global trends away from traditional approaches to fisheries biology towards a greater emphasis on mathematical fish stock modelling (Commonwealth of Australia 1992:4, Harrison 1991:70-1).

In the post-war era there was a sense of urgency with respect to garnering control of outlying regions of the country, both in order to prevent incursions by, particularly, Japanese fishing boats, and to continue developing, regulating and coordinating Australian nationals in Commonwealth and State waters.2 The Fisheries Act 1952 came into effect in 1955 and, from that time, fishermen were required to purchase a licence in order to fish. Various conditions were attached to these licences over the following decades, including restrictions on boat size, the amount of equipment that could be used, and the seasons during which fish could be taken. These management and conservation measures can be referred to under the rubric of ‘input controls’, as they control the amount of effort directed into the fishery. These measures contrast with the current popularity of ‘output controls’ (discussed below), which limit the amount of produce taken out of the ocean.

With the increased integration of fisheries management arrangements, State and Commonwealth representatives began meeting on a regular basis. The Commonwealth emphasised that it would not interfere in State practices but would, rather, delegate national directives for State administration. Conflict soon flared, however, because of anomalies that existed between the rules applicable to fishermen of different jurisdictions, and it soon became apparent that greater coordination of official bodies was necessary. Squabbling throughout the late 1960s

2 The limits of State jurisdiction are negotiated between each State and the Commonwealth. In New South Wales, State jurisdiction extends from the high water mark to 80 nautical miles, while the Commonwealth controls waters out to the 200 nautical mile limit of the Exclusive Economic Zone. The other States and Territories hold jurisdiction over waters to three nautical miles. South Australia is notable as the topography of the region is such that the internal waters of the Spencer Gulf and the Gulf of Saint Vincent (Figure 2) include water that lies more than three nautical miles from either side. These regions are regarded as ‘internal waters’ and managed under cooperative arrangements with the State and Commonwealth. There are also anomalous provisions in place to recognise the variation to South Australian State boundaries as provided for in the Petroleum (Submerged Lands) Act 1967 (including amendments). See Jabour (2006) in relation to the negotiation of Australian territories in Antarctica. 89 and 1970s among State managers and successive Commonwealth governments culminated in the establishment, in 1978, of the Offshore Constitutional Settlement (OCS) between the States, Territories and Commonwealth managed fisheries (operational in 1983). Under these arrangements fisheries were managed on the basis of some combination of geographical jurisdiction, the equipment used to catch the fish, or the species itself. Rather than each species being managed separately within each State, Territory or Commonwealth zone, the management bodies negotiated their jurisdictions. The details of these arrangements have been adjusted and reformulated throughout the last 25 years but still operate as an important administrative tool for coordinating State and Commonwealth activities.

Another factor in the development of Commonwealth fisheries management was the growth of the global fleet and the increased presence of foreign fishing vessels exploring Australian waters. The United Nations International Law of the Sea was developed throughout the 1970s and, in 1979, Australia was granted jurisdiction over ocean territories extending to 200 nautical miles (Harrison 1991:85-8). Under the Convention (UNCLOS) the Australian government was obliged to allow foreign vessels to harvest fish resources that could not be fully fished by local fleets (ibid:8). Enormous subsidies were offered to fishermen in some fisheries to invest in bigger boats and to compete with international operations. The perceived value of Australian fisheries was emphasised by the increasing exclusion of foreign boats. Expansion of fisheries was again encouraged by the government, which, in turn, necessitated increased attention to the management of both foreign and Australian operations. Harrison (ibid) explains that some officials responded to the 200 nm designation as if “this political act [had] magically created vast fish resources”.

By the early 1980s, however, the Minister for Primary Industry, economist John Kerin, was warning of the need to manage fisheries with care. This ‘care’ was not focussed purely on the environmental sustainability of the fisheries, but simultaneously on the economic viability of the industry. Indeed, the government later asserted that “Australia was to gain international recognition as one of the few countries to recognise that fisheries management was not just a biological issue but also an economic one” (Commonwealth of Australia 1992:3). Australian fisheries management proceeded with “bio- economic management” (Cox 2000:2).

The anthropologist, James McGoodwin (1990:73), describes the happy marriage between economics and fisheries management:

When fisheries managers extended their attention beyond the biological aspects of managing the fisheries, it was natural that the discipline of economics captured their attention. After all, Maiolo and Orbach note, “Economics has a language, a method and, for many, a track record that are more impressive to the nonsocial scientist than sociology, anthropology or other social science disciplines”.

Certainly, economics has been credited with considerable applicability to the management of natural resources, including fisheries (Macinko and Raymond 2001:2-3, Scott 1979, Wingard 2000). The comments of economist, Scott Gordon (1954:124), an influential voice in the early development of modern fisheries administration, illustrate the perceived compatibility of fisheries biology and fisheries economics:

Owing to the lack of theoretical economic research, biologists have been forced to extend the scope of their own thought into the economic sphere and in some cases have penetrated quite deeply, despite the lack of the analytical tools of economic theory. Many others, who have paid 91

no specific attention to the economic aspects of the problem have nevertheless recognized that the ultimate question is not the ecology of life in the sea as such, but man's use of these resources for his own (economic) purposes.

In lieu of demonstrable information on the interaction among living creatures, producers and markets, economic models have been combined with models of social institutions and tenure systems to predict various outcomes (Boserup 1970:121, Hardin 1968, Michie 1994:396, Olson 1965, Schlager and Ostrom 1992, Smith 1974:378-9, Young 1983). In some cases, economic modelling is used to substitute for inadequate biological data in the development of management plans (Anderson 2002a,b, Crutchfield 1959, Gordon 1954, Gulland 1983, Hardin 1968, Nakken et al. 1996, Rettig et al. 1989, and particularly Schaefer 1959).

During the 1980s there was a considerable expansion of intervention by the Australian government in fisheries management, and a vast array of proposals and changes were made in all fisheries. Industry requests for improved consultation with management in relation to these changes were addressed by Minister Kerin through the establishment of Management Advisory Committees (MACs) that were intended to facilitate this need. The cost of MACs was to be the responsibility of industry itself. Indeed, from the mid-1980s the concept of ‘user pays’ was implemented into Commonwealth fisheries management (Cox 2000:2), and, by the end of the 1980s, industry was deemed responsible for 90 percent of the cost of fisheries management (Commonwealth of Australia 1989:x, Commonwealth of Australia 1992:2).

In 1989, the government released a policy document that was to fix the shift towards administratively and economically rationalised management of Australian commercial fisheries: New Directions for 92

Commonwealth Fisheries Management in the 1990s – A government policy statement (Commonwealth of Australia 1989). This document initiated a concrete shift from ‘input’ to ‘output’ controls, through the implementation of quota systems in the majority of Commonwealth fisheries. The problem, as outlined in New Directions, was that the oceans operated essentially as an open-access commons, an arrangement that, it was assumed, would eventually result in economic and biological collapse. (This assumption reflects the ‘tragedy of the commons’ model, discussed in Chapter 7). The solution outlined in New Directions was to grant a limited number of economically efficient individuals proxy ownership of the right to fish for a particular amount of product: exclusive, or individual, quotas. Quota holders, it was argued, would be more likely to conserve the potential of the fishery because the perpetuity of their privileged investment was dependent upon the health of the resource.3 As many critics have noted, the model assumes that people behave as individual economic rationalists, uninfluenced by the relationships they have with others in the community (McGoodwin 1990:89-96). Of course, this assumption grossly misrepresents the behaviour of community members everywhere, and certainly that of Australian commercial fishermen, and particularly shark fishermen. I will discuss this assumption further in Chapter 7, in relation to the way bureaucratic models depict people as uncomplicated, interchangeable and isolated.

Rather than appreciating fisheries as a collective of interdependent, ‘rugged individualists’, New Directions (Commonwealth of Australia 1989:vii,1) placed great emphasis on distinguishing between

3 The ocean – a public resource with often indeterminable boundaries – is particularly difficult to manage through the use of exclusive rights. The challenge to privatise has widely been tackled by introducing some form of transferable fish- harvesting rights: variously, Individual Transferable Quotas (ITQs), Individual Fishing Quotas (IFQs) and Individual Community Quotas (ICQs) (Vlaming 2001, Wingard 2000). 93 individuals, clearly and rigidly attributing the right and ability to fish to a single, unambiguous, person.

Worldwide experience has shown that unregulated fisheries generally suffer from over-capitalisation and falling productivity and, with increasing frequency, face the threat of biological collapse.

These problems arise because [of] the lack of exclusive individual rights over the fish resources. The essence of the problem is that the actions of individual fishermen create costs for other fishermen. The result of behaviour which is economically rational at the individual level is unnecessary costs, excessive fishing effort and possible resource over- exploitation. At the industry level, the result is a loss of potential profit.

Management controls which maximise economic efficiency involve a lower level of fishing effort and lower costs than in an uncontrolled situation, and in virtually all cases are also consistent with the biological sustainability of the resources.

Hence, what manifests itself in fisheries as a biological problem occurs because of a failure to allocate all the costs of an individual's activities to that individual.

The three key objectives outlined in the policy statement were the “mutually reinforcing” objectives of maintaining, first, the biological sustainability and, secondly, the economic efficiency of the resource while, thirdly, recouping the costs of management from those individuals who benefited from the use of a public resource (ibid:2 original emphasis). Whereas, during the 1980s, there had been some emphasis on the importance of understanding the resource, New 94

Directions advised that “research should be undertaken only if the likely benefits exceed the costs” (ibid:ix). The principle of economic efficiency referred to the industry as a whole, and not to individual operators.

The most efficient fishermen should be able to expand their activity at the expense of the less efficient…. The more efficient fishermen buy ITQs from the less efficient at prices that exceed the earning capacity of those units in the hands of the less efficient fishermen. The less efficient operators leave the fishery, which reduces total fishing capacity (ibid:ix,23).

It was proposed that individual quotas be allocated to eligible fishermen, after which market forces would favour the more economically efficient operator and enable him to accumulate the quota of those fishermen who performed less efficiently. In this way, the fishery, as a whole, would operate more efficiently, and, by implication, with greater biologically sustainability. Such “autonomous or voluntary adjustment” (Bannister Quest 1997:7) would require that individual quotas be transferable, and so, Individual Transferable Quotas (ITQs) were proposed as the key tool for managing Australian commercial fisheries.

Most of the directives outlined in the New Directions statement were subsequently formalised in the Fisheries Management Act (1991) and the Fisheries Administration Act (1991). At this time the former Commonwealth fisheries agency, the Australian Fisheries Service (AFS), was dissolved, and replaced with the Australian Fisheries Management Authority (AFMA), a statutory authority. The purpose of establishing a relatively autonomous statutory authority responsible directly to the relevant fisheries minister rather than a government department, was to encourage more “flexible, open and less bureaucratic” management, 95 that was less expensive to administer, and that had strong ties to industry (Commonwealth of Australia 1989:xiv). The complex, convoluted, extremely costly and often intensely bureaucratic development of AFMA and the Australian fishing industry that took place over the next 15 years, has left these objectives of the New Directions statement unrealised. What follows is a more detailed description of Individual Transferable Quota (ITQ), the ‘output control’ management tool that was put in place during the period of my research.

From input controls, or, ‘net units’ to output controls, or, Individual Transferable Quota (ITQ)

Before the introduction of Individual Transferable Quotas, and the management of the fishery according to ‘quota units’, the shark fishery was managed according to ‘net units’. The difference between ‘net units’ and ‘quota units’ warrants a brief explanation, as it has continued to be a point of debate and, in some cases, litigation between fishermen and AFMA. In 1988, according to the Southern Shark Fishery Management Plan of the Fisheries Act (1952), those fishers eligible for future participation in the shark fishery were allocated a licence class according to their proven levels of participation during a retrospective ‘qualifying period’: September 1979 – September 1984. Those who had landed more than 45 tonnes of shark during any three years during that period were eligible for an A class licence. Those who caught less than this amount were eligible for a B class licence.4 Numbered subcategories within the B class differentiated fishers further. The entitlements afforded the different licence class holders the

4 Considerable bitterness still exists among those who caught only marginally under the 45 tonne limit, or who experienced mitigating circumstances that hampered their productivity during those years. Some have successfully mounted legal challenges to their allocated class. 96 right to use a particular amount of ‘net units’. Each ‘net unit’ was equivalent to one 600 m length of gillnet. A6 licence holders were eligible to use six ‘units’ of gillnet (6 x 600m = 3600m), while B5, B4, B3 and B2 licence holders were eligible to use 3000m, 2400m, 1800m and 1200m of gillnet respectively. In total, 1,234 net units were allocated in the fishery, enabling the entire fleet to use 740,400m of net. In accordance with the principle of ‘user-pays’, levies were calculated on the basis of ‘net units’: the more net units, the greater the levy.

Between April 1988 and May 1990, A6 licence holders were permitted to purchase another A6 licence (for approximately $100,000) and amalgamate the two, with the forfeiture of two net units, to form an A10 licence. The management body lamented, however, that the cost of investing in the industry had compelled many newly created A10 licence holders to increase work intensity in order to pay for the licence, and that amalgamation had failed to achieve the desired reduction in overall effort in the fishery (Commonwealth of Australia 1992:247). Subsequently, in early 1991, just prior to the activation of the new Fisheries Management Act (1991) and the creation of the Australian Fisheries Management Authority (AFMA), further steps were taken to reduce the intensity of shark fishing. The number of ‘net units’, and, implicitly, the net length applicable to A10, A6, B5 and B4 licence classes were reduced by 30, 33, 40 and 25 percent, respectively. However, after two years of lobbying by some fishermen, the ‘net unit’ reductions were reversed on A10, A6 and B5 licences. This reversal made little difference to the fishing pressure, however, as the length of net in a ‘net unit’ was simultaneously reduced, so that actual net length allowances were only partially reinstated (Table 1). During the 1990s, A and B5 licences collectively accounted for over 90 percent of all shark licences and were responsible for almost the entire fleet catch.

Following the period during which A licences were being reformulated, AFMA imposed a restriction on the trading of individual licences. This restriction was intended to discourage new people from buying licences that were not being used or, in other words, from activating latent effort. Similar restrictions had been in place under the Australian Fisheries Service, and non-transferability was to remain in place over the next decade, and beyond. Provisions existed for certain familial transfers (usually father to son) and those compelled by ‘exceptional circumstances’. However, the non-transferability of individual licences was strictly enforced, severely restricting the business flexibility of fishermen, particularly as many individuals owned multiple licences. As noted in Chapter 1, commercial fishing in south eastern Australia is multi-species and, prior to the introduction of licences, many fishermen switched targets according to fluctuations in abundance and market value. For example, shark fishing was typically combined with cray fishing due to the complimentary seasonality of the species. As a result, many fishermen had accumulated enough catch history in different fisheries to secure several licences when they were issued in the 1980s. With the implementation of the 1991 Fisheries Management and Administration Acts, and the favouring of a ‘user-pays’ system of cost-recovery, fishermen were required to pay levies on their individual licences in order to retain them – even if they were not in use. The 1990s were fraught with uncertainty regarding the future of management arrangements. The exclusivity of licences had driven prices upwards, and few fishermen were willing to forgo licences that might, in the future, be worth a significant amount of money. For example, the market value of Abrolhos Islands (Western Australia) crayfish pot licences increased dramatically from the late 1980s to the early 1990s, from approximately AUS$200,000 to over one million dollars (Wright 1992:5). As the 1990s progressed, more levies were paid, licence values increased, and many fishermen became 98 increasingly unwilling to forgo their ‘investment’ licences. When reflecting upon management arrangements, both fishermen and fisheries managers note the considerable distress displayed by industry members due to restrictions on licence transferability (Sachse and Richardson 2005:11).

During the second half of the 1990s, AFMA accepted scientific evidence that suggested the prudence of changing the focus of management in the shark fishery from ‘input’ to ‘output’ controls. A great deal of debate occurred among fishermen regarding the wisdom of moving to output controls. Some regarded the shift as “the most palatable of a series of unpalatable future management options” (in Sachse and Richardson 2005:11). Others campaigned tenaciously, at enormous financial and emotional expense, to resist the change. Arriving ‘on the scene’, as I did, in the early 2000s, I am unable to comment with surety on the attitude of fishermen during the 1990s, particularly as I was given many conflicting accounts of how certain people had behaved. Obscured, or at least complicated, by time, and the more salient tensions, conflicts, alliances and misunderstandings of the day, I simply could not untangle these accounts with confidence. Generally, fishermen refer to this period as a time of bargaining and conflict among various parties (from both industry and management) and considerable uncertainty in regard to both the future management arrangements and the character of other fishermen. Certainly, the strongest selling point of the new system was AFMA’s assurances that transferability would be enabled following the introduction of ITQs.

The key concept used by those who manage fisheries under ‘output’ controls is the Total Allowable Catch, or TAC. The TAC refers to the total weight of species that fisheries scientists estimate can be taken in one year without threat to the sustainability of the stock. The TAC may 99 be represented as either a ‘fishery TAC’ or a ‘global TAC’. The fishery TAC refers to the total amount of a particular species that may be taken by a particular fishery. The global TAC accounts for fish allocated to all State, Territory, Commonwealth and jointly managed fisheries, as well as fish that may be caught by research organisations for use in biological studies. It is the fishery TAC that has primary relevance to most fishermen of a particular species.

There is very little information on the abundance of gummy and school shark that is not compiled from the catch records of commercial fishers. This lack of reliable scientific information prompted an Australian Government Productivity Commission inquiry, Implementation of Ecologically Sustainable Development by Commonwealth Departments and Agencies (1999:204), to report:

AFMA operates in an environment of significantly incomplete knowledge. For instance, even for Australia's best known commercial fish species, little is known about ecosystem processes and habitat requirements [FRDC 1998]. Human effects also have a significant impact on the marine and coastal environments and returns to the fishing industry. Both of these factors imply that uncertainty and cross sectoral issues are key features of fisheries management.

In the absence of what was referred to by fisheries scientists as ‘fisheries independent data’, the 2001 TAC for the SSF was calculated with reference to previous catch figures. The period considered was between 1994 and 1997, the years used to determine the Individual Transferable Quota of each licence holder. Fishermen were allowed to submit catch records from three of the four years between 1994 and 1997, and efforts were made to present the catch records from years in which the most shark was landed. The average of these best catch figures was used to set the 2001 TAC. Necessarily, the average of the 100 best years was higher than the average of all years between 1994 and 1997, as the years in which the least amount of shark was landed were omitted. Hence, the global TAC for 2001 was slightly higher than the average of the four years – 2,156 tonnes of gummy shark and 383 tonnes of school shark (Table 2).

Gummy Gummy School School Shark Shark TAC Shark TAC Shark TAC TAC Global Shark Global Shark Fishery Fishery

2001 2,159.03 2,074.17 432.00 390.38 2002 1,700.00 1,556.40 327.00 278.96 2003 1,800.00 1,647.90 309.60 264.12 2004 1,800.00 1,647.90 292.20 260.06 2005 1,800.00 1,647.90 275.00 244.75

Table 2 Gummy and School Shark, Global and Fishery, Total Allowable Catch figures 2001-2005 (AFMA 2006).

In subsequent years, inconclusive scientific data was partially compensated for through the use of computer-assisted biological models. Many in fisheries management positions bemoaned the lack of reliable data available to them for informing their decisions. With black humour and frustrated resignation, one fisheries manager referred to the TAC setting process as “chook lotto”. In a TAC setting meeting I attended, Fred, a biological stock modeller, explained to those in the room how he had reached the proposed TAC: “Well, this is the model that’s currently accepted around the world. And, well, I put in the highest number that we were ever likely to get, and the lowest number, and divided the two. Simple as that”.

Numerous attempts have been made to facilitate a more accurate stock assessment process, and subsequent TAC setting, but with limited 101 success. A Fixed Station Survey, designed to estimate relative stock numbers, and which required significant investment in terms of time and money from both fishermen and fisheries ‘experts’, was so unsuccessful that it was abandoned soon after it began. Furthermore, there was debate over how catch figures should be interpreted under a quota system. In the early 2000s, the landed catch of school shark was significantly lower than the TAC. Some suggested that low school shark catch rates demonstrated that operators were avoiding the vulnerable shark, and that stocks should therefore be rebuilding. Others suggested that the failure of industry to catch the school shark TAC indicated a worsening stock situation.

Even before the introduction of ITQs, fishermen complained to management that instances of ‘dumping’ and ‘high-grading’ were likely to skew the data available from catch figures, and would add significantly to the stock problem. Caused by the activity of sea-lice (see Chapter 1), ‘damaged’ shark sells for significantly less than ‘good’ shark. Fishermen are exercising economic rationalism if they discard poor quality product, literally, over the side of the boat, and land only that which will fetch the highest price. Particularly to those who were allocated little quota, dumping and high-grading may have seemed the only way of lessening the financial burden of ITQs. As one man explained to me, in exasperation, “You don’t want to throw it over the side: it goes against everything you know. But your calculator’s telling you to toss it!” Of course, none of the discarded fish is landed and so it goes unaccounted for in stock assessment calculations. Fishermen made repeated and passionate pleas to AFMA to address the issue, in some cases speaking directly to the AFMA board in public meetings. Their concerns reflected the well-documented high-grading or ‘discard’ problem encountered in other ITQ managed fisheries around the world (Branch et al. 2006, Catchpole et al. 2005, 2006, Gilman et al. 2006). 102

The refusal of AFMA to acknowledge, much less make steps to counter, dumping and high-grading, was one of the most disturbing and shameful displays of mismanagement I witnessed throughout my fieldwork (Grosser 2002).

Despite the problems associated with managing a resource using extremely limited data, the ability to demonstrate a conservative approach is vital for AFMA. As a statutory body AFMA is required to justify its’ custodianship of commercial fisheries to various groups, including the relevant Commonwealth Minister, other government agencies, political groups, green groups and the public (Fisheries Management Act 1991 Sec.3.1.d). The TAC is an unambiguous single figure. By adjusting the TAC, the AFMA board can claim to be managing the shark fishery conservatively and, importantly, they can demonstrate this management numerically. As Chris, an AFMA board member explained to me, part of the appeal of quota is that “you can count it and you can cut it”. Chris is an intelligent participant in the commercial fishing community and was not implying that effective and conscientious fisheries management was achievable by simply reducing the TAC. Rather, what he alluded to was pressure upon fisheries managers to present simplistic and quantifiable evidence of their ‘conservation’ efforts. There is an apparent simplicity to the ITQ system that has rendered its use around the world appealing to centralised natural resource management, and particularly to fisheries managers (Acheson 1994:11).

In accordance with the New Directions policy plan, the switch from ‘input’ to ‘output’ controls required a corollary shift in value from ‘net units’ to ‘quota units’. In 1997, AFMA (1997) released a document entitled Allocation of Fishing Concessions where Management Arrangements Change. An important directive contained within this 103 document was that, upon initial allocation of the new concessions, the relative economic position of licence holders within the fishery was to remain constant. In order to satisfy the requirement that the status quo be maintained, individual ‘quota units’ were allocated to licences in relative proportion to previous catches. Those with A class licences tended to have caught more than those with a B class licence. The average of the highest catches from three of the four years between 1994 and 1997 were used to determine the relative economic position of each licence holder within the fishery. The percentage of the total fishery catch weight attributable to a particular licence could be represented as a percentage of ‘quota units’ allocated to the fishery under ‘output’ controls. So, for example, a licence holder who caught 10 percent of all the shark landed by the SSF between 1994 and 1997 (excluding the poorest catch year of each fisher), would be eligible for 10 percent of the ‘quota units’ allocated for use from 2001. Fishermen were able to estimate their relative position within the fishery and, hence, the proportion of the TAC to which they may be entitled. However, they could not determine the actual TAC, nor the actual weight of fish they would be allocated.

‘Quota units’ were initially announced in such a way that they reflected actual carcass weight of shark. Because the 2001 TAC was determined using the catch figures upon which individual ‘quota units’ were allocated, in this first year one ‘quota unit’ was equal to one kilo of carcass weight. However, ‘quota units’ were not based on a fixed weight of fish. Rather, the total weight of each species of shark that licence holders are eligible to try and catch changes from year to year in accordance with a fluctuating TAC. In order to assist in the transition of the industry to the new management system, AFMA staff assured fishermen that the TAC would remain constant for the first three years.

104

In October 2001, the AFMA board acted on advice received from its scientific arm, and the Shark MAC, that the stocks of school shark were in need of more stringent conservation measures. In response, the board decided that the school shark TAC be reduced by more than 20 percent. Although gummy sharks were not deemed to be at risk, the scientific advice suggested that school shark may be caught as a by- product of gummy shark hunting. As a result of directives under section 391 (2) of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (1999), and according to their own Statutory Obligations under Section 3.1.b of the Fisheries Management Act (1991), AFMA cannot fail to implement a conservation measure due to a lack of full scientific certainty regarding the nature of a problem. Recognised widely as the ‘precautionary principle’, this requirement is not unique to the EPBC Act (1999), but is employed globally in natural resource management contexts as a means of negotiating inadequate scientific information (Peel 2005).

Favouring a precautionary approach, the 2002 gummy shark quota was also cut by more than 20 percent. Hence, though there were no changes to either number of ‘quota units’ assigned to one licence, or the percentage of total ‘quota units’ that this allocation represented, the weight of fish permitted for capture under each licence declined. In subsequent years the TAC was altered further, complicating the relationship between Total Allowable Catch, Individual Transferable Quota and kilograms of shark carcass. Table 3 provides a simplified demonstration of these changes using hypothetical figures.

Other peculiarities of the ITQ system complicated the smooth transition from input to output controls. For example, provisions had to be made for situations where individuals did not catch, or exceeded, their allocated weight. A 20 percent ‘carry over’ or ‘carry under’ was allowed, 105

Table 3 Individual Transferable Quota unit allocation and subsequent conversion to carcass weight according to a fluctuating Total Allowable Catch – mock example of ‘Jak’, commercial shark licence holder.

Total shark fleet catch average of years between 1994 and 1997 2,100,000kg

Total shark fleet catch average of best three years during 1994 and 1997 2,400,000kg

Total Allowable Catch 2001 2,400,000kg Total Allowable Catch 2002 1,848,000kg

Year Jak’s Average of Jak’s best Jak’s 2001 Jak’s 2001 Jak’s 2002 Jak’s 2002 Shark best three three year ‘quota unit’ carcass ‘quota unit’ carcass Catch years (1994, average as a allocation weight allocation weight (kg) 1995, 1997) percentage of allowance allowance total fleet best three year average

1994 30,000kg

1995 27,000kg 30,000 + 30,666.67 / 1.29 x 1.29 x 1.29 x 1.29 x 27,000 + 2,400,000 x 2,400,000 / 2,400,000 / 2,400,000 / 1,848,000 / 1996 11,000kg 35,000 / 3 = 100 = 100 = 100 = 100 = 100 = 1997 35,000kg

30,666.67kg 1.29% 30,960 units 30,960kg 30,960 units 23,839.2kg

meaning that fishers could either retain up to 20 percent of their allocated quota weight for use the following year or catch 20 percent more than they had been allocated without being penalised, but on the provision that they ‘repaid’ the excess from their next annual allocation. This concept was not as simple as it was intended to be, and proved difficult for AFMA staff to explain to fishermen, not merely because the terms were, confusingly, renamed ‘under-catch’ and ‘over-catch’, respectively, during the explanation period. More problematic for AFMA, however, was the legal status of ‘quota units’. Some of these complications are discussed further, below.

In the late 1990s, various fisheries managed by AFMA came under 106

Ministerial scrutiny due to the absence of legally binding policy – a Management Plan. Several south-east fisheries, including shark, were included in considerations. As Ian, a senior fisheries manager, explained to me: “They said, ‘What? You haven’t got a Management Plan? You’ve got to have a Management Plan!’” Indeed, throughout the 1990s, the absence of a comparable Management Plan meant that the shark fishery was administered under a different section (1991:s32) of the Fisheries Management Act (1991) to that applicable to other quota-managed fisheries (1991:s22). However, AFMA’s efforts to bring the shark fishery into line with other quota-managed fisheries had been stalled, primarily because numerous unresolved legal challenges mounted by fishermen prevented the full implementation of a Plan. Until there was resolution on these issues, a legally watertight Plan could not be implemented.

A key component of the proposed Plan was the use of Statutory Fishing Rights, or SFRs, to confer legally binding rights and responsibilities to commercial fishermen.5 In the interim, the quota system was operating with limited legal status, and with ‘quota units’ that were provisional. These ‘provisional quota units’ were to be formalised into SFRs once legal proceedings into the allocation of ‘quota units’ had been resolved. Following the finalisation of the statutory Southern and Eastern Scalefish and Shark Fishery Management Plan (Australian Fisheries Management Authority 2003), ‘quota units’ became known as ‘quota Statutory Fishing Rights’ or ‘quota SFRs’ (Figure 12).

5 In addition to ‘quota SFRs’ fishers were allocated ‘boat SFRs’. While these ‘boat SFRs’ were allocated to existing commercial vessels, ‘boat SFRs’ are not permanently attached to a particular boat, but can be transferred to another vessel. Fishing permits, issued to fishers by AFMA, were to be attached to a particular boat (with a ‘boat SFR’), and could be used according to the permit conditions to target those species for which the permit holder possessed ‘quota SFRs’. 107

Licence requirements prior to 2001 / ITQ

Commonwealth Southern Shark Fishery Licence (Class A or B) Administratively attached to nominated vessel

Licence requirements after implantation of new Management Plan

Quota Statutory Boat Statutory Fishing Concession Fishing Rights Fishing Rights

12 Licence requirements for shark fishers prior to, and following, the introduction of Individual Transferable Quota Statutory Fishing Rights.

As a statutory provision, ‘quota SFRs’ are about as close to private ownership as can be legally and administratively achieved in regards to a nation-state managed communal resource. However, should the TAC be reduced to zero, which AFMA may be compelled to do as a conservation measure, the earning value of an SFR is also reduced to zero. Of course, in a fishery with a zero (or extremely limited) TAC, the value of SFRs themselves will be significantly lower than SFRs in fisheries with high TACs (Table 3).

So, despite the AFMA focus on ‘quota units’, as opposed to actual carcass weight landed, the legal status of the new Management Plan meant that the initial application of the ITQ system allowed for some unforseen negotiation of the rules. One of these ‘unforseen 108 negotiations’ was the ‘warehousing’ of quota, a phenomenon illustrative of both the inherent and unintentional complexity of the new system.

‘Warehousing’ involves the transfer via lease of an uncaught mass of fish from one licence holder to another, on the understanding that it will be partially leased back again the following year. In certain situations, this process can result in both parties gaining access to more quota than they would otherwise have been entitled had no transfers taken place. The licence holder initially receiving quota must have been allocated a greater amount of quota than the licence holder initially leasing his quota out. Furthermore, the majority of the larger quota allocation must have been almost entirely caught. At the end of the year, just prior to time when the under-catch and over-catch calculations are performed, a small amount of quota is transferred to the large allocation package. When one year passes into the next, the licence holder who received quota is recorded as having a small amount of uncaught quota. This amount attracts an under-catch allowance of 20 percent of the entire package. Because this quota package is larger than the other, the licence holder is eligible to ‘carry-over’, ‘store’ or ‘warehouse’ a greater amount of quota than the other man. If this uncaught amount had remained attached to the smaller package, it may have exceeded the 20 percent limit calculated for the smaller amount of quota, and thus been partially forfeited. As no stamp duty initially applied to these transfers, it made sense for those who were – for one reason or another – unable to catch their allocated quota to engage in warehousing. However, due to the potential of warehousing to inflate fishing pressure, the AMFA board decided to phase out the under and over-catch provisions in favour of a system whereby fishers could repay the excessive catches of one year in the first months of the following year. (Tables 4-5 illustrate under-catch provisions applied in the intended manner, and applied using the warehousing technique). 109

Table 4 Standard under-catch and over-catch process – mock example of License A and License B

License A

Year Annual Maximum Actual Uncaught Actual 1 allocation under- catch amount amount catch carried permitted over 20% x 100 – 100 = 50 =

100kg 20kg 50kg 50kg 20kg

(Exceeds maximum) Year Annual Carried Final 2 allocation over Year 2. amount quota allocatio n 90 + 20 =

90kg 20kg 110kg

License B

Year Annual Maximum Actual Uncaught Actual 1 allocation under- catch amount amount catch carried permitted over 20% x 1000 – 1000 = 1000 =

1000kg 200kg 1000kg 0kg 0kg

(Quota fully accounted for) Year Annual Carried Final 2 allocation over Year 2. amount quota allocatio n

900kg 0kg 900kg

110

Table 5 ‘Warehousing’ – mock example of License A and License B

License A

Year Annual Actual Mass Maximum Actual 1 allocation catch leased to under- amount License B catch carried before the permitted over end of the year 20% x 50 =

100kg 50kg 50kg 10kg 0kg

(Quota fully accounted for) Year Annual Carried Mass Final Year 2 allocation over leased 2. quota amount from allocation License B 90 + 25 =

90kg 0kg 25kg 115kg

License B

Year Annual Actual Mass Maximum Uncaught Actual 1 allocation catch leased under- amount amount from catch carried License permitted over A 20% x 1000kg 1050 =

1000kg 50kg 210kg 50kg 50kg

(Under maximum of 210kg) Year Annual Carried Mass Final Year 2 allocation over leased 2. quota amount to allocation License A 900 + 900kg 50 – 25 = 50kg 25kg 925kg

111

Probably the most disruptive aspect of the Individual Transferable Quota introduction was the restriction on the very ‘voluntary restructuring’ proposed by the plan. In theory, the more financially enabled fishers could gradually accumulate the quota of those who were under financial pressure. The ‘full transferability’ that fishers and fisheries managers had been trying to achieve legally for over a decade did not eventuate, however, due to ongoing legal wrangles that stalled the finalisation of quota allocations. Compounding matters, upon the introduction of ITQs, 65 fishers took up their right to challenge various aspects of the plan in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT), disputing both particular allocations as well as general principles (described further below). Of the many challenges mounted at the AAT following the introduction of ITQs, the most important challenge came from a group of fishermen who challenged the formula whereby AFMA had allocated quota, an appeal that came to be known as ‘the Fischer case’, after one of the appellants. Through a lengthy and curious serious of legal events the fishers eventually proved their point, though their efforts did not bring about significant change (detail below). Also, AFMA themselves conducted extensive reviews of their own quota allocations and confiscated quota from those who could not prove their catch history claims to the satisfaction of the AFMA compliance division. Until these matters were resolved AFMA refused to allow transferability except as ‘whole package’ transfers. The concern was that, in the event that AFMA were required to re-allocate ‘quota units’, quota that had been legally traded in segments between both existing and new shark licence holders would be impossible to unscramble.

Unable to split licence packages so that latent licences could be sold, fishers were required to continue paying levies on these licences lest the licences be forfeited, along with the potential to recoup the investment made in the form of the initial purchase price and ongoing levies. 112

Unable to buy or sell quota gradually, financially pressured fishers were required to either lease quota from others (at a cost almost equal to their profit margin), to sell their entire package, or to purchase an entire package.6 Purchasing quota was problematic both due to the actual price of quota (initially quite stable at $25,000 a tonne), and because the legal status of ‘provisional quota units’ did not represent solid collateral against which most financial institutions were willing to lend.7

During this time, many fishermen expressed a marked uncertainty about the future of the shark fishery, their place within it, and the potential for the fishing community to survive what some perceived to be an attack on their culture. Drawing on language frequently used by those commenting on the Australian government’s treatment of Aboriginal people, some fishermen referred to their treatment as resembling “cultural genocide”. The outcome of the Fischer case was a regular topic of speculation among fishermen because it was widely perceived to bear heavily on the economic feasibility of individual operations. Many were extremely hesitant to seek alternative forms of employment, and deeply distressed at the thought of leaving an industry with which they had had a lifelong association. A mood of

6 Several managers and other fisheries ‘experts’ suggested that fishermen should simply fish for as long as it took to catch their quota, then find alternative employment, or, as suggested by AFMA’s Fisheries Manager, “go on holidays”. A number of factors make this course of action untenable for most fishermen: financial institutions require regular contributions to loan repayments; the same amount of money earned over a quarter is taxed more highly than if earned over an entire year; typically, crew must be provided with stable employment across the year in order to retain their services; many fishermen in provincial Victoria have little opportunity for alternative local employment. For a discussion of some alternative employment strategies used by fishers and ex-fishers in non-Australian industrial fishing contexts see Pettit et al. (2005), Endter-Wada and Keenan (2005) and Stewart et al. (2006). 7 Even in those fisheries where ‘provisional quota units’ have been made into Statutory Fishing Rights (SFRs), the investment security of commercial fishing businesses has altered little from the perspective of financial institutions. Despite the statutory nature of fishing units, the inherent flexibility of the correlative Total Allowable Catch renders the potential financial value of these SFRs unstable. 113 resilience pervaded much of the industry during these early years, and those who could possibly hold on to their businesses did so by leasing ‘quota units’ from others. Those fishermen who had officially entered the fishery in the 1980s were largely the same people who were allocated ‘quota units’ in 2001, and who attempted to maintain their place in the fishery during the early 2000s.

While the permanent sale of quota units was still restricted, leasing quota was permitted. The leasing process itself required significant effort, partly due to the complexity of the legal and administrative arrangements, but primarily because available quota was often difficult to locate on short notice, in quantities that were appropriate and at an acceptable price. The new demands of leasing have resulted in some changes to the employment structure of fishing family units. While it is well known that rural women contribute substantially to the administration of primary industry businesses,8 the temporal pressures of organising quota transfers have compelled some women to forgo other commitments in order to meet the administrative demands of the ITQ system. In 2005, those women and men I questioned estimated that they spent a minimum of one day per week on fishing business administration.

Within the new system, many fishing businesses were compelled to secure ‘quota units’ as well as to catch fish, a demand that facilitated the emergence of a new category of shark fishery stakeholders: the ‘quota broker’. Quota brokers, like real estate agents, or stock agents, facilitate the transfer of goods – in this case quota – among fishers, in return for a commission. When the shark fishery implemented output controls in 2001, quota brokering in Australia had already been

8 Banks report that women sign 80 percent of all Australian farming business cheques (Hansen 2003:2). 114 established in response to the introduction of ITQs to other commercial fisheries. Indeed, at the time quota was introduced to the shark fishery three members of the AFMA board either operated, or were significantly involved in, quota-brokering businesses that serviced other fisheries.

After the introduction of ‘quota units’, ‘net units’ were no longer a measure of fishing capacity. However, length restrictions remained in place in order to prevent extra effort, in terms of the amount of gear being passed through the water, from increasing. A number of B class licenced fishermen appealed to AFMA for the relaxation of net restrictions, arguing that such limitations were unnecessary because the fishery was now managed by output controls. By restricting the ability of some fishermen to catch their quota with as little ‘effort’ as possible, AFMA was indeed contravening their legislative objective to facilitate the ‘economic efficiency’ of the industry. By the mid 2000s all shark gillnet licence holders were eligible to use 4200m of gillnet. However, as many smaller operations did not have the quota to justify further investment, or the corresponding equipment to accommodate extra net (such as a larger spool), the relaxation of net restrictions has, at the time of writing, not resulted in a significant increase in net use.

‘The Fischer case’

The ‘Fischer case’ was probably the most notorious to be heard at the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) during the period of my fieldwork, and was regularly a topic of speculation among fishermen, partly because the appellants were challenging the method whereby AFMA had determined the relative economic position of fishermen. If they were successful the allocation formula might be remitted to AFMA for reconsideration. In short, quota might be reissued in different proportions. The prospect of reallocation filled many fishermen with a 115 mixture of fear, hope and anxiety, even though the majority of AAT appeals had been decided in favour of AFMA. At the outset of the Fischer appeal the case was relatively unremarkable. However, as the case progressed, it became apparent to many observers that AFMA managers were not confident of winning, while the fishermen involved were hopeful. Interest in the case intensified. Fortuitously, I was visiting the AFMA offices in the weeks prior to the decision being handed down, and those staff who were involved in the case were completely absorbed in the task of bolstering AFMA’s position. Of course, I was not privy to any discussions concerning this case. Nonetheless, it was evident that this was a very stressful period for those directly involved in the court proceedings, particularly while waiting anxiously for a decision.

For those commercial fishermen based in Gippsland, the Fischer case took on an extra importance which related to the symbolic victory that many were anxious to claim against AFMA in lieu of substantive resistance. As one Lakes Entrance fisherman chuckled:

It doesn’t make that much difference to the contents of my wallet whether they [the Fischer legal team] win or lose. In fact, I’d probably be a bit worse off. I’d just like to see those bastards [AFMA] go home with their tail between their legs. It’d be good for industry. For morale.

Though the Fischer case is not integral to the story contained in this thesis, a brief outline of the case is warranted due to the importance it held during the period of my fieldwork. The case is also noteworthy as it illustrates the intense bureaucratisation typical of commercial fisheries management in Australia. This bureaucratisation will be described at greater length in Chapter 7.

The basis of the challenge at the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) 116 related to particular obligations that AFMA have under the Fisheries Management Act 1991, the Fisheries Administration Act 1991 and the FMP8 (1997), during times of administrative change. It is specified that AFMA should endeavour to maintain the relative economic position of every licence holder in the fishery.

Prior to announcing the initial allocation method, AFMA had received advice that the actual value of A and B licences did not require consideration for the purpose of quota determination. It was suggested that because the licences were non-transferable their market value was irrelevant: the benefits of owning, say, 10 ‘net units’ rather than 5 ‘net units’ were realised in the proportionately higher catch history accumulated, and subsequently, quota allocated.

However, during the Fischer case it emerged that ‘under the table’ licence trading was, indeed, occurring, and that some AFMA managers had been aware that this was taking place. In the absence of a Management Plan, these transfers were not contraventions of policy. The presiding judge decided that, prior to 2001, shark licences did have a differential economic value that was relevant to AFMAs task of allocating quota so as to maintain the relative economic position of fishers.

On the 27th September 2002, AFMA was directed by the AAT to reconsider their allocation process (AAT 2002). AFMA appealed the AAT decision to the Federal Court of Australia where, six months later, they were again directed to reconsider the ITQ allocation process (FCA 2003). AFMA subsequently formed an Independent Allocation Review Panel (IARP), comprising an economist and a retired Federal Court Judge, to reassess the initial allocation process. This panel accepted written submissions and also conducted numerous open meetings in fishing 117 ports where fishers were given the opportunity to present their position. The IARP concluded that, before the introduction of the ITQ system, the value of a fishing package had consisted of both the licence, and the demonstrable economic returns generated through the use of that licence. AFMA acted upon the IARP’s advice and reallocated quota for the 2004 fishing year, maintaining the emphasis on catch history as a determinate of quota entitlement. The relative value of the licences themselves – which were necessarily equal among fishers with identical licence classes – were deemed to be worth 17 percent of the entire quota determination process. From 2004, fishermen who had caught comparatively little on their licence during the allocation years were entitled to slightly more quota than originally, as the reformulated entitlements took into consideration the value of the licence itself, rather than considering only the demonstrated benefits accrued from its use. Many of the reissued quota packages closely resembled the original allocations. Those with larger quota packages necessarily lost the most in terms of the weight of fish they could catch, and several launched (unsuccessful) legal cases claiming a right to compensation.

The AFMA decision to reallocate quota according to the IARP advice was again appealed to the AAT by Fischer, and over 20 others. In an attempt to resolve fully the shark allocation matter, the AAT invited other appellants to participate in a joint appeal. Almost 20 fishing businesses accepted this invitation and, in over a month of hearings spanning May and June 2005, various positions were presented to the presiding Justice Downes, primarily regarding the allocation formula but also addressing other ITQ and stock assessment related issues. After several months of deliberation, Justice Downes affirmed AFMA’s decision to follow the advice of the IARP in the reallocation of shark quota for the 2004 fishing season, and the weighting apportioned to licence value and catch history. 118

Though Justice Downes found that AFMA’s ‘quota unit’ allocation process did not contravene any of the relevant policies, statutes or laws under which they are compelled to manage commercial fisheries, he noted that his final decision was somewhat arbitrary. The complexity of the case, he noted, was such that he was hesitant to make a decision that AFMA was better informed and equipped to make (Fischer and Anor 2005:107). Rather, his role was to make a judgement that was not unlawful in any way:

This is one of those cases where there is no correct decision. It is within the discretion of the decision-maker to arrive at the preferable decision. Others might arrive at a different decision. However, unless the decision is infected by error of law it will stand. This is the essence of executive or administrative decision-making. A range of decisions is available. There are no certainties to determine the result. There is no one correct answer. A range of possible results will all avoid legal error. Expert evidence will assist the decision-maker. However, the ultimate decision is not one for experts but one which depends upon judgement (ibid:50).

In relation to the challenges directed towards AFMA’s preferred method of determining the TAC, which included questioning the methods by which sharks are identified as belonging to a single genetic group for the purpose of a stock assessment, Justice Downes judged it wise to affirm the process. In doing so, he avoided opening a metaphorical can of worms in relation to fisheries science and environmental policy. Downes explained (AAT 2005:107):

An issue would have arisen as to the extent to which flaws in policy should impact on individual quota allocations if I had upheld any of the challenges. I am relieved from addressing that problem. However, I note that the Tribunal will approach with caution large and complex issues 119

with which the agency making the reviewable decision is especially equipped to deal. This is particularly so when the issues are influenced by policy and not merely by matters peculiar to the reviewable decisions themselves.

The narrative of the appeals made against AFMA’s introduction of output controls to the shark fishery exemplifies the bureaucratisation inherent in modern fisheries management in Australia, and the difficulty with which even the most experienced legal minds can understand the complexities.

Conclusion – A new direction in a new environment

It was in the context of these management changes, legal appeals and a pervasive sense of uncertainty among fishermen as to the financial and cultural future of the commercial industry, that I entered the field. In the early period of my research, I encountered mainly the owners and owner-skippers who were involved in a campaign to prevent or reverse the implementation of ITQs. Though there was certainly a core of politically active individuals who drove this particular movement, the community dialogue regarding the ITQ issue encompassed an enormous number of fishermen from around the country.

Through the medium of an internet discussion group, FISHFOLK, frequented by fisheries ‘experts’, commercial fishers, and other interested people, the Corner Inlet fishermen garnered interest and support from people around the globe. Those who took an active interest in the Australian situation included Californian Climatologist and Marine Biologist, Gary Sharp, and world renowned international fisheries development and management adviser, Menakhem Ben-Yami, who visited Corner Inlet from Israel in 2000 to advise local fishermen on 120 their fight against ITQs. Many Australia-based fisheries ‘experts’ participated in the ongoing discussion about south-eastern Australian fisheries management, including marine scientists Pascale Baelde, Peter Hale, Tim O’Hara, Jeremy Prince, Terry Walker and Leon Zann. It is too simplistic to classify the tone of each of these people as being either ‘pro’ or ‘anti’ commercial fishing, though there were certainly those who were more willing than others to recognise the knowledge provided by fishermen. Certainly, most fishermen were aware of the potential power wielded by those in positions of scientific authority, and some fishermen went to great lengths trying to convince various fisheries ‘experts’ that commercial fishers had an understanding of marine ecology that warranted attention.

For the owners and owner-skippers I encountered throughout my research, the goals of identifying those with influence in fisheries management decisions, and of garnering their support, had become a major focus of time, energy and money. These fishermen extended their scope of interaction beyond the waters of Bass Strait, beyond the wharf, and into the meeting rooms, hotel lobbies, conference centres and courtrooms that have, in recent decades, become salient environments for those seeking to make their living from commercial fishing. These domains have become just another environment fishermen are compelled to negotiate. Most of these men and women were highly savvy and articulate participants in fisheries management discussions, and their understanding of the political domain put my own to shame. Michael, a shark fisherman and tireless campaigner for the scrapping of output control policies, lamented this shift in focus from the more traditional interests of fishermen. Watching deckies working or larking on the boats at the wharf, Mick would occasionally express a longing to be one of those “lucky bastards” who was oblivious to management issues, who could simply go fishing. “You should go and study them, 121

Tan. Not me. They’re the ones that still have the pure, fishing culture, unadulterated by all this crap [the concerns of management]”. Indeed, changes to fisheries management systems that ignore the complex relationships among fishermen, their natural and social environments, as well as their sense of personal identity – such the implementation of ITQs into the Australian shark fishery – have the potential to destroy the social foundation upon which the culture of Bass Strait fishermen rests. But for now, aspects of the ‘fishing culture’, to which Michael referred, remain. The following four chapters focus on the more traditional experiences of fishermen, as deckhands and skippers at sea in Bass Strait, and it is to their stories that I now turn.

Environmental Realities: Ambiguous boundaries in physical space

Younger men … would hear about an enormous octopus (kwita) …. Its arms are thick as coco-nut palms, stretching right across the sea.... Only seldom does it come to the waters between the Trobriands and Amphletts, but there are people who have seen it there …. Woe to the canoe caught by the giant kwita! It would be held fast … till the crew, dying of hunger and thirst, would decide to sacrifice one of the small boys of their number. Once a native, asked why a grown-up would not be sacrificed on such an occasion, gave me the answer:

“A grown-up man would not like it; a boy has got no mind. We take him by force and throw him to the kwita”

- Bronislaw Malinowski, Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922:234).

The ambiguous ganka

Deep in the waters off the south-east coast of Australia lives a creature called a ganka. Ask almost any fisherman who lives in a coastal town abutting Bass Strait and he will describe the morphology and behaviour of the animal in great detail.

Gankas look somewhat like a cross between a crab and an octopus, or a crab and a cuttlefish. Indeed, ganka young are indistinguishable from cuttlefish young, and occasionally surface in fishing gear. As gankas 123 approach maturity, however, they grow evasive and somewhat mischievous. They also grow short, but sharp, teeth. Some fishermen sport nasty scars as a result of disturbing a vicious ganka. Though gankas are necessarily dependent upon organic matter for nourishment, their unusually resilient digestive system allows them to eat a range of non-organic substances including plastic, steel and nylon. This possibly reflects a need for roughage, but could be due to their curious natures. Gankas possess great dexterity, their long tentacles enabling them to move through water, and even onto islands, with ease. Though not restricted to water, they are saline bound, never venturing too close to the mainland for fear of the fresh water run-off.

Gankas are a pest to fishermen. When boats are laying off the gear and the crew are sleeping, particularly at night, mature gankas have been known to climb up the anchor rope and onto the deck of the boat. Once aboard they “eat anything that’s not tied down”, including ropes, floats and gaffs. They have a particular penchant for gumboots. In order to thwart the pillaging, someone must stay awake, on ‘ganka watch’. Usually – indeed, without exception – the person who goes on first watch is an inexperienced, uninitiated, ‘green’ deckhand.

Gankas are ambiguous creatures: they straddle the boundary between myth and reality. Generally, experienced fishermen do not believe in gankas in the same way that they believe in other sea creatures, even those they may never have seen such as great white sharks or plankton. However, when questioned about gankas several were unwilling to discount their existence entirely, explaining that the ocean was large and unknowable, and potentially home to a variety of hitherto unknown beasts. Andy explained, “I’ve seen a lot of weird shit come up in the net”, implying that a ganka-type creature may indeed exist. As well as blurring the lines of reality and myth, gankas move across other 124 boundaries that fishermen recognise. They are able to live in both air and water, on land and in the sea. They are not constrained by State lines or the loose territories recognised among fishermen. They eat the ‘inedible’. Gankas are ambiguous, in that they move between spaces that seem mutually exclusive. Yet, it is precisely the ambiguity of their nature that, on the one hand, allows them to move across boundaries, and, on the other, connects the domains that they move among.

The key boundary that gankas straddle, simultaneously dividing and connecting – the boundary upon which this chapter is focused – is that between the social and the natural environments. The ‘existence’ of gankas in Bass Strait is dependent upon the ecology of those who fish the region. Without the relationships among shark fishermen – one in which deckies are sometimes made the butt of elaborate jokes – ganka populations would dwindle to extinction. Likewise, the relationship between deckies and more senior fishermen arises in the context of a particular physical environment. Gankas are used by fishermen to socialise junior recruits in a way that is consistent with the physical demands of fishing in Bass Strait (described in Chapter 5). The human and natural worlds cannot adequately be considered exclusively. As Ingold (1992:40) suggests, they are mutually enabling.

The distinction between nature and society – as between land and sea, day and night – helps to order an otherwise continuum of sensory input. When The Black Keys sing “You know what the sun’s all about when the lights go out”, they remind us that conceptual boundaries often separate categories that only have meaning in relation to each other (Carney and Auerbach 2004). ‘Day’ only makes sense in relation to ‘night’, or rather, when we experience the difference. We understand daylight as we do, because the lights go out. As Barth (2000:22) suggests, we employ boundaries as tools to negotiate the world. Some 125 categories are so entrenched in mental schema that they appear to exist in isolation from the patterns and relationships within which they have meaning. They appear to stand alone. They appear logical. And yet, it is often the very movement across boundaries that gives them meaning. Boundaries not only divide, they also connect (ibid). When people, things or events transgress an apparently logical boundary, the result can be ambiguous, simultaneously destabilizing and strengthening categories of meaning. It is in their ambiguity that gankas simultaneously draw attention to the boundaries that fishermen negotiate, and facilitate the connection between delineated spaces.

Boundaries are always created through iterative discourses with the physical and social world and, because human behaviour is dynamic, boundaries shift. “Human activities perversely create such leakages through conceptual boundaries” (Barth 2000:28). Capturing the dynamic relationship between human activity and nature, Pálsson and Durrenberger (1990:139) suggest that “representations of nature and production are generated in social discourses. As production systems change, so do representations of nature and production”. To suggest that ‘nature’ is subject to cultural interpretation neither denies that the world is ‘real’ nor implies that people can be fooled into believing in a completely fabricated world. However, nature, as we perceive, understand and engage with it, is produced through the iterative discourse of human action in the world. There is no single, static reality that may be detected and attributed existence. A dualistic understanding of nature and culture – of an objectively existing environment and of humans who perceive, classify and give it social meaning – sets up a false distinction between environment and organism (Ingold 1992:40). “An environment”, Ingold critically imputes, “is that which surrounds, and therefore… it presupposes something to be surrounded” (ibid). 126

The very notion that humans act ‘within’ an environment is problematic, as the two are inextricable. People understand nature as mediated through dynamic interactions with both the physical world and human relationships (Berger and Luckmann 1966, Ingold 1992:39, Ingold 2000d). Bourdieu (1977:81), influentially, referred to knowledge generated through the activities of people, knowledge that lies beneath the level of discourse as ‘embodied’. In developing his notion of ‘relational thinking’ Ingold (2000c:240) suggests that we may “just as well” refer to ‘enminded knowledge’, or patterned understandings of thinking the world. “For”, he argues, “to develop certain patterns of movement in the world is, at one and the same time, to develop certain modalities of attending to it”. Ingold refers to enminded knowledge as an aid to explaining his call for ‘relational thinking’, a proposal that aims to capture the holistic relationship among organisms, environments, doing, thinking and being (ibid:244). While ‘relational thinking’ does encourage a more comprehensive approach to questions of ontology, I find the idea of enminded knowledge a useful tool for comprehending pedagogic processes, particularly if considered in association with another model of cognition: connectionism.

Enmindment strikes me as somewhat akin to connectionism, which suggests that the human ability to make rapid calculations stems from a learned ability to package regularly occurring sequences of experientially iterated thought and behaviour (Bloch 1998:11-3, cf. Pinker and Mehler 1988). Without entering the debate on connectionism, the notion of ‘packaging’ is a useful way to think about the way in which we learn to string together a complex array of minute actions into a single performance. One ‘movement’ is rarely isolable to the contraction of a single muscle or the firing of a single neuron. Rather, a ‘movement’ is an amalgamation of a cluster of minute bodily actions. One observes an entire physical movement, a whole 127 performance, and emulates that action with one’s own body. The skill is reflected, displayed, realised, transmitted “in its practical state” (Bourdieu 1977:87). While one may be given some instruction, some direction as to appropriate execution, the actualisation of the skill is only captured in the real-time performance of a complete package of movements. Bloch (1998:7) notes that the training of apprentices, in any number of occupations, rarely prioritises explicit instruction, but, rather, relies upon the ability of the student to mimic the actions of the master. One has learned the movement precisely when it no longer requires attention, when the components of the action collapse into a single, embodied, enminded skill: when it goes without saying. To use another of Ingold’s (2000c:234) phrases, this information is not “isolable from the real-time performance of the activity itself”.

The way someone understands the world is dictated by their engagement with that world: the items they encounter, the tools they use, their modes of behaviour, and the other people they meet. It is through their experiences as shark fishermen, doing what shark fishermen do, that shark fishermen come to understand, delineate, divide, connect and glean meaning within their environment in a particular way.

This chapter explores the relationship between shark fishermen and the natural environment, by considering some of the boundaries – divisions and connections – that they encounter through their performance in the world. One of the aims of focusing on these boundaries is to challenge the notion that they are fixed, or that they have some internal logic, but rather, to note the context of performance in which categories of understanding arise. The other aim is to acknowledge the vital role these classifications play in facilitating meaning within the continuum of human action and imagination in an environment. 128

The following three sections focus on experiences that are specific to shark fishermen. The sections are structured around three sets of delineation, although the ambiguity of these divisions is evident in each section. Though these categories reflect both emic and etic usages they should, in both cases, be considered as tools of appreciation situated in a context of action, and not as fixed categories.

First, I consider the boundary between land and sea. Shark fishermen continually move between the two, embodying the salient categories of understanding and simultaneously experiencing aspects of both places. There is a sense in which shark fishermen are like gankas in that they personify the ambiguity of a life at sea and on land.

Secondly, I describe the interface of the sea surface, the differences and similarities that are imagined above and below the water. The focus of this section is the understandings that are generated through experiences specific to shark fishing. In Chapter 8, I describe contrasting knowledge that is generated through engagement with the media, and discuss the conflict between these modes of ‘seeing’ the ocean.

The third and final section relates to the divisions that shark fishermen encounter on the surface of the water, both those imposed in consultation with the state and those that are negotiated among shark fishermen at sea. These ‘divisions’ serve to variously distinguish between, and connect, individuals within the fishing industry, while at sea. It is the very malleability of these lines, and the social relations they facilitate, that enables shark fishermen to move around Bass Strait, and within the fishing community that is mapped onto the ocean.

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At sea and on land

Fishermen engage with a medium that is crucial to their livelihoods and yet is one in which none could survive unaided (Acheson 1981:276). Beyond the bulwarks of a boat is a world with features of a different order to those encountered on land. There is a clear distinction in the minds of shark fishermen, as well as the non-fishermen who live in the port towns of Southern Victoria, between the land and the sea. This difference is, at once, physical and social. Humans socialise the seascape using terrestrial categories, rules and metaphors, and employ categories developed in marine domains to order life on land (Pálsson 1990). As shark fishermen move between the land and the ocean, they carry over certain tools for ordering the world and leave others behind. Some patterns of order retain considerable coherence both on land and at sea. Typically, however, as categories of understanding, metaphors, patterns of behaviour, and so-forth, are employed in different settings, their emic salience alters accordingly.

The islands that dot Bass Strait are significant to fishermen not merely because they are places that are – or could be – inhabited by humans. Initially, I imagined the islands to be safe havens. However, my focus was mistakenly with the land, and I had not adjusted my focus to accommodate the water. Land is important if the boat sinks and the crew must steer a life-raft – or swim – to shore. More relevant, however, are the currents that move around the islands to create areas of calmer waters in which fishermen can shelter during rough seas. It is for the relative stillness of these areas during storms that a skipper will seek out and “hide behind” an island.

Experiences on land are often invoked in marine environments, and vice versa. For example, off the west coast of Tasmania, where there are no 130 islands behind which to ‘hide’, fishermen are forced to “shelter under the big tree”. Of course, there is no tree sprouting from the sea floor to provide a convenient refuge for fishermen, rather, the imagery uses a terrestrial symbol to provide a sense of hope. Likewise, what happens ‘at sea’ can help to make sense of a land-based quandary. Take, for example, the exchange I witnessed one evening in the bar of the Port Albert Hotel, where a game of Gaelic football happened to be screening on the television. The sport was one with which few present were familiar. Matt, a shark fisherman from Tasmania, described the scoring procedure to his mate by using the analogy of a piece of fishing gear: “...and then he kicks the ball into the cod-end!” While both these examples are offered with some humour, simultaneously highlighting the distinction between two domains while displaying a personal understanding of both, literal connections between the land and the ocean are evident in other symbolic tools. For example, when the leaves of a particular tree are blown upwards to show their white undersides (indicating a certain wind pattern), or a particular bird migration style is observed, certain ecological states of the ocean can be implied. As Joy, member of an extensive fishing family, explains, “If there are plenty of blossoms on the tea-trees, then there will be an abundance of school shark. That’s just the way it has always been” (Seevers 2004:107). One of the classic associations linking sunsets, sunrises and weather patterns is captured in the rhyme: ‘Red in the morning: fisherman’s warning. Red at night: fisherman’s delight’.1 While Bass Strait fishermen can tune their radios to the weather station for constant updates from a meteorological centre, first-hand, if unquantifiable, information is nonetheless noted with serious regard. Part of the education of novice deckhands involves learning to attend to various signs in order to predict environmental states. Again, the ganka plays a

1 This rhyme is sometimes rendered for a terrestrial audience as, ‘Red in the morning: shepherd’s warning. Red at night: shepherd’s delight’. 131 role in this education. Experienced deckhand, Brown, explained to me that when readying to dupe a green deckie, one should point out certain environmental phenomena and comment, with the appearance of knowledge and conviction, that the conditions are just right for gankers. He imitated the ruse – complete with pointing gestures and a furrowing of the brow – with deadpan solemnity. “You know, you say, ‘Oh, there’s a Southerly, and the water’s lapping at the boat a certain way and this bird, or that bird, is flying over: it’s ganka weather’”. The green deckie may wait in vain for a curious ganka to board his boat and devour his gumboots, even in the most suitable of conditions. However, games like the one Brown described act to direct the attention of the novice deckhand to those details in the environment that can, indeed, be ‘read’ or interpreted as conveying important information. Through such direction, the deckhand who may once have perceived a rigid distinction between, say, birds and fish, or failed to appreciate subtle differences in wind direction, will begin to appreciate alternative boundaries in the world.

Further overlaps between that which occurs on land and at sea will be described below, when considering the threshold that separates and binds that which is above and below the water. In the subsections that follow, however, I describe other ways in which fishermen take patterns of understanding generated on land, and adjust them to suit the environment at sea.

Time

Shark fishermen are compelled to adjust to the physical environment, and production imperatives, in which they labour. Unlike farmers, who organise their work around the sun, or shop-workers who tend to do most of their work in daylight, shark fishermen work around the moon. 132

Lunar cycles are crucially important for two key reasons: they create tides and they offer varying levels of light. Tides ebb and flow every six and a half hours. In order to prevent nets from bunching up, rendering them ineffective or destroying them totally, nets are usually set and hauled in the same direction as the tide. The exact timing of setting and hauling varies with the particular ecological conditions of the shot, but must be done within this six and half hour window. Tides will run the hardest after the full moon, making it trickier to put nets into the water and pull them out again intact. The best time to fish is just before and a little after the full moon. Another advantage of working around this time is that sea-lice are more active in the dark, and will therefore damage fish less during the day or under a full moon. Over a ten day trip fishermen rest and work on a shorter cycle than those on land, but a cycle that nonetheless reflects terrestrial categories of time. Chris explains:

Tanya – Do you reckon it’s different being out here to what it is being on land?

Chris – Oh, definitely.

Tanya – What’s different about it?

Chris – Oh, it’s a total different life, out here. It’s very easy to lose track of days, and time, well, not so much time, but days, I suppose. Sometimes, the hours. We work with the tides, it’s always moving, it changes, or gains or, so you slowly move around the clock. For instance you might start having breakfast at the normal time, and, I’ve done trips where by the end of the trip you’re having breakfast at tea time. And you just work around the tide, as it moves.

Chris’s comments suggest that he regards time segmentation at sea as 133 different to land-based time though he does not see the two as mutually exclusive. Though his explanation for eating breakfast in the evening makes sense in terms of the requirements of fishing, he contrasts it to the “normal time” at which breakfast is taken. In this way, both land and sea time are simultaneously salient.

This land and sea distinction is nonetheless important for ordering the lives of fishermen, and sometimes the boundary must be expressly reinforced. While Chris’s comments do not convey a strong sense of preference for either ‘sea time’ or ‘land time’, there is sometimes a sense of cultural value attributed to different ways of understanding the world which rouse claims to partiality. Any conflict between the two perspectives typically emerges in the context of exchanges with those who only recognise the world in a way compatible with terrestrial experiences. In asserting the validity of both land-experiences and sea- experiences commercial fishermen sometimes find that they are compelled to counteractively prioritise the seaward domain, further solidifying the division.

“…and you don’t know until you go to sea!”

For people who spend their lives on land, the ocean can seem an alien environment. A Victorian research group paraphrased the sentiments of those it surveyed regarding their perception of the ocean: “(The public) don’t feel confident or secure in the environment of the sea. Consequently, many people prefer to observe the sea from the safety of land” (Smith and Free 1996:9). Alternatively, for those men who have spent a great deal of their lives negotiating the physical and social realities of the shark fishery, land can seem the more foreign environment, or at least the less desirable. Several men referred to embarking on a fishing trip as “going home”. Sitting in the pub one 134 night, just before one of the local crews ‘went home’, I listened to a long and pessimistic discussion among several fishermen about the advantages of the lifestyle at sea over that on land. The phrase repeatedly used to describe the sea was “reality”. Being “at sea is reality” while the terrestrial world is “just shit: and you don’t know until you go to sea!” The world on land takes on a particular meaning in relation to that which occurs at sea.

Being at sea allows fishermen a somewhat detached perspective on the world, allowing them to focus on their terrestrial lives, and also to temporarily escape from them. Dave, a young man with a young family and a single wage, expressed a wish to maintain the separation between land and sea and remain on the ocean side of the boundary for longer:

Dave – [You] don’t have to pay bills. If I could have my kids sitting next to me, and my family’s feelings with me. I was sitting there reading a book the other day thinking “I could sit here forever”.

Tanya – Wouldn’t you get bored?

Dave and another crew member – Nah! It’s too beautiful.

Though Dave’s comments struck me as somewhat escapist, I recognised his sentiments, and was strongly sympathetic. In 2001, a day before I departed on an eleven day shark trip, my financial situation was particularly grim. It would be another week before my next scholarship payment replenished my emaciated bank account. I borrowed money to buy petrol to drive to the wharf. I was anxious. Once the boat was out of phone range, however, my lack of money no longer concerned me, not merely because I was too busy vomiting to be concerned about anything but the gentle waves that tilted the boat and churned my stomach. For at least the coming week, I would have food, a bunk, good company and 135 work to occupy me. The routine of the fishing operation soon made my terrestrial woes seem a distant concern. Like the other fishermen on the boat, I could expect some financial relief when I returned to land, though unlike the other fishermen, my income was not dependent upon the size of the catch.

Fishermen are compelled to negotiate terrestrial concerns, however. When on land, shark fishermen engage with a number of overlapping communities, as do we all. Fishermen encounter family, townspeople, women, children and other fishermen, those associated with the local school, or football club, and each group requires a slight reorientation of attention to reflect the respective social guidelines. The community of fishermen at sea is yet another social group to which they must adjust themselves. The following example illustrates the difficulty with which some fishermen negotiate the social delineation between land and sea.

Football

The temporal demands of shark fishing restrict those involved from participating in social activities that occur with regularity in coastal towns. An example of this is the relationship fishermen have to a social institution that binds rural communities all across South Eastern Australia: regional Australian Rules football competitions. The local team for those in Port Albert is the Demons.

Every Saturday during the football season – March until September – The Demons meet to play against other local teams. Inclusion in the Seniors team is competitive, and some men train more often than the mandatory twice weekly coaching sessions, in the hope of being one of 136 the exceptional players who are paid.2 The importance of the matches increases throughout the season as the tally of wins and losses determines who is eligible to vie for the Premiership Cup during the Grand Final. Particularly during the season, townsfolk devote a great deal of time to discussing a range of pertinent issues: how skilfully this or that player is performing; how a particular player compares to his brother, father or son; the skills of the opposition; the fairness of the umpires; the possibility of making the finals. Even those who do not attend regularly are able to keep track of the games through the considerable coverage received in local papers.

Team allegiance is largely geographical, as most supporters have a kin or friendship relationship with one or more of the local players. There are multiple divisions, from Seniors, 2nds and 3rds, down to children’s teams, as well as netball matches (almost exclusively female in rural Australia) that coincide with Seniors’ games. Entire families can play sport at the same time, in the one location, an important consideration in the country due to the long distances and minimal public transport. On Saturdays throughout late autumn, winter and early spring, locals converge on the football oval, parking their vehicles around the edge. Those arriving earliest secure the best – and often warmest – vantage points from which to watch the game.

The game days are extremely social and, in the absence of a strong religious community,3 act as a weekly gathering event, where locals meet to talk, eat, drink, court and flirt, cheer, and honk their car horns

2 Pre-season training significantly increases the time during which team members are actively involved in team activities. 3 Though there are certainly those who regard themselves as Christian in and around Port Albert, the church does not have a strong, active presence among those with whom I associated. Though the only wedding I attended was held in a local church, the many guests did not adhere to, and showed little understanding of, the ritual observances that might be expected of regular church-goers. 137 every time The Demons score a goal. Young teenagers circulate in groups among the car bonnets, netball courts, kiosk, pavilions and the edge of the oval. In this context of the community beyond the schoolyard, young people hone their socialising skills. Following the Seniors’ game, the families and friends of the players gather in the football pavilion for a meal and further drinking. The players themselves emerge from showering as heroes – especially if they have won, or played well – and enjoy their local celebrity for an evening. From their framed position on the wall, the black and white faces of past teams seem to watch over their descendants with approval.

In addition to the post-game socialising, the football club organises many social events throughout the year. Though attendance at these events is not officially restricted, typically only those with a social connection to the club or players attend, marking out the group as exclusive.

Fishermen are largely excluded from participating in local football due to the time they spend at sea. The experience of Eric, a short-term deckie, illustrates the kind of status fishermen forego by not playing football. I was introduced to Eric as ‘Fraser’s new deckie’. A ‘green’ deckie, he had no credibility in the fishing industry, and was yet to prove himself. Though Eric quickly learned to negotiate his new role, he was always the most junior on the boat. He fished for several months and then returned to land-based employment. During the football season following his stint as a deckie I often watched him play for the Demons, sitting with his wife, Georgie, and two children, Hayden and Isaac. Right away, I was struck by how the social make-up of the football club differed from that of the fishing community, and particularly, the different status Eric had in each. While on the wharf he was ‘Fraser’s deckie’ and behaved accordingly. As I describe in 138

Chapter 4, a deckie, particularly a green deckie, neither seeks nor is afforded public attention. On the football field, however, Eric was a skilled, confident and charismatic player of some renown. In the football pavilion, as on the field, he had presence, and was popular. I sheepishly admit that I sometimes felt a pang of giddy pride at being at ‘footy club’ events because of my association with Eric. Such was the difference in the man’s status that my memory of Eric, the Demon’s star footballer, seems at odds with my memory of the person who was ‘Fraser’s deckie’.

Due to the time commitment required to participate in football competitively, the domains of ‘football’ and ‘fishing’ remain somewhat distinct. As such, tensions aroused by contrasting depictions of a man’s status are allayed. Generally, fishermen are unable to join in the ritual of football, to be part of this important social event, and their ability to attain status in the terrestrial focussed community is accordingly restricted. I was told that one skipper, who was also a particularly dedicated footballer, did manage to play for a while, by timing his trips so that he was home every Saturday. During the week he trained, while the crew slept, on an exercise bike he kept in the engine room. This story was told to illustrate the tenacity of the fisherman in question, but it concluded by noting that his schedule was too rigorous to keep up and that the man had had little choice but to quit the sport altogether.

Jerry, a young shark boat deckie, explained that he had quit fishing because football was too important to forego. Another, related, reason was that the extended periods spent away from land was vexing his attempts to maintain a romantic relationship with a local girl. Public sporting prowess is certainly a formidable weapon in the courting armoury of a young rural man. 139

Women

While at sea, separated from the community of non-fishers, fishermen are divided from the vast majority of women. Commercial, offshore fishing that involves extended time-commitments, is largely restricted to men in Australia. Certainly, locals cite a range of reasons as to why women are typically land-based, including their traditional role as primary caregiver (King 2001, also see Yodanis 2000 for discussion of gender segregation in rural fishing communities). When I asked fishermen and their families why women did not regularly go to sea for extended periods, some people noted that ‘in the past’ women were reputed to court an indefinable ‘bad luck’ (see Chapter 6). While this theory was presented as an ‘old wives tale’, the adherence of some fishermen to other colloquial prohibitions suggests that the miasmic qualities of women may not have been wholly discredited. The more common explanation – with which I was more satisfied – was that in cramped working conditions women were a ‘distraction’ to the male crew and a potential threat to wives back on shore. When discussing the male saturation of the fishing industry, one skipper illustrated just this point by relaying to me the story of another skipper who had crashed his boat at the wharf because he was distracted by the female deckies on another vessel. Two women from Port Albert worked as deckies aboard shark boats during the period of my research, and both adjusted their behaviour so as to allow them to fill a traditionally masculine role. While some Australian fisheries include an economic and exemplary role for women,4 both as shore-based processors (most notably in the processing of scallops), and fishermen

4 Describing how the efficacy of a role-model for ‘fisherwomen’ may be compromised, Pálsson (1991:93) acknowledges how the role of women in the fishing industry is often socially devalued disproportionately to their quantifiable contribution. This trend is well documented in many other labour domains (King 2001). 140 in their own right,5 shark are almost exclusively caught and processed at sea by men.6

Young men who are members of a land-based community in absentia only, who are unable to participate in prestige gaining social activities such as football, are challenged in their efforts to gain – and keep – girlfriends. The time required to invest in a new relationship is simply not available for the fisherman who spends up to twenty days per month at sea. Even phone contact is largely impossible as mobile phone coverage is not deemed an economically viable service provision in Bass Strait, an assessment unlikely to be redressed in light of the complete privatisation of the state telecommunications network, Telstra. After the demise of his latest relationship, Kupe shook his head and sighed, “fishing is a single man’s game”.

I asked Luke, a 45 year old man who had been fishing for over twenty years, how the temporal requirements of fishing impacted on his ability to forge and maintain terrestrial relationships.

5 One Bass Strait family, in particular, boasts an unusually high (at various times, more than six) number of women actively fishing, although none target shark. 6 Cole (1991:68) describes how various economic and ecological circumstances facilitated the participation of Portuguese women in the port of Vila Chã, describing how:

they became “like men”. Indeed, a Vila Chã fisherwoman describing her work at sea invariably will say, “I fished as a man”. Thus, although fishing was culturally constructed as masculine work, the work of fishing could be, and was, performed by individuals of either sex.

The description offered by Cole only partly reflects the situation I encountered. Though fishing certainly is ‘culturally constructed as masculine work’ in Australia, women are not able to fill the role of ‘fisherman’ as readily as the women of Vila Chã. Much depends on the particular circumstances of the woman in question, such as her age, her relationship to the skipper and the conditions of her participation. 141

Tanya – Is it hard to maintain, like, friendships and relationships, and that kind of thing, on land, when you’re spending so much time at sea?

Luke – Um, it is. Relationships, with the opposite sex, that is, you have to have, in my case a good woman, who understands, that when you come out here you’re usually working long hours and you come home and you’re pretty tired. Whereas friends, friends don’t really matter because if they’re real friends it doesn’t matter what happens, they’re still you’re friend. If they’re going to worry about you going to sea, or if you can’t go somewhere because you’re at sea, well then, I consider they’re not real friends so it doesn’t really bother me.

Tanya – I just think of Danny. He’s such a young guy: I wonder how he can maintain a girlfriend. And, I mean, not just him but a lot of the other young deckies.

Luke – Yeah, well, when you’re that age though, you don’t mind, you go through a few [pauses, grins and gives a small sigh] women I suppose. But like I said, you’ve got to find one that’s of the right frame of mind. They’ve got to realize that you’re out here trying to make a living.

In some cases men spend so many of their teenage years in the exclusive company of other men, in a masculine environment, that they find it difficult to talk to women at all. Indeed, many young deckies seem tongue tied when compelled to talk to a non-fisher, let alone a woman! Greg, a twenty year old deckie, whom I regarded as unusually confident, candidly agreed that deckies who began working during their teenage years were often not in a position to develop social skills comparable to those acquired by their land-based peers, simply because much of their youth was spent talking to other fishermen about fishing. When it came to girls, sighed Greg, “If they don’t want to talk about fishing, which most of them don’t, we just don’t know what to say to them”. 142

Relationships do form, however, and there is a sense in which they facilitate the movement of men between the communities at sea and on land. While men are occupied with fishing, women have the freedom to forge an almost separate life for themselves on land. The first few days following a trip can be, according to one fisherman, “like a honeymoon, which lasts just long enough for the man to get under the woman’s feet”, whereupon he can return to sea (McGoodwin 1990:37). In a relationship characterised by separation, it is the very division of the couple that ensures the maintenance of the relationship. The following extract, from a letter by a North American fisherman’s wife to a fishing magazine, captures the sense in which women help fishermen move between land and sea:

Every time you leave, you take other people’s souls with you. We sit looking at the full moon, wondering how and where you are …. We realize it’s not an easy transition from your world to ours, but if you will trust us and let us, we will help you make the adjustment (in McGoodwin 1990:37).

Woman and man, female and male, are categories with meaning to fishermen on land, and these categories are drawn upon at sea to help order social relations within the predominantly male community. For example, it is common that commercial fishing boats in Victoria are named after a woman with whom the namer of the boat established a relationship on land (Dwyer et al. 2003). Additionally, as will be discussed in the following chapter, the relationship among deckhands and skippers is somewhat gendered. The role of ‘deckhand’ is ‘feminised’, in that they are constructed in relation to – less powerful than, reliant upon – skippers. It could seem that women are not such unlikely deckies. However, there is a sense in which women are not eligible for this extra-feminisation. As will be illustrated in the following chapter, it is the process of feminisation, and the reiteration, that is 143 vital to the relationship between skipper and deckhand. One who is already ‘feminised’, in a sense, is unresponsive to further gendered stylisation. Indeed, a few examples suggest that women in the fishing industry style themselves in an extra-masculine manner, hence positioning themselves to be feminised (again) along with other deckhands (Harré and Slocum 2001). Secondly, in the trajectory of a fisherman’s apprenticeship one usually anticipates that he will graduate from a deckie to a skipper, a role that is akin to being a man. In Chapter 5 I will describe how Greg, the shy deckie described on page 142, developed from a somewhat feminised 20 year old deckie to become a thoroughly masculine figure as a skipper. Such a transition would be problematic for a young woman (Busby 2000, Yodanis 2000).

As fishermen move between land and sea, the ideas described above – time, financial responsibility, community status and gender – alter their salience and meaning in accordance with shifting contexts of experience. These multifaceted systems of meaning do not remain integral within a particular domain, however, but continuously iterate understandings of the world as fishermen generate experiences across physical and social spaces. While fishermen fully recognise the distinction between land and sea, their experience of this particular boundary is informed by a range of symbolic conflicts and compliments. In the following section I will describe another border that fishermen encounter, though in most cases, they physically experience only one of the contrasting domains. While fishermen spend their time perched on the surface of the water, their focus is often directed below the waterline. Much of their understanding of the underwater environment is generated through engagement in relatively arid conditions. 144

Above and below

Half in and half out of the water, the boundary that shark boats straddle is important to fishermen both literally and figuratively. The surface of the water often acts as a point of inversion, modifying meaning as things pass in and out of the sea. It is the very boundary that both separates and connects that which is above and below the water.

Above the water a man is alive. Below he is dead. While a handful of fishermen dive, many cannot even swim. Matt explained that he had seen too much “weird shit” come out of the water to ever voluntarily climb into it. Confident and dashing, standing outside a dining room at Parliament House, Melbourne, a look of disquiet crossed Matt’s face as he described the water in monstrous terms: “It’s the blackness of it, you know?! It’s just so big and black. It’s the blackness of it!” Men cannot live in such blackness: to slip below the surface is contrary to life.

When the creatures that live in the water cross into the air, they, too, quickly pass from life to death. Some fishermen even describe the demise of fish as “drowning” in air. Only Port Jackson Sharks and Skunkies – the two primary by-catch species that are thrown back – remain alive for a long time once above the water. Their lack of economic salience somewhat counteracts their transgression: they are ‘out of place’ on the boat and must move back into the water for order to be restored. Gankas, of course, move between the water and the deck of the boat with ease, their ambiguity connecting that which is divided. Similarly, in Icelandic folk-lore, “anomalous water-beings … stress the boundary between land and sea” (Pálsson 1991a:97), by moving between the two. Actual sea-creatures challenge the integrity of the boundary of the sea surface, but only temporarily. Seals, penguins, 145 and turtles emerge from the sea for relatively short periods, flying-fish, dolphins and whales even more fleetingly. It is these very creatures, these ‘anomalous water-beings’, that often feature in folklore from maritime societies around the world, appearing as anthropomorphised protagonists, stressing the boundary between myth and reality.7

There is another sense in which movement across the boundary between air and water involves a shift between myth and reality. Below the water is potential economic benefit, while it is above the water that this potential may be realised. When gillnets enter the water there is a period of expectation as the nets “soak”. During this time the underwater action is mere speculation, and any number of scenarios are possible, from destruction of the nets to a ‘100 box shot’ (an exceptionally large catch). When the gear is hauled, however, the outcome becomes fixed, not only in the minds of those on board, but also in logbooks, catch-record forms, and, eventually, the minds of other fishermen.

Because little can be known about the action below the surface of the water, fishermen imagine it according to their particular experiences with that environment. Though Pálsson (1991a:68-9) suggests that similar ecological and technical experiences, alone, cannot explain commonalities between understandings of the ocean, my research indicates a strong correlation between styles of engagement and imagined realities. The following subsection demonstrates how different experiences can facilitate diverse understandings of the sea.

7 For example, the Hans Christian Anderson fairytale, The Little Mermaid, which depicts a fish-woman attempting to negotiate both her ocean home and the terrestrial palace of her lover, has been enormously popular worldwide, particularly among Western and Japanese audiences. As with folktales of mermaids and mermen, tales of seal-people or ‘selkies’ (a term originating in the Orkney Islands) have been recorded widely and reproduced in many societies. Selkies are able to temporarily shed their skin and behave as humans on land, donning their skins to return to the sea. 146

“What is under the water?”

When I began my research I began to regularly ask people a particular question: what is under the water? I myself had no clear sense of what the answer might be. Those I questioned ranged from shark boat skippers to deckhands, marine biologists, fisheries managers and fish- and-chip shop owners. The discrepancy in responses was remarkable, not merely because there were clear differences that reflected the various relationships between people and the ocean, but because of consistency in patterns that emerged from their responses. After a momentary blank stare, people would tell me about the marine features that were important in their social and productive lives. They rarely offered either more or less (see Boster and Johnson 1989). In this chapter I will outline the responses of skippers and deckhands.

Skippers spoke first of features of the ocean floor upon which fishing nets rest: valleys, coral, sand, rock and sponge. Of course, there was the hopeful expectation that there would also be ‘fish’ in the water, by which they meant the primary economic species – shark. While they sometimes referred to the by-product fish, primarily saw shark and elephant fish, they seldom mentioned fish that had no economic value.

In casual conversation with other fishermen, skippers continually contemplated the number of shark in the water. However, they did so in a way that reflected their particular conception of time. As noted above, uncaught fish are always a speculation, can never be confirmed, realised, at least, not until they are landed on the boat. Shark fishermen are sometimes accused of competing for ‘the last fish’ in Bass Strait, and their language of competition at times suggests as much. While the role of competition among shark fishermen will be discussed in greater detail in Chapter 5, it is important to flag the peculiar 147 ecological circumstances in which they compete. The contest to be ‘top boat’ occurs within the limited time frame of a single trip. The competition is always retrospective and temporally bounded, and the aim is to catch a greater proportion of the total fleet catch than is caught by one’s rivals. Once the trip is over, the scores revert to zero and the ocean fills again with potential fish. Contrary to popular belief, skippers rarely talk about ‘the one that got away’.

In contrast to skippers, deckies tend to ignore the seabed, but, rather, talk about the creatures that emerge in the nets, both those that can be sold and the by-catch which must be handled in the process of hauling: shark, skunkies, sawdies, lice, as well as less obviously animate objects such as rock and sponge. Many save ‘unusual’ finds in a bucket, to examine in greater detail after the hauling is complete. In their responses to my question, deckies tended to indicate a focus on a particular level of the water column: the level at which shark may be found.

Less often, but still quite frequently, both skippers and deckies refer to creatures lower in the food chain than their target species, such as pilchards, crabs and plankton. Nick and Brown, professional deckhands and brothers, regularly proclaimed – “Fuck the whales! Save the plankton!” While obviously good for a laugh, the statement was a serious suggestion that the most viable course of conservationist action was considering food webs rather than individual species.

Partly because the reality below the surface of the water is largely speculative, shark fishermen regularly employ the use of terrestrial metaphors to classify the underwater world. While sea creatures have a salience in fishing communities that render them ‘good to think’ (Tambiah 1969), the medium in which they live restricts fishermen from 148 actually seeing them ‘in the wild’. Rather, shark and other by-product appear moments after capture. Some creatures approach boats with the expectation of a free meal: during hauling seals swarm around fishing nets and pilfer the livers of trapped fish. Dolphins can often be seen playing under the bow of a steaming boat.

As metaphors, as cultural tools, sea-creatures are somewhat malleable, open to interpretation according to existing schema. One fisherman explained that the sea somewhat mirrors the land, with fish behaving like birds, and other creatures more like ground dwelling animals.

You have to be able to visualise what is happening. Revert back to land. You got grass-eaters and predators and meat-eaters who eat the grass- eaters. [But] most of the ground dwelling fish have the ability to jump off the ground.

There are also creatures that are, according to one fisherman, “neither plants nor animals” such as star-fish and sea anemones.

Both deckies and skippers also talk about creatures that are neither economically advantageous nor deleterious to them, but that have a non-use value. Fishermen are subject to experiences and understandings of the ocean that are not derived from their activities as shark fishermen, but from what they share with other Victorians. Whales, for example, have a salience that does not reflect their use- value. Rather, their ‘value’ stems from a cultural appreciation that is more widely shared by many in Western nations, that whales are beautiful, compelling and worthy of reverie. After returning from sea, I asked John how his trip had been. He replied by describing it as “just beautiful”, as they had encountered a pod of whales that had sung to each other. The crew had been asleep as the faint cries came through the hull of the boat, and the skipper had gone to the fo’c’sle to wake the 149 crew so that they did not sleep through the treat. The overlap – and incongruity – between determinations of ‘use value’ and ‘non-use value’ among commercial fishermen and Australian non-fishers will be discussed further in Chapter 8.

As fishermen move between land and sea, as they hover on the interface between water and air, their ‘reality’ is fashioned from repeated encounters with the borders between domains. If reality is relational then boundaries among concepts, worlds, domains and environments are crucial to perception. Often, that which lies on one ‘side’ of a divide is only sensible through reference to the other ‘side’. Fishermen, like Daffy, know that fish are not actually birds, but comparing the former with the latter suggests a way of knowing the world with which he can anticipate the behaviour of his prey. Passage through seemingly ethereal borders imparts knowledge that informs understandings in a comprehensive range of contexts: fishermen carry their conceptual luggage as they cross, leaving a wake of ideas that agitate – perforate and emphasise – so-called boundaries. In the final section I will focus on delineations that occur on the sea surface, both those that are officially decreed and enforced, and those which could be described as informal territoriality.

Lines on the water

In what follows I first describe ‘official’, nation-state enforced lines that delineate State waters, closed areas, the boundaries of particular fisheries and so forth. The second subsection focuses on the informal markers of territory that fishermen negotiate and enforce among themselves. Fishermen must simultaneously acknowledge both ways of dividing up the water. Though these methods of delineation may seem fundamentally different, and while only one is officially recognised by 150 the Commonwealth, the examples below show that both sets of markers emerge dialogically with political, environmental, legal and social forces.

Official boundaries

Prior to the 1st of January 2003, the official parameters of the Southern Shark Fishery (SSF) consisted of Commonwealth waters adjacent to South Australia, Victoria and Tasmania (Figure 4). Following the implementation of the South Eastern Shark and Scale-fish (SESS) Plan in 2003, the management of the shark fishery was partially amalgamated with a number of other fisheries, in a slightly reconfigured region. While there is preliminary evidence to suggest that administrative changes have had some effect on the targeting, movement and concentration of fishermen in and around Bass Strait, such changes appear minimal and will take time to develop and settle into a discernable pattern. Predominantly, the jurisdictions described as both ‘official’ and ‘territorial’ remain intact (Figures 3-4).

As the ‘creation’ of the SESS fishery demonstrates, official boundaries that designate various jurisdictions over sea territories and marine species are periodically negotiated among various bodies including State and Commonwealth governments and their agents. Of primary significance to the management of the shark fishery, deliberations occur between, on the one hand, the State governments of Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and New South Wales and, on the other, the Commonwealth government represented by the Australian Fisheries Management Authority, or AFMA. These Offshore Constitutional Settlement (OCS) negotiations have been occurring periodically since the 1970s and outcomes have varied. For example, OCS deliberations conducted in the late 1990s saw the State of New South Wales secure jurisdiction of waters from the shore out to 80nm, when other States generally settled for control of waters to 3nm. More relevant to Bass 151

Strait fishermen, Tasmania secured jurisdictional over waters from the shore to 3nm around all islands in Bass Strait, though the management of some shark species within Tasmanian waters is with AFMA. Furthermore, large bays, such as the Spencer and Vincent Gulfs in South Australia, fall under a special category of State and Commonwealth management, and in some cases, these ‘internal State waters’ are allocated a separate annual Total Allowable Catch by AFMA. Despite the anomalies, a useful approximation of jurisdictions, relevant to the shark fishing community under consideration, is that State waters extend from the shoreline to 3nm, while the Commonwealth managed waters between the 3nm mark and the 200nm Australian Fishing Zone or AFZ.

Like many decisions that are developed in consultation with multiple interest groups, official jurisdictions are created through incremental political negotiations among government officials with political and economic objectives, with input, as will be suggested below, from those with political power, influence or savvy (Kjær 2004:55). Several Commonwealth public servants suggested to me that the reason New South Wales waters extended to 80nm rather than 3nm, was because the personalities involved in the OCS negotiations were not fondly disposed to each other. To many fishermen, these boundaries seem arbitrary, or at least have little meaning in the context of their experiences at sea. Those fishermen in a position to comment upon the development of particular boundaries, such as those appointed by AFMA to serve on representative committees, often stress to fisheries ‘experts’ that lines reflecting the political and economic imperatives of those in management have little salience to many fishermen. They argue that without the support of fishermen these borders only existed on paper and were unlikely to be respected or enforced by the fishing community. Because the areas under consideration are so large, and 152 the compliance resources of AFMA so small, many of these boundaries are effectively policed by no one. During the period of my fieldwork there was a strong move by management to require that all commercial boats be fitted with Vessel Monitoring Systems (VMS). As one AFMA officer stated, “It’s not if, but when”. Indeed, in early 2006 it was announced that VMS was to become compulsory across all AFMA managed fisheries by mid-2007, and that, in some cases, boats were to be fitted with video surveillance equipment in order to police the dumping of fish at sea (Australian Fisheries Management Authority 2006:11-2).

Regardless of the apparent wisdom of negotiating boundaries to the satisfaction of both fishermen and regulators in order to ease the demands of compliance enforcement, AFMA administrators maintain a tone that reflects the official status of AFMA as a ‘regulatory body’. Several managers simplified their decision-making duties by explaining to me that “the more [fishermen] jump up and down and complain about a particular decision … we know that we’re close to the right answer”. This is despite the public AFMA ‘philosophy’ of a ‘partnership approach’ between management and industry. While it would be foolish to suggest that AFMA does not have a regulatory role to play, the idea that governance can be best achieved without the tacit support of constituents is at odds with the political philosophy of the Commonwealth. The subtle power of fishermen to effectively enforce communally recognised boundaries is described in the next subsection.

Unofficial territoriality

Shark fishermen commonly state that they are ‘allowed’ to fish anywhere they like, that the sea belongs to everyone and no one. Certainly, within the official parameters of the shark fishery, a shark 153 licence permits the holder to fish anywhere. In practice, however, particular fishermen regularly fish particular regions. The integrity of these “traditional fishing area” boundaries are enforced through the subtle – and sometimes not so subtle – exclusion of ‘outsiders’. ‘Outsiders’ are not necessarily those who are non-fishers, or who are unknown fishers, but rather, these divisions on the water of Bass Strait reflect distinctions among members of the community at sea (Acheson 1998, 2003). Furthermore, different degrees of social distinction correspond to more or less refined demarcation of space. There is a great deal of ambiguity in the creation and enforcement of these lines on the water, ambiguity that facilitates the movement across multiple and contextually dependent boundaries.

In order to understand the ‘lines on the water’ that shark fishermen negotiate at sea, we may imagine a seamless connection between men and their physical environment (Ingold 2000c:244). Certainly, divisions on the water correlate somewhat to terrestrial locales, and shark fishermen have the strongest territorial ‘rights’ closest to their ‘home’ port. However, in the middle of Bass Strait, or among men from the same port, the ‘rules’ of territoriality are more open to strategic manipulation. While every fisherman with a valid permit can, legally, fish wherever he pleases, it is more accurate to suggest that a fisherman gains access to particular marine regions through his social relationships. There are examples of fishermen being ‘able’ to fish in ‘non-traditional’ regions due to a social connection with other men who fish those areas. This connection is not necessarily friendship, but may be financial, familial, political, etc. Lines on the water emerge, shift and dissolve, in ways that reflect the social relationships among men, both on land and at sea. The engagement of men in the marine environment informs their interpersonal relationships, and this community is simultaneously mapped onto the water. 154

Shark fishermen from the same port will generally fish in a common area, relatively close to their home port. These areas are ‘nucleated’, in that the degree of territoriality diminishes as the distance from port increases. In relation to Maine lobster fishermen, Acheson (1988:79, 2003:29) contrasts ‘nucleated’ with ‘perimeter-defended’ territoriality, in which precise boundaries are strictly observed and defended. Though I asked several men if the ‘traditional fishing areas’ could be drawn on a map, they all felt that to do so was somehow inappropriate. To do so would rigidify something that was necessarily vague, and might be seen as tantamount to ‘claiming’ a space to which one had no explicit right. Nonetheless, a general picture of the regional zones should be sketched, to give a sense of the basic patterns from which fishermen variously deviate.

From Corner Inlet, fishermen tend to fish south, past ‘The Prom’, ‘Hogans’, ‘Erith’, ‘Deal’ or ‘Kent’, around ‘The Sisters’, further down to ‘Prime Seal’ and even to ‘Banks’.8 Lakes Entrance fishermen may also steam across to the Furneaux Group, but tend to stay further east, around the oil rigs, such as Kingfisher, and closer to the continental shelf. San Remo fishermen may steam east, but tend towards King Island. Those from Tasmania tend to focus on the islands closest to them (either King or Flinders), while the South Australian fishermen do not often steam east in search of shark, but remain on the west side of the fishery.

The salience of the port distinctions is evident in the way that shark fishermen group together, and classify each other, at sea. For reasons elaborated upon in Chapter 5, shark fishermen regularly fish in small

8 These regions refer to, consecutively, Wilson’s Promontory, the Hogan Group, Erith Island, Deal Island, the Kent Group (of which Erith and Deal make up a part), Inner Sister Island and Outer Sister Island, Prime Seal Island and Banks Strait (Figure 7 and Inserted Maps). 155 groups, exchanging vital fishing information via radios and, in the limited cases where reception allows, mobile phones. One of the topics of discussion is the movement, and success, of other boats. While the individuals may be known, a fisherman from Corner Inlet may refer to a group of boats as ‘Lakes Boys’, or ‘San Remo Boys’, or ‘Tassie Boys’ (the degree of specification increasing with the proximity).9 The following stories are examples of how fishermen subtly enforce these divisions. One afternoon while his boat was being unloaded I asked Ollie, an owner and skipper from Lakes Entrance, where he fished and with whom. He explained that he usually fished to the east, and mainly communicated via radio with other boats from Lakes Entrance, several men in particular. If he happened to encounter boats from Port Albert (the closest shark fishing port to the west) he saw no harm in talking to them: it was better for everyone to talk. Occasionally, particularly earlier in his career, Ollie steamed west and fished around King Island. He did not, however, talk to the San Remo Boys who fished the same area, but, rather, worked with his brother: “you only need a couple of boats to find the fish” (see Chapter 5). Did the San Remo Boys resent his presence at King Island, I asked. “Not that they said”, Ollie noted, adding, “I don’t know what they said to each other when they got back in”. While the San Remo Boys did not actively prevent Ollie from fishing the region, they had nonetheless withdrawn their voices from the interloper, essentially denying him the chance to exchange knowledge with them and, in that way, they reduced his chances of success.

Paul, a skipper from Port Welshpool, had also tried to fish King Island, but had found it difficult to elicit productive radio exchanges with the San Remo Boys. He had come back, unsuccessful and without the intention to return. Bass Strait is “a big paddock”, he explained, and

9 While not necessarily an expression used by all in the industry, the description of other groups of fishermen as ‘such-and-such boys’ was common. 156 there was little reason to steam all the way to King Island to take a “blind shot” when he had a “guaranteed wage” in an area “close” to home. Of course, had Paul been able to tap into the network of information possessed by the San Remo Boys, he may have placed his shots with greater effect.

Paul, in turn, actively excluded ‘outsiders’ from ‘his’ area, a tactic he explained one day on the wharf. He and two other young skippers regularly, and collaboratively, fished a notoriously treacherous area called Banks Strait. It is a considerable challenge to set gillnets effectively across the uneven strata of the region, and to negotiate the strong tides that often ‘scream’ through the narrow pass between the southern tip of the Furneaux Group and north-east Tasmania. Those without experience risk losing their gear over ledges, their nets rolling up in the tide, or worse. Occasionally, other fishermen, respecting his authority on, and perhaps his first rights to, the region asked him, "where should I put the gear?”10 Paul, sitting on the wharf with a mischievous grin, imitated his mock indifference with a shrug and recounted his response: "Put them anywhere you like!" Still grinning, he explained that ‘they’ ripped up their nets, or lost them and had to come back with a grapple to retrieve the gear. They rarely bothered to try fishing that area again. Perhaps catching my horrified look at the thought of someone loosing $20,000 worth of fishing gear, he noted, sombrely, "you’ve got to do it to protect your patch!" It is important to note that Paul did not actively contribute to anyone’s misfortune. He merely withdrew his voice from the interlopers, essentially denying them the chance to exchange knowledge with him, and this minimised their chances of success.

10 Note that Paul did not claim ‘rights’ to Banks Strait, he merely noted that this was where he fished regularly. 157

Through the strategic negotiation of social bonds and alliances, some fishermen are able to encroach on someone else’s ‘traditional area’ and perhaps receive assistance in the form of information. Quin, a Victorian fisherman who now employs a skipper to run his shark boat, laughs when he tells the story of sending his skipper, Ron, to fish in South Australian waters. Ron found himself in a volatile stand-off with another skipper who wanted to shoot his gear in the same place. The South Australian was reportedly livid with indignation at the audacity of the Victorian who had come to steal his fish! The situation was on the verge of becoming quite nasty and both skippers called their bosses. Quin and the other owner – old friends and fishing companions – told their skippers, “It’s OK!” and the two men grudgingly conceded to manoeuvre around each other without further incident. This example illustrates the way that social connections can be stretched, transferred across water, time and apparent allegiances in order to manipulate social boundaries and facilitate access to otherwise restricted regions.

The following example describes how fishermen are sometimes compelled to acknowledge relationships they would rather ignore, and how the strategic manipulation of certain social connections can elicit important information. Asleep in the fo’c’sle of the San Remo boat, Golanding, we were awoken to action on the deck. The deck lights were on and there was a boat beside us that I did not recognise. Deckies, Simon, Travis and I stood quietly to one side, smoking, watching. Though our skipper, Victor, and the skipper of the other boat were exchanging ‘pleasantries’ there seemed to be something not quite right. Victor was tense. The exchange ended and we all went back to our bunks. The next day I queried Victor about the stranger. His name was Walter, Victor told me, and he was the hired skipper of the Cape Blair, from Port Albert. Victor squinted and stared ahead as he noted quietly that they did not personally know each other. He had not 158 known who it was when the Cape Blair skipper had called him over the radio: “You there Vic?” Victor’s tone suggested that he felt the man had been somewhat presumptuous in hailing him by his given name, and not the vessel name. Why had he answered, I wanted to know. Victor explained that Walter’s boat was owned by a man named Xavier. Xavier leased shark quota to Victor’s regular fishing companion, Allen. Though this connection had not been an explicit point of discussion between the two men, Walter had worked this tenuous bond to force Victor to recognise a connection between them, and, through that connection, to behave cooperatively. Walter’s knowledge of the social terrain had granted him access to a physical space that may have been more difficult to negotiate without Victor’s cooperation. Victor could only shrug his shoulders: “what can you do, Tanya?”

The ‘bundle of rights’ associated with one’s ‘traditional area’ is often difficult to explain, particularly because the style of ‘ownership’ is unsuited to explication. As shown above, one’s connection to place can change with shifting social relationships and contexts. In addition, these salient areas usually only become apparent when someone tries to encroach upon them, whereupon the ‘lines on the water’ emerge in the responses of the men who embody the socio-physical delineation. Fishing from Port Albert one day, a report came over the radio, from a Lakes Entrance fisherman who had a social connection that facilitated his cooperation with Port Albert fishermen, that the Sally Anne was fishing in the area. One of the listening deckies responded with indignation. “Sally Anne! That’s a Lakes [Entrance] boat!”

“San Remo”, corrected the skipper.

“Ahh, San Remo” continued the deckie. “They’re bad men. They should stay in their own backyard. And that Lakes bloke too. He shouldn’t 159 come out of his back yard. They’re poaching!”

Later, I asked the deckie what he had meant by his comments, and he qualified them by saying that everyone was allowed to fish wherever they liked, but that it was a “territoriality thing”. He continued by explaining, “West of the Prom is San Remo, we have the islands, and Lakes is more the east side of Flinders, the rigs and the edge of the shelf” (Figure 12).

Sometimes this ‘territoriality’ is overtly demonstrated through the sabotage of fishing gear, or worse (Acheson 2003:27, McGoodwin 1990:128). The following is an excerpt from an Administrative Appeals Tribunal, during which the plaintiff had described some of the factors that had prevented him from fishing during a particular period. The record shows:

Because his hand was still not healed, Mr Walton could not yet take his boat out on his own and his brother had other commitments. He was still at home on 30th May 1986. That day he received advice from a friend, who had passed through Port Welshpool, that the engine room of his vessel was full of water. It seemed that his boat had been interfered with. Somebody had damaged the switch in his ice room. He suggested that it may have happened because there was animosity between ports, and he was a San Remo fisherman who had fished out of Port Welshpool and left his boat tied up at Port Welshpool (Walton v AFMA 2002:26).

Though the salience of ‘territoriality’ among fishermen can manifest tangibly, informal boundaries are typically irrelevant to those concerned with the official management of the region. The uneasy function of territoriality within an official context is illustrated in the following example, as is the difficulty of formalising knowledge that is only efficacious as long as it remains ambiguous, or open to reformulation. 160

At a fisheries management meeting in Melbourne, a fisheries manager was encouraging a small group of fishermen to pass comment upon various regions of Bass Strait that were not necessarily within their ‘traditional fishing areas’. The aim of the exercise was to designate regions that would become closed to all shark fishermen. A series of

13 Section from display located at the Lakes Entrance Fisherman’s Cooperative. The map shows parts of Victorian and Tasmanian coastline, with letters representing ocean locations where particular species are often found. Note that the ‘shark grounds’ depicted reflect the perspective of Lakes Entrance fishermen, with the majority of ‘S’s located to the east of Bass Strait. Indeed, Port Albert and Port Welshpool are not marked on the map (Corner Inlet is represented just east of Wilson’s Promontory), nor are the shark fishing grounds that are most salient to the fishermen of this region, around the islands south of these ports. (Note that this image has been slightly enhanced to improve legibility). Note: no scale on original.

161 large maps and fishing charts were spread across a long table. For a number of minutes, Adam, the manager coordinating the process, and Brett, the recorder for AFMA, sat alone beside the maps on one side of the table. Several scientists, two AFMA managers, and a data modeller, filled the other side of the table and, for the majority of the time, stayed seated. The four fishing industry representatives – all with affiliations to different ports – moved nervously around the table, talking, drinking coffee, occasionally standing beside Adam and Brett, crossing and uncrossing their arms, keeping their eyes on the map in front of them, and each other.

Cam was asked to suggest a specific point within a region close to his home town of Devonport (Tasmania). Obviously nervous and reluctant, he eventually stabbed his finger at the map and said, “there!” Not to be implicated again, for the next point, close to King Island, Cam suggested they ask Daniel. Though not geographically close to either of their home ports, both Cam and Daniel had fished the region many years ago. Daniel was called back from the tea-room where he had been talking quietly with another fisherman. Before he emerged, however, he apparently donned what he often referred to as his “blonde wig”. Looking dazed, the white haired man eventually – comically – bumbled out, peered around for somewhere to rest his coffee cup, fumbled with his glasses for a while, asked a litany of questions, and eventually suggested that they ask Eamon, or perhaps Cam, as those men had fished the region more regularly than he. Cam rapidly declined: “Eamon’d kill me!” However, the attention was diverted from Daniel long enough for him to slip back to the safety of the tea-room. As he quietly sidled past me he grinned and winked: “I’d rather be out of this shit!”

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Where official and unofficial boundaries overlap

As noted above, both ‘official’ lines and those boundaries relevant within the community of fishermen must be simultaneously negotiated. However, these lines are not necessarily easy to distinguish and often inform one another. Official restrictions that distinguish among men who can fish in a particular region, or target a particular species, or use a particular type of equipment, can be reflected in the way those men subsequently define social boundaries for themselves and others, as the following example illustrates.

Following a meeting in Canberra in which “exclusion zones” were discussed, I found myself at a restaurant with a group of shark fishermen. Though there used to be – and sometimes still is – intense rivalry among shark fishermen of different States (particularly Victoria and Tasmania), ‘our’ group consisted of shark fishermen from all three States regulated under AFMA’s shark management plan: Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia. This grouping was in the context of the scope of the meeting, in which a variety of fishermen were present, including trawl fishermen and ‘non-trawl’ fishermen (distinct in fishing method, target species or both from shark fishermen). The meeting had been arranged to discuss details of an amalgamation of these sectors, and representatives of each were vying for the best outcome for their particular fishery. Though the ‘Non-Trawl Boys’ had courteously asked us to accompany them to the city, our group, the Sharkers, had decided to go to a steak house in the nearby suburb of Manuka. As we walked in the door, I felt Michael stiffen beside me, and looked up to see two ‘Trawl Boys’ talking at the bar. The scene reminded me of an old Western film, as we all paused, just inside the swinging doors, waiting for the whistle in the air to die away. Instead of a greeting, Michael gave a small grin and acknowledged our embarrassing mistake: “Is this the 163 exclusion zone?” he asked. The men at the bar grinned back and one drawled: “No, its just the Non-Trawl exclusion zone”.11 There was a smattering of laughter, and we walked past the bar to the restaurant area. Already seated was a large group associated with the Trawl Fishery. A number of vague, even surprised, greetings were exchanged. Observant waitresses hurriedly began pulling tables together. Several people from both groups leapt in to stress that such rearrangement would not be necessary. In the crowded restaurant the tables were nonetheless close together, and when several latecomers arrived, and our table was extended to accommodate them, the two groups were effectively joined anyway. With droll resolution, the shark and trawl tables managed to ignore each other and we left separately. Evident in this encounter is that years of institutionalised differentiation between these fishermen, some of whom live in the same port, informs their relationships, at least in contexts where these groupings are relevant. While unofficial – ambiguous - boundaries among fishermen can be manipulated strategically, distinctions that are concretised in Commonwealth-endorsed administrative structures are difficult to mould according to circumstance.

The categories of ‘Sharkers’, ‘Non-Trawl Boys’ and ‘Trawl Boys’ have developed partly in response to administrative delineations, as well as, of course, similarities in target species and fishing methods. However, informal groupings can also influence the creation of official strictures, as the following example illustrates. In the following exchange, note the way both official and unofficial styles of spatial regulation are acknowledged, and how they jostle for recognition in a context in which only the former is truly suited.

11 Various tensions between Trawlers and Non-Trawlers sometimes surfaced, particularly in relation to how ‘environmentally friendly’ the fisheries were perceived to be by the public. 164

At the Melbourne meeting mentioned above, a shark fisherman, Gerard, was being pressed for information. He was being asked to suggest a suitable area to conduct a Fixed Station Survey. Gerard was pointing out large areas on a map of Bass Strait, but Adam, the fisheries manager discussing the project, needed a specific location, one that Gerard was obviously hesitant to supply. The process of extracting this information from Gerard had been going on for some time. It was a verbal dance in which questions were asked, answers half implied, more subtle questions posed, the inquiry thoughtfully ‘misinterpreted’, and so on. Gerard had recently suspended a fishing trip and flown to Melbourne from a South Australian port, with the intention of resuming the trip once the meeting was over. He was somewhat frustrated, somewhat resigned, and visibly exhausted, rubbing his red eyes and massaging his pale face in his hands. Brett, the AFMA member recording the discussion, was also keen for a prompt resolution to this particular agenda item, and sat with pen poised. Eventually, with some resignation, Gerard conceded the information.

Gerard – So when I say north-east of King Island I’m generalising on a fairly large area.

Adam – [quietly] – Now we, for the sake of exercise, just basically just want the specific GPS coordinates.

Gerard – [staring ahead, with minimum inflection] – 45 16 150 07

Evident on the video recording of this exchange is the sudden cessation of background chatter: the room is momentarily completely silent.

Adam – [somewhat taken aback] – You realise what you’re doing? You realise that that’s then going to be …. So don’t make it a point that’s particularly special to you. 165

Brett – [interjecting as he writes] – 45 16 150 07 …. thank you very much!

Commonwealth employed fisheries ‘experts’ who talk with shark fishermen about their resource use – managers and scientists in particular – tend to be well aware of the informal zoning that takes place, as Adam’s comments indicate. Nonetheless, they are required to adhere to the administrative regulations of their employers. This exchange illustrates how informal lines on the water can be blurred with the official lines, and the personalities involved, in the creation of new lines. In this way, ‘official’ categories are infused with some of the ambiguity characteristic of unofficial categories. When the social or environmental or productive contexts in which these official categories are embedded shift – say, Gerard leaves the fishery, or Fixed Station Survey locations are employed to determine the sites of marine parks – the residual administrative boundaries can appear to exist independently of any human input. Rather, as the creative roles of particular people recede from memory, or are obliterated in reams of paperwork, marks on a map that were established in a particular context take on a legitimacy afforded through their incorporation in official nation-state administration. However, unlike the ambiguous boundaries of fishermen, these formal markers cannot be easily renegotiated to accommodate shifting circumstances.

The next story is about the genesis of lines on the water in the scallop fishery, back in the early 1980s. The men involved were not strictly ‘scallop fishermen’ but often targeted other species, including shark. One of them even went on to play a senior role in management. The example emphasises the difficulty of distinguishing between official, and unofficial, lines on the water.

166

Throughout the 1970s and very early 1980s, those who wished to dredge for scallops in the coastal regions of Bass Strait required either a Victorian licence or a Tasmanian licence. There were no licences, as such, for fishing the Commonwealth waters of Bass Strait. Victorian licences had to be purchased, while Tasmanian licences were granted without charge. While fishing on their State licence, Victorian licence holders were restricted to within 20nm of the coast, while Tasmanian scallop fishermen were officially unrestricted, their jurisdiction overlapping with Commonwealth waters. In the early 1980s the permit conditions on Tasmanian licences changed.

Harry owned a Tasmanian licence, while James and Kevin held Victorian licences. Early in the 1980s, Len moved his family from Gippsland to Hobart, Tasmania, and acquired a licence himself. Very soon afterwards – “I’d mown the lawn twice!” – the regulations changed and Tasmanian licences had to be purchased. As there was now a value on Tasmanian licences, jurisdictional restrictions were drawn up to prevent those who had no licence from benefiting unfairly. However, where the boundary lay on the water was yet to be decided. The Tasmanian State fisheries managers knew little about the location of scallop beds and called on the assistance of industry: Harry and Len represented the interests of Tasmanians, while James and Kevin spoke for Victorians. In private discussions, the four acquainted men agreed to use their positions of influence to their own advantage. They suggested that the line not be restricted to a particular distance from the Tasmanian coast, but that it snake out to encompass the biggest and best scallop beds that lay close to the island state. Beds close to King Island were left alone: they were not the ‘traditional fishing areas’ of the men concerned. 167

James and Kevin planned to buy Tasmanian licences as soon as the restrictions had been approved and to fish in both Victorian and Tasmanian waters. At the time there was a size limit on Tasmanian, but not Victorian, scallops. The fishermen with two licences could fish Tasmanian waters and unload his entire catch on the Victorian market. In practice, those fishermen with a Tasmanian licence and strong social ties in a quiet – unpoliced – Victorian port could do the same thing. Harry and Len, however, had some vital information. They knew the Tasmanian fisheries manager, Mario Appleby, much better than did James and Kevin. Appleby’s parochialism – or rather, antipathy towards non-Tasmanians – was such that he could be counted upon to resist the incursion of Victorians, and certainly refuse them licences to fish Tasmanian waters. At the meeting where the boundary was to be discussed, Harry and Len drew the proposed line upon the board. Neither James nor Kevin challenged the coordinates and the boundary was formalised.

Harry and Len sit back and laugh when they marvel that “they” (current fisheries managers) do not know where the line came from. Indeed, when questioned, many younger fishermen knew nothing of the story. While Harry enjoyed telling this story partly because it depicts a witty and wily subterfuge, he usually shook his head and marvelled that he and Len had drawn a “line on a board in a meeting room twenty years ago”, that continues to affect the way fishermen interact with scallops – and each other – in Bass Strait. “In hindsight it’s been a pain in the arse”.

“Why?” I ask.

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“Why?!” Harry laughs. “‘Cause scallops don’t take any notice of lines! They shift over them and across them!”12

In light of the perceived influence that personalities and relationships can have on the creation of official regulations, some fishermen are inclined to exert their influence to advance their own position. Some fishermen influence, or, more importantly, are seen to be influencing, regulatory details more than others. Consequently, certain decisions are seen by some shark fishermen to be associated with other fishermen or factions of fishermen. Certain official lines on the water are inextricable from the social relationships that structure shark fishermen themselves. They are partly official and partly informed by prevailing social dynamics. Whereas the regulatory boundaries are fixed for an ongoing period, the interpersonal relationships that inform their creation are fluid, they shift and change, dissolve and reform somewhere else. Transient relationships are frozen in official regulations, and fishermen often told me of this or that rule: “there’s a story behind that... ”

12 The development of the scallop fishery cannot be considered without reference to the Allied fisheries fleet of the early 1980s. Taking advantage of the potential ‘tax-dodge’ posed by free entry to the fishery, and the associated classification as ‘primary producers’, a group of professionals – “doctors and lawyers” – invested in a venture called Allied Fisheries. The scheme was orchestrated by an entrepreneur (who later became involved in the development of a chain of nursing homes for the elderly). On the whole, the infamous fleet was ramshackle, poorly managed and intentionally run at a financial loss. Some investors reportedly purchased boats without having seen them and with no knowledge of the fishery. Unsatisfied – sometimes unpaid – crew were only too happy to make up for their poor conditions by selling other fishermen their equipment, fuel, and sometimes even scallops, for a very small fee. The number of boats working the scallop beds out of Tasmania grew dramatically. The massive influx of ‘outsiders’, including many New Zealanders, mixed with entrepreneurial ‘locals’, resulted in a period of intense fishing and social interaction. Boats passed so closely that crews could throw cigarettes to each other, and “it was nothing to be a hundred boats on the drag!” Tales of the rowdy nights spent in various ports are legendary. Of course, the Allied fleet soon went bankrupt, but not before entry restrictions were placed on the Tasmanian scallop fishery. 169

The nature of boundaries described in this section reflect those described in earlier parts of the chapter in two ways. First, boundaries on the surface of the water, whether they be negotiated between fishermen and fisheries ‘experts’ or purely among fishermen, are generated in the context of dynamic social relationships. Changing alliances, political and economic imperatives can alter the salience of a particular boundary on the surface of the ocean. The significance of the distinction between land and sea can differ for, say, a married skipper, like Luke, and a teenage deckhand in the throes of a love-affair, like Jerry. Likewise, Matt’s depiction of the underwater environment as monstrously ‘black’ is certainly at odds with those who dive recreationally in order to appreciate the aesthetic beauty of the ocean. Secondly, it is often through the transgression of territories, ‘exclusion zones’, jurisdictions or borders that the importance of these distinctions is realised. The deckhand who protested the presence of ‘San Remo’ and ‘Lakes’ boats in ‘Corner Inlet’ territory may have had more difficulty defining his own identity in the absence of those ‘bad men’ who represented the ‘other’. Clearly identifying who he was not, in the context of a perceived transgression, afforded him a more refined understanding of who he was (Barth 1966, 2000, Chapman 1992). The significance of moving from the deck of a boat to the water is brutally apparent to those who have known the drowning of a loved one, as too those fishermen who fail to elicit the transfer of fish from the water-column to the deck of their boat. It is the ambiguity of these boundaries, their simultaneously binding and separating, desirable and offensive functions, that render them so efficacious and so important to understanding the diversity and dynamism of human interaction with ‘the ocean’. 170

Conclusion - Critical signposts

The stories in this chapter challenge the notion that ‘society’ and ‘nature’ are discrete categories. Rather, social and natural schemas reflect and inform human behaviour and, through these ongoing flows of performance, categories of meaning are realised. Rather than being ethereal, however, these categories, boundaries and thresholds act as critical signposts for shark fishermen. Notions of land and sea, fishermen and non-fishermen, reality and imagination, official lines and ‘traditional fishing areas’ all aid shark fishermen in their negotiation of the ocean.

These categories only make sense in relation to each other. The experience of one side of a boundary is therefore invoked in the experience of the other. Fishermen simultaneously embody their experiences of both land and sea, fishermen and non-fishermen, ‘reality’ and ‘imagination’. Boundaries are also subject to manipulation in response to dynamic human action in a continuous flow of experience, and boundaries shift across time and are used strategically in response to particular contexts. The boundaries themselves are necessarily porous, simultaneously connecting what they divide. It is through the propensity for both order and transgression that boundaries of meaning glean their efficacy in the lives of shark fishermen. The very ambiguity of these lines, the ability they grant shark fishermen to negotiate various positions, enable them to manipulate their sub-group allegiance as the situation dictates. Lines on the water do not simply demarcate boundaries among shark fishermen themselves, but help to order the flow of information between them. The information itself is vital to the capture of shark. As I will demonstrate, shark fishermen strategically recognise boundaries, switch their group membership, readjust their affiliations – they variously cooperate and compete with others in order 171 to share and withhold information – in order to hunt shark effectively. To hunt shark effectively is to be a shark fisherman. The ambiguity of the divisions described in this chapter, then, aid shark fishermen in the maintenance of a workable, responsive identity, as discussed in the next chapter. It is only when categories of meaning are extracted from the realm of physical experience, objectified in isolation from performance, that sharp boundaries between categories are maintainable. ‘The ocean’, as it is experienced in isolation from the physical domain itself, is considered in Chapters 7 and 8. The next three chapters, however, continue the theme of fluid experience, of ambiguous boundaries, considering relationships among men on shark boats in Bass Strait.

Physical Realities: The motion that binds them on the ocean

This chapter describes the way shark fishermen relate to their environment, including how they relate to each other. Like all people, they are simultaneously individuals and group members, who, at different times, construct or present themselves as one or the other. The individuating influence of modernity has allowed many in the West to detach themselves from meaningful, ongoing relationships with those not counted as friends and family (Giddens 1999). Fordist tendencies have spread beyond the factory: workplace relationships are often characterised by disassociation among co-workers (Aglietta 1979, Lipietz 1987). However, the particular circumstances of shark fishing compel shark fishermen to behave in a strongly interconnected way, sometimes even while they are professing their autonomy.1 In practice, neither a solely individual nor a totally cooperative man could perform

1 Throughout this chapter I refer to the behaviour of men on shark boats. The particular productive requirements of shark fishing tend to emphasise the importance of social relationships. However, many of the performative characteristics described may, and in many cases do, reflect the experiences of those who engage in other types of fishing. 173 the day-to-day activities required to hunt shark. It is only through the strategic negotiation of the dynamic interplay between individuality and group membership that shark fishermen are able to actualise their identity, to be shark fishermen. The contradiction only appears in the articulation of the nexus of the two story lines, when the identity of ‘fisherman’ is removed from the context of action and represented as static. While Chapter 5 will address the intersection of ‘individualistic’ behaviour and ‘collective’ action, this chapter will focus precisely on that collective action which is paramount for shark fishing success. Further, while Chapter 5 will consider the discursive tools and tropes that fishermen use to reconcile participation in a community that is simultaneously characterised by competition and cooperation, this chapter addresses the real-time activity of fishermen and their action- oriented relationships with each other. It will describe how the activities of fishermen blend into, are conceptually inextricable from, the activities of other fishermen.

The chapter will be divided into three ethnographic sections, which build upon each other paradigmatically. All three sections consider the embodiment of skill, and each layer of action informs the next analogically. As the chapter progresses, however, the scope of the action grows from a consideration of collectively appreciated skill embodied and performed by one person, to the individual acts that are only possible when likeminded others, either tacitly or explicitly, agree to simultaneously engage in collective performance.

The first section describes how young deckhands learn to do the things that deckhands do, how they embody the practical, productive, tasks that denote their role. Though many of the tasks that deckies are responsible for are articulable, the ability to perform them skilfully, properly, lies beneath the level of discourse. My analysis is informed by 174

Bourdieu’s theory of practice (1977:81-8, 1990, 1998). Being a deckie, indeed, being a fisherman, is not realised merely in the adequate completion of tasks: it also requires the successful performance of a social position. Just as fishermen learn, embody and realise knowledge of the physical world through engaging with it, they learn, embody and realise the social skills necessary to play a part in the shark fishing community of Bass Strait through practical experience.

The second section describes the relationship between young deckies and their skippers. This bond is embodied in the flow of learned, physical movement between the two, and though each role is realised dialectically, the discussion here will continue to focus on the part of the deckhand. Most skippers will stress that they couldn’t run their boat without their deckies, that they are, as one fisherman put it, “an arm or a leg or maybe half a body of what goes on”. The bodily analogy is apt, and I describe the relationship between skippers and deckies as ‘prosthetic’. The term ‘prosthetic’ suggests a useful schema for conceptualising the relationship between the men: skippers are central while deckies are peripheral, though their bond is mutually enabling. The coordinated action of a crew is somewhat like a composite human body, with a governing centre and a number of replaceable, if vital, limbs. This section will conclude with a reflection on the way this interconnected, prosthetic relationship affects the development of an autonomous adult identity among young deckhands in coastal communities.

While the first section of the chapter relates to the internalisation of shared skill and knowledge within one body, the second section captures the way in which shared skill and knowledge is played out, only ever realised, in the dialectic, interactive, unchoreographed and yet mutually informative performance of a body of men. It captures the 175 necessary permeability, interconnectedness, the indivisibility of shark fishermen. There is a sense in which the action, the doing, the very identity of the deckhand is simultaneously enabled by, and subsumed within, that of his skipper.

The third and final section of this chapter shifts the focus from deckies to skippers, or rather, to the relationship among skippers of different boats. First, I will describe the particular ecological circumstances in which shark fishermen operate. These circumstances compel the fishermen to variously cooperate, and compete, with other shark skippers. Building on the theme of interconnectedness, this section focuses on the act of cooperation among skippers of different boats. More specifically, the movement of information between skippers is considered as the ‘super-glue’ binding fishermen to each other. Chapter 5 will describe the interplay of cooperation and competition in greater detail, showing how information is sometimes shared, sometimes elicited and sometimes withheld, and how cooperation and competition are continuously negotiated in the maintenance of an acceptable identity.

Deckies and their (bad) habits

Deckies come to embody the technical skills of their trade – walking around the deck of a boat, gutting fish, making coffee – by doing the things that deckies do. Embodied knowledge is skill that never reaches the level of discourse, but rather, “is transmitted in practice, in its practical state” (Bourdieu 1977:87). The skills of deckhands are often inarticulable, possessed and realised only in habitual performance, in habits. To remove an action from the context of its performance, by articulating it, strips it of meaning. The ontology of the skill is not separable from the performance. While the relationship between doing, 176 knowing and understanding is dialectical, while all but ‘reflex’ actions are informed by some knowledge of the action, an activity exists precisely in its execution.

I was often told that people who had no experience of shark fishing – those who, as was the mantra, had “never been, never seen, never done” – were not in a position to understand the industry. Experiences such as the movement of the boat, the smells of the ocean, the chill of soaking clothes, the thrill of a good catch, the sight of a brilliant sunset, the stress of a fluctuating income, the sound of singing whales through the hull of a boat, the burn of tired muscles, the peace and quiet, and the loneliness, of a life at sea, could not be replicated on paper, on a movie screen, or evoked by the most vivid story-telling.2

The following poem, The Deckies’ Lament, which was sung one day, with great gusto, by a Lakes Entrance deckie, suggests something of the relationship between skippers and deckies at sea.

The Deckies Lament (traditional)

Oh to be a fisherman Oh to be a fisherman And ride the ocean waves We’re only left one grace Get screamed at and spat at When we finally get to port Just like a fucken slave Get pissed and off our face

Oh to be a fisherman Oh to be a fisherman And live a life of ease They make you groan and grunt And work for fucken arseholes And even when you do your best Who treat you as they please You still get called a cunt

2 When I began fieldwork I was encouraged by several people to watch the film, The Perfect Storm (2000), as they considered it a reasonable representation of commercial fishing. This film is discussed in the following chapter. Though I did find the film a useful depiction of what I experienced later when I was passenger on a commercial fishing vessel, the representation was a paltry sketch of the latter experience. 177

Oh to be a fisherman Oh to be a fisherman You know it can be funny This is our advice Work your arse off night and day Read our fucken poem And get paid fuck all money And think about it twice!!!

Even this vivid account of the life of a deckhand must be understood within the context of experience. Had I read this poem before embarking on my first fishing trip, I may have, as suggested, thought twice about my journey. In retrospect, however, the telling aspect of The Deckies’ Lament is that half the stanzas contain explicit reference to the relationship between deckies and their skipper. A decontextualised reading would fail to capture the irony invested in this piece. As will be illustrated below, the notion of a collective of deckhands, who stand united in defiance of their skippers and employers, is so unlikely as to be laughable. The implicit contradiction in the poem is that despite the ghastly conditions described there is still a contingent of men who are, nonetheless, active deckhands.

For the first six months of fieldwork, though I listened attentively to countless tales of commercial fishing, I was still one of those who had “never been, never seen, never done”. Though my imaginings were given colour and depth by the stories of fishermen, and shaded with depictions observed over a life-time of media watching, there were huge blank spaces that only experience could fill. Now, after several trips aboard shark, and other, commercial fishing boats, I realise that there were, in addition to the blank spaces I recognised, complete voids in my understanding, spaces I was unaware were there to be filled. The knowledge that filled these voids was, for me, novel. The notion that aspects of the world can exist for some people and not for others is taken up further in Chapter 8. For now, I will turn to the first time I encountered what lay beyond the wharf, beyond the bar, out at sea on a shark fishing boat. 178

Doing what Danny does

The first skipper who took me to sea, to show me how it was done, was a man named Fat. He skippered a boat called the Daryl R, with two deckies: Loaf and Danny. Before the much anticipated trip, I asked Sal, Fat’s partner, herself an experienced fisherman, for general advice. “Just watch Danny”, she advised. “Just do what Danny does”. Though I pressed for more concrete advice, she repeatedly indicated that I should direct my attention to Danny’s behaviour, to his movements, to his body, and to try to replicate that action with my own.3

As a landlubber, my first challenge was walking. Initially, I watched with frustration as both Danny and Loaf moved about the Daryl R as though she were nestled snuggly in stone. Their bodies somehow anticipated the to and fro of the deck, simultaneously reading and coordinating the motion of the boat, the incoming waves and the directed action of their own, and each others’, bodies, and unconsciously responding with counteractive movements at their knees and hips that allowed them to remain upright.

I, on the other hand, literally hit the deck again and again. Though painfully aware of my body, it was dumb and unresponsive to my surroundings. I could not see the cues that Danny and Loaf absorbed with their bodies, or at least, I misread them. In order to walk anywhere I had to move like a crab, with gumboots shuffling across the deck and hands clawing from item to item. My arms occasionally held me up as my legs gave way. However, the contact between the boat and my hands offered more than simply extra support, but acted like receptors, channelling extra information about the angle of the boat

3 O’Connor (2005:201) provides an evocative account of her apprenticeship in the art of glassblowing, describing the “corporeal sight” required to learn certain skills. 179

and the relative position of my body. Like the blind reading brail, devoid of one sense I compensated with another (Figures 14- 15).

14 Early days. Still with one hand on the wash-box Gradually, however, as I diligently 'watch what Danny does', distracted I was able to walk momentarily by Fat with my camera. with only one hand in contact with the boat, and eventually, with no direct contact at all. Somehow, after days of trial, error and considerable bruising, my body went into autopilot, and I learned to 15 Loaf, reaching for a knife, Danny, gutting, and me, managing to stay upright. This picture anticipate the resembles the view of the skipper from the movement of the wheelhouse. Note the design of the bow-roller. boat, to intuit the appropriate response. Whereas ‘walking’ had been a multifaceted endeavour, it became a single activity that I no longer had to concentrate upon. All the elements collapsed into one motion, and my ability to walk went without saying.

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The articulation of embodiment, or, ‘bad habits’

In the comments of fishermen themselves, I noticed the difficulty with which embodied skills are articulated. The rules defy definition. They lose potency with explication. Like the ‘traditional fishing areas’ described in Chapter 3, these rules are often only visible, graspable, when they are broken, when a performance is bad. When I asked Macka, a shark boat skipper from Lakes Entrance, what he looked for in a deckie, he responded with stories about the poor performance of an ex-deckie named Leo. He stressed that there were considerable advantages to hiring a 'green', or novice, deckie over an experienced, skilled, or ‘gun’ deckie. Deckies trained on other boats, under different skippers, deckies like Leo, picked up, what he repeatedly spoke of as, “bad habits”. Macka’s comments about 'bad habits' conveyed the level at which deckie knowledge is possessed: it is habitual, embodied.

To have ‘bad habits’ didn’t imply that a deckie was incapable of completing a task. Every deckie must be able to, say, gut a fish. However, there are a number of ways to gut a fish, from the precise cuts made, to the sequence of cuts, to the treatment of the carcass. Every fisherman, for one reason or another, seems to have his preference. A particular way of performing a task may be safer than another, or more efficient. At the end of the day, however, the skipper’s way is, by definition, the right way, and a deckie who refuses to conform his body and actions to the will of the skipper has ‘bad habits’. Though some skippers are reportedly, and notably, more easy-going than others, and may allow a deckie to perpetuate his own style, skippers have the authority to declare a particular style superior or acceptable.

To change ones’ habits is difficult, precisely because they are habitual. ‘Bad habits’ are etched into the body. Instead of explaining something 181 to a deckie for the first time, as to a ‘green’ deckie, the erasure of ‘bad habits’ requires that the skipper speak over the voices of past skippers, shouting them down, drowning out their dubious wisdom. Leo complained bitterly that the job was completed regardless of whether it was completed his way or Macka’s way. However, the articulable aspect of the performance – the achievement or otherwise of the task – was not the totality of the performance: it had to be done with a particular style, in a particular way: Macka’s way. The difficulty of undoing Leo’s ‘bad habits’ lay in the difficulty of deconstructing those skills he had already packaged into a single performance.

Seamless motion, seamless bodies

A good deckhand works rapidly and with rhythm. Once, when I was working as a lone deckhand – doing a not quite passable job – the skipper told me, “It’s a study in movement, Guy. It’s the motion. You’ve got to have the motion”. The skipper finally asked another boat to lend him an experienced deckie.… The deckie pounced aboard the boat like a cat, instantly and reflexively putting his body to the work. Where I had been struggling to improve my coiling, he showed me how to do it with two fingers, making use of the rope’s natural twist to guide it into neat stacks. It was an art, a dance, and it was aesthetically pleasing (Wright 1992:45).

Wright’s description of Abrolhos Island crayfish deckies moving like dancers resonates strongly with my own observations of the way deckies move on shark boats. The relationship between the bodies of deckhands, their equipment, and even each other, is seamless. They glide easily around the deck of the boat, which is wet, laden with large objects, moving parts, flailing fish and continuously shifting. During hauling, deckies are moving continually: from the gutting board to the bow roller; further down the net, to un-mesh a fish; back to the gutting board; to the net again. The flow of movement is rarely interrupted by 182 two deckhands encountering one another at a bottleneck. Rather, they take in the position of the others on the deck, intuit their future position and activity, and use that information to inform their own movement. Bodily cues – the positioning of body and limbs in relation to the boat and the water, the direction of the gaze – as well as contextual cues – the stage of hauling, the last task performed, the next task to be undertaken – work together to signal the way someone is going to step, the path they have chosen, the fish they are going to pick up, the action they are going to perform next. They side-step each other so instinctively, they manoeuvre so effortlessly, that spontaneous action really does resemble choreographed dance. The actions of others, contextualised within a shared world of understanding, inform their own.

Such bodily awareness does not serve simply to ease the process of fishing, but is vitally important for the safety of all on board a small fishing boat in the middle of the ocean. All must be able to dance faultlessly on deck, as one wrong step could send a man twirling into the water. Andy, a typically quiet and easy-going deckie, emphasised the importance of being able to walk on deck by reminiscing about a man who could not: a man with ‘bad habits’. The offending deckie had placed everyone in danger by failing to coordinate his body with the fishing operation. Afraid for his own safety lest the uncoordinated deckie zigged when he should have zagged, knocking someone over the bulwarks, Andy grabbed the man and held him over the side of the boat, warning him to, literally, watch his step. While watching a deckie who is light on his feet is, as Wright suggests, ‘aesthetically pleasing’, the dangerous circumstances in which deckies work demand that they coordinate their bodies with their surroundings.

Pálsson’s (1994:910) description of Icelandic fishers suggests that 183 fishermen, skippers in particular, are inseparable from the environment in which they work and the tools that they use. “Where are we to draw the boundaries between fishermen, their technology, and the environment?” he asks. He illustrates his answer by suggesting that:

For the skilled skipper fishing technology – the boat, electronic equipment, and fishing gear – is not to be regarded as an ‘external’ mediator between his person and the environment but rather as a bodily extension in quite a literal sense.

There is a similar connection between deckies and the equipment they use. For example, I was wearing shorts one evening at the pub when my friend, Loaf, an observant deckhand, commented approvingly on the appearance of my legs. I was momentarily chuffed before I realised that he was referring to the many bruises that discoloured the outside of my knees, ranging from faded and yellow to recent and deep purple. The bruises conveyed to Loaf that I had been repeatedly carrying gillnet weights from the bow to the stern of a fishing boat during hauling, bashing the heavy leads against myself as I swayed with the movement of the boat. Having watched me vomit for the entirety of another voyage, Loaf’s approval was for the stubborn behaviour he inferred from my bruises: “You’re a toiler, I’ll give you that”. The following example captures the literal connection between the bodies of deckhands and the tools of their trade, in this case, the boat.4

4 While some shark boats are operated ‘two handed’, by a skipper and one deckhand, requiring the skipper to operate the boat from a lever on the deck so that he can assist in the hauling, on boats with two deckies the skipper is able to remain in the wheelhouse with his slippers on. These men are known, and may refer to themselves, as “slipper skippers”. The skipper working on the deck views the hauling process from a significantly different perspective to that of the ‘slipper skipper’. All of the shark fishing trips I accompanied were manned by a ‘slipper skipper’ and two deckies, hence discussion of the technical aspects of fishing reflects this bias (Figure 16). 184

Again sharing a beer in the Port Albert Hotel one night with Loaf and his brother Tony, who was also an experienced deckhand, we lamented the retirement of one of the youngest shark boat skippers in the fleet (attributable, at least in part, to financial pressures intensified by the introduction of ITQs). Tony, who had been happily working for the 16 It's not all delegation for this 'slipper skipper'. young skipper for some

months prior to the latter’s ‘retirement’, looked sadly through the window to the wharf outside where the Rodondo had been tied up for some time. Tony pointed to his forearm which, though thick with muscle, had atrophied somewhat since he had ceased fishing regularly. He pointed to the Rodondo, then looked at his arm, lamenting, “that boat hasn’t moved, look at my arm, it’s wrong”. I was struck by the connection Tony had made between his body and the boat. He continued immediately by drawing a similar connection between the body of his skipper and the now defunct fishing operation. The relationship between his skipper’s body, the knowledge he possessed in his mind, body, and in the bonds he had with others in the community, the action of the fishing operation, was a relationship woven over multiple generations of experience. In leaving the 185 industry the fabric of this relationship had been torn. Tony lamented that his skipper, Mick, had lost something that he had inherited “through genes Tanya, not through practice, but through genes!” Tony’s assessment of Mick’s skill as ‘genetic’ may seem to contradict my assertion that knowledge is embedded in practice. However, it is precisely the conflation of that which is so inherent that it resists articulation – genes – with that which is so thoroughly embodied as to be indefinable – fishing skill – that emphasises my point: by alluding to the generational link between the abilities and performances of Mick and his ancestors, Tony captures the manner in which embodied knowledge is transferred among those who move in the world, side by side (see Pálsson 1999).

There is a sense in which the bodies of fishermen are permeable, that they are connected, in “quite a literal sense” (Pálsson 1994:910) to the tools of their trade. While deckies relate to knives, coffee cups, nets and fish with their bodies, many skippers do not actually engage with these items in the same way. Rather, the relationship between skippers and the items that enable them to catch fish are mediated through the bodies of their deckhands. Wright (1992:137) was told, “a good deckie is your best piece of equipment”.5 This connection is explored in the next section, where deckhands are described as prosthetic extensions of their skippers.

5 Wright (1992:137) was told that a crayfish deckie is important “because he frees you to think about what you’re supposed to be doing, which is finding crays”. Shark boat skippers operate slightly differently; they tend to be hyperaware of their deckies and, even if they appear to be concentrating on the task at hand, usually have one eye on their deckies at all times. 186

The prosthetic relationship between skippers and deckies

“(A deckie is) an arm or a leg or maybe half a body of what goes on”. – Daff, professional fisherman.

Joe has seine fished Corner Inlet since the late 1990s, a style of fishing that requires less capital investment than shark fishing, using a far smaller boat, and typically requiring only one deckie. Prior to ‘retiring to the Inlet’ (as it is often described), Joe was a shark boat skipper. In the following excerpt, Joe describes how changing his performance from one style of commercial fishing to another, brought his identity as a fisherman into perspective. In his comments, we see that Joe’s identity is affected by the way that tasks are divided between his own body and those of his deckies.

I’ve only been in it three years, and to me, it’s all about lifestyle. The Inlet’s all about lifestyle. And the challenges. You really are a hands-on fisherman in the Inlet. Do you get what I mean? Like, I remember someone saying to me, “When you were a fisherman…” We were talking about sharking one night in the pub, and he said, “You know when you were a fisherman…” [Joe pauses, furrows his brow and lifts his hand to scratch his head]. Well, I took a bit of offence to that, in actual fact. Because, I don’t believe I’ve ever been more of a fisherman in my life than I am at the moment. I believe that I’m much much more a fisherman [pause] now than I was, say, for the last eight years I did sharking, because for the last eight years I did sharking I was a fishing vessel manager. And it was a totally different thing, you know. And the sharking was evolving to such a degree that, geez, I can’t remember the last time I gutted a shark. And yet, when I was a young fella, I was a gun gutter. You know what I mean. I’ve become so much more… Inlet fishing is just so much more hands-on. Like, I’m handling fish every day of the week.

187

Joe’s comments emphasise the connection between doing, knowing and being a fisherman. Though there is certainly considerable prestige attached to the role of shark skipper, Joe’s comments suggest that by graduating from being a deckie to being a skipper, one is distancing oneself from the role, the identity, of fisherman. By reverting to a style of fishing that, once again, involved him “handling fish every day of the week”, he was reducing the distance between decision and action: he was throwing away the prostheses he relied upon as a “fishing vessel manager”: his deckies.

When Sal advised me to “do what Danny does” she wasn’t simply referring to the things he did, nor even to the way he performed his duties, but also to the role he played in relation to the other people on the boat, namely the skipper, Fat. Being a deckie involves a great deal more than gutting fish. It is the embodiment of a social position. This section focuses on the way in which the relations between skippers and deckhands are evident in their bodies, in their physical movements and in their understanding of personal boundaries.

Pálsson has described the relationships between Icelandic skippers and deckies as one in which deckies are one of many parts of the fishing operation, to be coordinated simultaneously with the boat, the gear and the weather. The fishermen themselves describe the relationship between skippers and their crew as akin to that between a pianist and his piano (Pálsson 1994:911).

Deckies learn to relate to things in the same way they learn to relate to each other. They learn to move their bodies, to be in the world, through a pedagogic process that privileges action. As with technical skill, to theoretically appreciate the relevant social institutions, cannot substitute for the ability to negotiate these relationships as they are 188 played out at sea. A ‘good’ fisherman, a ‘gun’ deckie, is proficient in the performance of both the physical and the social skills involved in fishing. Indeed, the two are inextricable. While Leo may have been a good deckie on another boat, his inability to traverse the social terrain on board Macka’s boat made him an undesirable appendage.

Invisible and Peripheral

Like the embodied skill that goes without saying, deckies are often invisible extensions of their skippers. Especially during the early part of my fieldwork, the ‘invisibility’ of deckhands was something of an ongoing private joke for me. I was perplexed as to why the young men with whom skippers spent so much time could be almost totally absent from their discourse about fishing. Deckies were mentioned only occasionally, typically as “my deckie” or perhaps using a first name or a nick-name, and usually in the context of a story about doing something.

The easiest way to encounter (some may say ‘corner’) skippers and deckies interacting is on a boat at the wharf. While the reaction of crew to an incoming ‘outsider’ is consistently one of wariness, the different response of skippers and deckies captures the simultaneous distinction and connection between the two. Approaching a boat, it quickly becomes apparent who is the skipper. His comportment is typically more elevated, his attention is concentrated across a range of activities, and while he is likely to be doing the most technically demanding job, he is the only one issuing orders. While the skipper’s demeanour may range from friendly interest to polite irritation, most deckhands, particularly young ones, fade into transparency. While they will almost certainly be furtively watching the interaction between their skipper and the newcomer, they will typically focus on a localised task and avoid drawing attention to themselves. The comportment of a deckie, by 189 comparison with their skipper, is often withdrawn, their bodies oriented downwards. Illustrative of this ‘downward physical orientation’ is the strong impression I have that deckies have large eyes. Of course, the eyes of deckies are no bigger than those of skippers, but because their heads are often angled downwards they must open their eyes wide to take a peek at someone talking to their skipper. Though a deckie may speak quietly to another deckie on the boat, he is unlikely to join the conversation and is rarely invited to do so. Indeed, while the skipper may introduce another skipper, the owner of the boat, or perhaps his wife, he will rarely introduce a deckhand.

What follows is an excerpt from my field notes, following an encounter with a deckhand whose behaviour I felt to be transgressive, precisely because I had noticed him.

Deckie keeps looking up. [He is] Steve, a boy from Eden with big, deep- set eyes that have the dark outline of a stage actors’, and a quiet, endearing, childish charm. I wanted to snatch the fag out of his hand when I saw him with one. He smoked it self-consciously, bravely, and not casually, arrogantly, like it belonged in his mouth, as the other young deckies do. Something about him made him stand out when deckies are meant to fade into the other gear on the boat. [Original emphasis].

The relationship between another young deckie, Billy, on the Port Welshpool shark boat Sebastian N, and Peter, the skipper, was more usual. Billy was a tall, slim young man with short, sandy hair and, though silent when I approached the large blue hulk of the boat one afternoon, his eyes seemed to miss nothing. It was my birthday, and Roman offered me beer, which we drank in the wheelhouse over a long conversation. Though Billy was present throughout the entire chat he never contributed. He sat, eyes diligently flicking between the speakers, 190 responding promptly to Peter’s occasional requests. Peter, on the other hand, largely ignored Billy, and I tried to do the same. Occasionally, Hooper spoke about Billy as though he was not there and, when he did so, Billy appeared visibly unmoved. I began to wonder if ‘Billy’ was, indeed, the name of the deckie before me. It was, therefore, during an interval when Peter left the wheelhouse to attend to some business with another skipper on the wharf, that I asked with some hesitation, “It’s Billy, isn’t it?” To my surprise, Billy initiated a vibrant chat about fishing, the Sebastian N, Port Welshpool, his role as a deckie and mine as an unusual interloper. Upon Peter’s return, however, Billy fell back into the silence from which he had temporarily emerged.

Initially unsure of how to negotiate such an obvious distinction between skippers and deckies, I felt highly self-conscious approaching deckhands while they were in the company of their skippers. As time went on I realised that introductions, as I was accustomed to them, were not going to be forthcoming, and it became something of a game with myself to see how implicated in a conversation a deckie could become without being formally acknowledged. Some skippers seemed to actively avoid learning the names of green (novice) deckies on the wharf or, in the case of owners, even on their own boat.6 After about six months of learning little about deckies I resigned myself to two courses of action. I took a job at the Pier Port Hotel, the sole watering hole in Port Welshpool, where deckies could be encountered in a more relaxed setting, particularly after their skippers had departed. I also took to questioning skippers about their crew and sometimes, somewhat

6 The death-rate among off-shore fishermen in Australia is very high. Inexperienced fishermen are more likely than others to meet an untimely death. Denying knowledge of the names of young deckhands could be a way of thwarting the distress of ‘knowing’ one who is lost at sea. Several incidents observed during my research suggested as much. 191

provocatively, invited an introduction from deckies themselves. In doing so, I always felt I was doing something rather inappropriate.

I still cringe slightly to think of one of the more awkward encounters. After having known Brocky for around 18 months, I happened upon him and his deckie at the wharf, preparing to leave. My parents were visiting at the time and I wanted them to meet my friend. During the exchange of pleasantries at the edge of the boat my parents repeatedly glanced expectantly at the young man who was deftly performing the tasks that readied the boat for departure. Taking a deep breath to combat the disturbance I was about to create, I inquired after his name and introduced the family. ‘Matt’ immediately looked intensely uncomfortable, but permitted his name to be extracted and managed to mumble a greeting. There was an awkward moment as Brocky fumbled with belated introductions and the conversation immediately reverted to excluding Matt. Later, Brocky told me that Matt was of a fishing family from another port. The young man had no doubt seen many examples of deckie behaviour upon which to model his own. During a later conversation with Brocky we spoke about the disturbance caused when I had addressed Matt at the wharf that day. Brocky, a man with impeccable manners, seemed bemused at his own admission that it had simply not occurred to him to make the introductions. So ingrained are these behavioural patterns of social interaction that they do not even warrant reflexive thought (Bloch 1998:7).

There are fine distinctions among deckhands: a ‘green deckie’ is new to the business; a ‘professional deckie’ is an older man, a veteran, who is unlikely to become a skipper, either through choice or circumstance; a ‘gun deckie’ is one who is known (and often knows himself) to be rapid and proficient in the execution of his duties; the ‘number one deckie’ is the one who outranks other deckies on the boat, either due to his 192 indisputably superior skill or his longer association with the boat.7 Skippers, however, always outrank deckhands. Regardless of skill, age, career length, physical strength, personality, or any other factor, the role of deckhand is always peripheral to that of the skipper.

As well as being able to fade into the other gear on the boat, a good deckie must embody his peripheral status. One of the most overt demonstrations of this peripherality aboard the Daryl R involved the skipper’s chair, located in the wheelhouse of the boat. Fat spent the majority of his time in that black, vinyl chair, where he was in reach of all the controls and could survey the deck. While I did, from time to time, sit in ‘Fat’s chair’, as did Danny, it was a treat, a temporary elevation to a privileged position. What reflected the relationship between Fat and his crew most eloquently was not who sat in the chair, however, but the movement of people under it. The chair could be swung in and out of place on a hinge, and the limited space in the wheelhouse meant that when the chair was in position it blocked the doorway to the galley, leaving a hole at the bottom through which one could squeeze. When Fat was sitting in his chair everyone passing between the galley and the wheelhouse crawled under him. On the odd occasion when Fat swung the chair back for me to pass I bashfully felt the impropriety of the scenario, and hoped the others had not borne witness. Even Loaf, a big but agile man, who had once worked as a deckhand alongside Fat, and who himself was a qualified skipper, unquestioningly got down on the floor and passed beneath the chair. Had their roles been reversed, I am sure that Fat would have performed

7 The position of ‘number one deckie’ is usually jostled for by deckhands of relatively equal status. Byron questioned Jack’s claim that he was more senior, referring to Jack bitterly as “so-called number one deckie”, noting that Jack had joined the crew of the Jarrion only one trip earlier than he. Rooster, by comparison, explained that he was ‘number one deckie’ on the Lady Roula because the other deckie, Admiral, was a highly skilled and well respected, semi- retired skipper, and was therefore ineligible to vie for the position. 193 his peripheral role equally well.

Prosthetic limbs

A skipper has little need to talk about deckies for the same reason he has little need to talk about an arm, or a leg: their role is incorporated into the movement of the body, or of the fishing operation. Deckies’ actions were often taken for granted, subsumed under those of the skipper and implied as an extension. A good deckie does not stand out, but ‘fades into the other gear on the boat’. Deckies are cast out, like arms and legs, to aid the skipper in, what is, ultimately, his performance (Pálsson 1994:910).

I often saw skippers controlling the activities of deckies like additional limbs. Typical, was an afternoon I spent with the crew of the Ripple III as they worked on replacing the deck of the boat. Roger was both owner and skipper and had with him two deckies, Dylan and Stu. Stu, a gentle, reserved man, was deckie on the Daryl R, but had worked with Dylan previously on the deck of the Ripple. Stu’s moonlighting on the Ripple was facilitated further by the tendency for Roger to work ‘with’ the Daryl R skipper, Fat. Dylan, a good-looking, witty and affable nineteen year old, somewhat on the bored side of content, seemed happy to engage me as a new (and easy) target for his good-natured teasing. Dylan was apprentice, however, to Roger, whose wit could simultaneously split hairs and curl toes. Roger delighted in teasing me, or anyone else for that matter, and in a verbal spar his tilt never missed. Most who managed to draw breath from laughing were poorly equipped to challenge him. Roger behaved typically, making all decisions, doing the more complicated jobs, directing the action, and humour, of everyone on the boat. While not lifting a plank, hammering a nail, sawing, or some other isolated task, Dylan and Stu waited on the 194 periphery for instructions, participating brightly in the kidding banter. All tomfoolery ceased upon Roger’s word, however, as this plank needed to be held in place, or that hammer passed. Dylan would stop, literally, mid-sentence, and he and Stu would spring into action, like flexed muscles. While each man saw the world through his own eyes, it was Roger who directed their gaze towards the salient features in the landscape, whether it was a plank, a hammer, or an anthropologist.

Deckies never quite relax in the presence of their skipper: they are always ‘on-duty’. They hover, waiting for the stimulus – a glance, a gesture, a word – that compels them to complete a movement of the skipper’s with one of their own. A good deckie responds instantly and cheerfully to requests for tools, coffee, and heavy lifting, minimizing the lag between will and action. At sea, a good deckie is out of his bunk and ready to work as soon as the skipper is ready, he eats when the skipper cooks, he sleeps when the work is over, if he is sea-sick he vomits over the side and continues his task, he relieves himself only when it is convenient within the schedule of the operation. He is cast into the rigging to tighten a bolt, or into the water to untangle the anchor rope from the prop. Deckies enable skippers to be in two places at once, to reach further, higher, and for longer than they could on their own.

When a crew is working together in harmony, when deckies are attuned to the cues from the skipper, there is little need for explicit instruction, as Anderson (1972:134) has also described of Newfoundland deep-sea trawler fishing crews. “It behoves the skipper to create a working relationship and atmosphere wherein men act effectively without being told, and respond cooperatively and quickly under necessary commands”. A good deckie will pre-empt the skipper’s request, making for a relatively silent working situation. He learns by watching and 195 doing, after which he simply acts. A deckie who has embodied the routine of the operation, who knows his own tasks, and those of others, so well that he barely needs to think about them, has no need to talk about them (eg. Wright 1992:46). Joking, teasing or chattering, flesh out exchanges among the crew, while directions relating to the performance of tasks are often reserved for when a crew member does something wrong. I often felt the inappropriateness of my own voice when asking questions during the hauling of the gear.

Power and rites of passage

The relationship between shark boat skippers and their deckies is acutely hierarchical. There is a sense in which the relationships described above could be considered an embodiment of power. However, to discuss the interactions between skippers and deckies in terms of power fails to capture the complexity of the bond. To talk about deckies as passive recipients of influence, falsely posits them as static victims (Scott 1985). Certainly, the experience of being a deckhand can be fraught, evident in the dissatisfaction some deckies express regarding their treatment at the hands of their skipper (see The Deckies’ Lament). However, though there is little employment in the rural coastal regions abutting Bass Strait,8 the young men who are now working as deckhands on shark boats do have opportunity to pursue

8 It should be noted, however, that changes to the government management of these industries in recent years have limited the number of jobs available. For example, following the deregulation of the dairy industry in mid-2000, economic pressure to restructure led to the growth in size, and reduction in number, of milking operations. Due to economies of scale, dairies became more ‘efficient’ and many workers were made redundant. As producers of two thirds of Australian milk, the impact on Victorian dairy workers was considerable, particularly for those in fertile dairy regions such as South Gippsland (Lewis 2001). Such changes reflect the neo-liberal trend in Australian governance in the late 1980s through the early 2000s, of which ITQ management is another example. Compounding the financial woes of unemployed regional people, those receiving social security pensions from the government have their payments reduced as a penalty for continuing to reside in a region with low employment opportunities. 196 alternative employment, such as at the local timber mill or in the dairy industry. Evidently, for some men, the benefits of being a prosthetic deckie outweigh the drawbacks associated with their relative positioning vis-à-vis their skipper.

By undergoing a process of initiation deckies gain access to the community of fishermen. In addition to enjoying benefits such as an outdoor lifestyle and a good income (ideally), they may also enjoy the camaraderie of the group, vie for status among their peers, participate in industry gossip (though often merely as observers), regard themselves and, importantly, be regarded as members of an exclusive group. As proponents of ‘positioning theory’ suggest, many people participate actively, though not necessarily reflexively, in their positioning, and can achieve a desired place in a network of relationships through the performance of a particular role (Davies and Harré 1990, Harré and Slocum 2001, Harré and van Langenhove 1999, Henriques et al. 1988, Hollway 1998:80-6). Deckies can achieve an elevated social status in the community through the deft performance of their prosthetic role. In some ways this process resembles that of a more general rite of passage into manhood, and for many young deckies, learning their trade and becoming a man occur simultaneously.

The notion of ‘manhood’ and the process of becoming ‘a man’ in many Western countries, including Australia, is often associated with individuality, self-reliance, perhaps the creation and maintenance of a family, financial security, gaining the respect of other men and establishing an identity separate to that of one’s nuclear family (Buchbinder 1994:37-9, Buttery and Wong 1999:148, Carroll 1982:467- 8, Conway 1985:22-4, Raphael 1988:9-10, Ward 1978:289-96). Van Gennep’s (1960) seminal, The Rites of Passage (first published 1908), 197 continues to influence theorists of masculinity: initiation into ‘manhood’ is commonly represented as a process comprising an initial separation from the natal group, followed by a period of exclusion or subjugation and, finally, the reincorporation into society of the initiate who has been transformed from a boy to a man. Later influential views on male initiation incorporate psychoanalytic notions of “Oedipal rivalry between father and sons” (Raphael 1988:9-10). Other theories involve male envy of the female creative ability, according to which men symbolically emphasise their reproductive power by stylising initiates as women – sometimes with permanent scarification or simulated menstruation – before they are ‘born again’ as men. Raphael (ibid:10) describes the general process, quoting Firth on the Tikopia:

The suppression of individual freedom during the rituals is critical, for the novitiates must learn to pay full respect to tribal tradition:

In ordinary life he can obey or disobey; at initiation he must submit. He is taken in hand by his elders, treated by them as an object, carried about, gripped in strong arms, and forced to undergo an operation from which he shrinks. His submission is taken for granted, and it would be strange if at this time he did not become aware of the power of traditional procedure [emphasis added].

The prior dependence upon the nuclear family must be entirely negated, for the initiand must be reduced to the state of vulnerability which will eventually lead to submission.

Though he draws on classic anthropological accounts such as those of van Gennep and Firth, Raphael focuses on white men in the USA. His case studies include the story of Will, who was drafted for the Vietnam War (ibid:28-9):

Will’s initiation into the military immediately assumed a classical form. 198

He was removed from familiar surroundings, placed with a group of his peers, and ceremonially deprived of all vestiges of his prior identity.

The death of the boy was signified by the hair cut and the loss of one’s personal clothes; the boys, quite literally, had to be stripped of their personal past. This, of course, is an important feature of the separation phase of the initiation process.

The army was then free to impose its own stamp upon the blank slate it had created, and this was the beginning of the transition phase of the rite of passage.

The process of creating Will, ‘the man’, resembles that of creating a ‘good deckie’. Their ‘bad habits’ must be erased, or, at least, new habits imposed. Of course, like deckies, Will is not actually stripped of his personality, but in the context of the army his use is not measured according to his outstanding features, but rather, in his ability to play a functional part of a corps. Raphael (ibid:208-9) refers to Yehudi Cohen, who explained initiation rituals in relation to their socialising effects:

Initiations occur primarily “in those societies in which children are brought up to be anchored in the wider kin group” rather than the nuclear family; initiations are thus seen as a means of transferring allegiance from the nuclear family to the larger group which the initiand must eventually join.

This account is reminiscent of the removal of deckies from the terrestrial community – including the nuclear family, age-mates and girlfriends – and their incorporation into the community at sea, in which the prioritisation of relationships among fishermen – particularly between deckies and their skipper – are stressed. The imperative collectivity of fishermen is inscribed on the bodies of novice deckhands, after first removing them from their natal community. To represent this 199 process in discrete stages so as to resemble van Gennep’s description, deckies are first compelled to erase familiar connections to people and places (separation), to submit to the will of another (subjugation), then directed to form bonds with other individuals and locations (reincorporation). For fishermen, there is a sense in which the challenge of adulthood is to maintain some autonomy from whichever community one eventually becomes a part. Particularly for skippers, the bond with ‘the group’ is tempered by the necessity to present oneself as ‘an individual’. There is a perpetual paradox in simultaneously maintaining allegiance to both oneself and one’s’ cooperative. Indeed, this tension is, arguably, particularly pronounced in Australian rites of passage into ‘manhood’, a proposition discussed further in the following chapter. At this point, however, I will continue to focus on the more overtly cooperative relationship between skippers and deckhands.

Teasing

The integral and personalised bond between individual skippers and deckies is mutually dependent. Because the relationship between deckies and skippers is largely embodied it is difficult to raise the issue as a point of discussion. One of the ways in which the dynamic manifests itself visibly is in the continual games played between skippers and deckies. The sharp wit required to participate in the verbal repartee is a valuable skill in the fishing industry, and these jocular exchanges are not merely an entertaining distraction from the boredom that some feel at sea, but also have a pedagogic value. However, while this teasing is often genuinely funny, and while deckies often willingly engage in the play, they can never win, precisely because a key function of the exchange is to reiterate their position in relation to the skipper. 200

Guy Wright’s (1992:150) description of crayfish skippers and deckies9 depicts a relationship even more strongly hierarchical than those I witnessed, although the style of game playing is reminiscent of shark boat skippers. Wright describes an arm wrestling match between Jim, a cray boat skipper, and Fletch, his deckie. Aware that beating his skipper, even in play, was subverting the proper order, Fletch threw the match. Fletch tells Guy privately: “‘I could have put him down, but you never can win against these guys can you?’” capturing the enduring inequality of the bond between skipper and deckie. Wright (ibid:151) comments on the relationship:

The structural relationship between bridge and deck was unable to be breached, even in the ludic mode. This attitude was maintained by Jim throughout the season by making certain, in small ways, that Fletch felt the difference in status between them. The agonism, or combative contest, became an unbalanced competition in which Fletch had no chance of winning.

While the relationship between shark skippers and deckies is not typically ‘agonistic’, games with a recurrent ending, an enduring moral, a predictable outcome – games that deckies can never win – are an important feature.

Danny played along with Fat’s joke about having a hole in his shirt – which involved Fat poking at a real or imagined hole with his finger and asking rhetorically “got a hole in your shirt Daneal?” – for eleven straight days. On another trip, six months later – and presumably

9 The Western Rock Lobsters sought by Wright’s fishermen are harvested over a matter of months. Working relationships between men are sometimes limited to a single season. The greater polarisation of skippers and deckies may be due to the more compressed period of the relationship, in which roles must be enforced quickly, rather than be allowed to develop over a longer period of more subtle encounters. 201 during every interim trip – the ‘joke’ was still being made – and Danny was still playing the game. While the ‘in’, or ongoing, joke between Fat and Danny suggested a robust and stable relationship between the men, and was – at times – genuinely funny, I sometimes wondered if Danny ever tired of the game. Lying in our bunks in the fo’c’sle I broached the topic with care, asking if Fat ever exhausted the joke. Danny did not answer my question directly, but responded by talking about other skippers with whom he had worked. These other skippers had shouted and ranted and dominated the crew with verbal vitriol. Fat, on the other hand, was always happy and joking, and did not shout, making for a more pleasant working environment, an environment in which Danny wanted to remain. Implicit in Danny’s response was the understanding that despite the method employed for maintaining the hierarchy, deckies necessarily occupied a contrasting position to skippers, and that this contrast was necessary to an ongoing relationship. Danny understood the social institution that informed the rules of the game he was playing, and though he repeatedly ‘lost’, he played skilfully. Fat, similarly, by maintaining his position relative to Danny without raising his voice, won the continued loyalty of a gun deckie10. At the end of the day, both Fat and Danny were victors. A couple of years after this incident, the owner of the boat lamented that Danny was going to be getting his skipper’s ticket soon, signalling the impending demise of the stable and productive relationship between Fat and Danny.

The conflict between being prosthetic and being ‘a man’

Though skippers and deckies are joined fast in a productive bond, to

10 In order to illustrate how intolerably a particular skipper behaved towards his deckies, another fisherman explained, “That’s why he’s got his kin working for him: he’s got that bad of a reputation”. 202 consider them social equals would be a mistake. As noted above, and again below, some deckies express conflicting feelings about their role. However, this ‘teasing’ should not be confused with malicious ‘workplace bullying’, such as that targeted by the Victorian Work Cover Authority (2003) in an ongoing program that was launched in 2003 with an advertising campaign. Workplace bullying is defined in the key document released during the campaign as “repeated, unreasonable behaviour directed toward an employee, or group of employees, that creates a risk to health and safety”. ‘Unreasonable behaviour’ referred to “behaviour that a reasonable person, having regard to all the circumstances, would expect to victimise, humiliate, undermine or threaten” (ibid:6). While these coarse definitions are characteristic of policy motherhood statements, it is nonetheless useful to consider the teasing that occurs among fishermen with regard to the objective of the skipper in relation to issues of safety. Certainly, the peripheral position of deckies makes sense, is legitimate, within the community of fishermen. What is more, this dynamic is vital for the safe and efficient running of a shark fishing operation. A skipper must be sure that his instructions will be followed to the letter, and instantly, in an emergency situation: a sinking boat can be under the water in seconds. For a start, skippers are 100 percent responsible for the safety of the men on their boat. Those who lose a crew member while fishing are marked. Indeed, whole families may be stigmatised. It is not uncommon for fishermen to sell their assets and retire following a fatal accident. Some skippers cite the stress of being responsible for someone else’s life as the reason they are excessively stern while at sea,11 or, as some deckies suggest, why they “become psychos once they

11 The responsibility of skippers for the safety of their crew is not restricted to the Australian context (Anderson, 1972:133, International Maritime Organization – Ireland, 2005:2, Johnson et al. 1998, Stadler, 1987:88-9). Talking with a cab driver in New Orleans, he revealed that he had been a shrimp boat skipper most of his life, but had sold the business and moved to the city after an accident in which his long-term deckhand had been killed. 203 cross the bar”. Raphael refers to Cohen (in Raphael 1988:208-9), who described socialisation processes as involving “any sort of strong emotion”, not only positive experiences. It is, in part, precisely in order to reduce the risk to health and safety that some skippers repeatedly ‘tease’ their deckies. The flow of banter tethers a skipper to his deckies, and with these connecting threads a good skipper can weave a safety net for all those in his care.

While on land, even while not in a working context, skippers – particularly owner-skippers – are sometimes regarded as responsible for their crew. If a deckie is short of money, he may ask his skipper for a ‘sup’, or an advance on his wages. A skipper who does not find fish, who cannot provide for his crew and their families – particularly if other skippers are catching – is shamed. In less formal ways, skippers are considered responsible for their deckhands, even in the eyes of the community, as the following story illustrates.

One night at the Port Albert Hotel a fight broke out between two deckhands who worked on the same boat. I was sitting beside the fireplace, where I could see the length of the bar as it stretched out to my right, and the pool-room ahead of me. The deckies were playing pool together while their skipper was quietly eating his dinner at the other end of the next room. Though the three men often drank together, on this occasion they were socialising separately. The partners of both deckies were present. When the fight erupted various people tried to interject, including the women, but to no avail. In a subtle way, the people in the bar looked to the skipper to deescalate the situation. He was quickly informed as to what was happening between ‘his deckies’, and as the fight got more intense those in the room repeatedly glanced at the skipper expectantly. A burden of responsibility seemed to cross the skipper’s face as it became apparent 204 that he must step in. He rose, slowly, and made his way to the pool- room. Those in a position to see both the flailing bodies of the deckies and the approaching skipper looked attentively from one to the other. When the skipper reached the pool-room and the deckies noticed him the fight immediately ceased. One of the deckies stormed out of the pub, smashing a glass pane with his fist on the way, slicing his arm badly enough to require many stitches. Though both were sober, it was the skipper, not the man’s partner, who took the injured man to hospital for medical attention.

While being the object of another man’s concern can offer financial and social advantage, there is a sense in which a deckhand’s dependence on another man is problematic. Like all fishermen, these men do not exist solely in a community of fishermen. As Pálsson (1991a:68) points out, "no fisherman – no crew or a fleet, for that matter – is an island unrelated to the world ashore, the community to which fishermen belong”. When not at sea, both skippers and deckies live in coastal towns, where the appropriate relationship among men does not necessarily resemble that among men at sea.

When skippers patch-up, bail-out or give ‘sups’ to their deckies while on land, they are evoking an ethic that is primarily relevant to men at sea. As proposed in the previous chapter, this decontextualised evocation contributes to the positioning of fishermen somewhere across the divide between land and sea, both blurring the division and emphasising their own distinction from those with a more rigid relationship to this boundary.

The intimate bond between skippers and deckies can compromise a deckhand’s efforts to develop and present an individual persona. Particularly for young men, some of them teenagers, many of whom 205 have not yet created a family, who have little money, who are yet to establish themselves as ‘men’, being supported by, even subsuming themselves to the will of, another man – particularly their father – hampers their ability to enter the world of adults. Rather, they are figuratively trapped in the liminal stage of initiation. Many subtly subvert the order of power in a way that resembles what Scott (1985) calls ‘weapons of the weak’, in order to protest their position (also see Sherman 2005 and Yang 2005). A deckie might talk disparagingly behind his skipper’s back, fail to make his coffee precisely the way he likes it or, less often, leave something lying around for him to trip over, in order to ‘get him back’ for some perceived put-down. Of those young boys who begin their fishing careers with their fathers, it is almost expected that they will have a fight with their dad and leave the ‘family’ boat during their late teens or early twenties, when their prosthetic position as a deckhand becomes irreconcilable with their attempts to legitimise their claims to ‘manhood’ with displays of autonomy. Talking about his recent departure from his uncle’s boat, 22 year old deckie, Anthony, explained, “You just can’t work with family: it just doesn’t work”.

Of course, young deckies do become men, in one way or another. Some leave the fishing industry. Others become a particular category of man – the professional deckie – and learn to negotiate their identity by variously resisting and contributing to their prosthetic role. Some go on to become skippers themselves, at which time they are required to demonstrate their ability to direct others to suit their will, to be the locus of activity. A story told over instant coffee one afternoon related to a fisherman who had recently taken control of his own boat, and who had yet to prove that he had adequately graduated from the deck and become ‘a man’. A wily fish-buyer had tested the manliness of the young skipper by trying to cheat him on the first load of fish he bought. 206

After the fish were loaded the fish-buyer had climbed into the transport truck and, just about to drive away, shouted a per kilo price that was lower than the previously agreed upon amount. With a satisfied chuckle and a sip of his coffee, the story-teller conveyed how the young skipper had risen to the challenge by dragging the fish-buyer through the window of the truck and ‘insisted’ on the original price.

However, those deckies who are skipper material are only taught the tricks-of-the-trade, the secret knowledge required to be a skipper, once they are initiated: when they prove themselves to be comprehensively familiar with the social landscape and are aware of the role into which they are expected to step. As one old-timer put it, “when they pass the attitude test”. There is a sense in which those who graduate to a position where they can control their own body, and even the bodies of others, are only enabled to do so when their skipper relinquishes his grip.

As he follows orders, in his physical comportment, a deckhand behaves as a living prosthesis to his skipper. The relationship between Steve and his skipper, as between Billy and Peter, Dylan and Roger, Danny and Fat, and Matt and Brocky, is one in which the deckie is partially subsumed within the relationship between deckie and skipper.12

12 The context of my encounters with these five young men – interrupting their work, in the public space of the wharf, as a young woman and relative stranger – no doubt contributed to their tendency to ‘fade into the background’. Nonetheless, the appurtenant role of deckhands is a salient classification among shark fishermen, one which meaningfully informs other social interactions. For example, I was sometimes teasingly referred to as Mick’s ‘deckie’. Standing around the bar at the Port Albert Hotel, several weeks before Danny, his deckie proper, was to be married, Danny asked Mick if he had asked me to assume the position of ‘and friend’ which appeared on his wedding invitation. Mick gruffly stated that “You don’t have to ask a deckie anything: you tell ‘em!” His implication was that he had not asked me anything because even telling a deckie to do something was somewhat inappropriate: they should just do it automatically. In this particular context, my place relative to Mick was as an appendage. 207

Deckies play a supporting role, and while the fishing operation could not proceed without them, it is the skipper who speaks for, who acts as, the face of the crew. While part of being a good deckie is being skilled in the execution of tasks, is having ‘the motion’, another is learning to embody the social position in which one is peripheral, in which one informs the actions of the skipper. This corporeally interdependent relationship is a vital component of a deckie’s apprenticeship, indeed, is vital for the realisation of each role: deckhand and skipper. While a skipper may not verbally acknowledge his arms, legs, or deckies, he is responsible for their physical and financial wellbeing: to neglect them is to effectively bind his own hands. Skippers use the hands of deckies to perform particular tasks, so that their own hands are free to do something else.

The flow of information among skippers

Most fishermen never manage true autonomy from others in the community: rather, their bonds to others are renegotiated in such a way as to allow them differing control over the function of the collective. The ability of shark fishermen is enabled through the coordinated action of the collective, and is not isolable to the performance of the individual. The final section of this chapter will describe how the flow of information among shark boat skippers links them in a bond as inextricable as that between deckhands and their tools, skippers and their deckhands. The key difference in the relationships between skippers and deckies, on the one hand, and among skippers, on the other, lies in the latter’s explicit veneration and periodic affectation of ‘individuality’. In Chapter 5, I explain how coexisting discourses of interdependence and individuality inform one another, indeed are vital, for the maintenance of a coherent identity. This section explains the practical reasons fishermen can never be truly self-reliant hunters. 208

Hunters

Shark fishermen are hunters both in that they exhibit, and identify with, the romantic image of the gallant, rugged, sea-faring provider, and in that they actually hunt – search for, seek out – their mobile and elusive prey. Indeed, Anderson and Wadel (1972:154) suggest that “deep-sea fishing might be classified as industrial hunting”. Like the Icelandic cod gillnet fishermen that Durrenberger and Pálsson (1986:216) have described, Bass Strait shark fishermen draw on “a wealth of detailed knowledge” to discover the location of fish, including information gleaned from their natural surroundings, their equipment, their accumulated knowledge, and other fishermen. These tactics are described below.

Vitally important to the Icelandic fisherman is his ‘fish finder’, or ‘sounder’, which emits a beacon of sound that bounces off the air-filled swim bladder of fish, and is reflected back to the boat, alerting him to the composition of the water column. So important is the sounder to the “‘precise fishing’ [púnktafiskirí]” of gillnetting, explain Durrenberger and Pálsson (ibid:218), that the Icelandic fisherman will not shoot the gear until the sounder detects fish. Bass Strait shark fishermen must do without this technology, however, as shark do not have a swim bladder. Though sounders can detect features of the sea floor that are favourable to shark – such as feeding grounds – the fish themselves are invisible. Shark inhabit a place as enormous as it is obfuscated, and relatively little is known about their migration patterns (Productivity Commission 1999:204). The location of shark are only ever assured on those occasions that they surface in the gear and land on the deck. Unlike Icelandic fishermen, Bass Strait fishermen hunt blind.

209

Background information

In order to increase their chances of catching fish consistently, shark skippers must compensate for their lack of ‘vision’ by making educated guesses as to where to find fish. The more information a man has to guide his forecast, the more likely he is to find “a bit of a scratch”, “a bit of colour”,13 or an economically viable patch of fish. These ‘guesses’ are formulated on the basis of both ‘background’ information – where shark were found on this day perhaps a month, perhaps five or even twenty years, ago – and ‘current’ information – where shark are being found right now.14

‘Background’ and ‘current’ information is not an emic distinction. Rather, ‘finding fish’ is understood to combine a range of information and skill that is not temporally fixed. Certainly, both ‘current’ and ‘background’ information flow along similar social channels. The distinction is useful, however, as it allows us to appreciate the perpetual generation of ‘current’ information that is required to facilitate, activate, and realise the use of ‘background’ information. Without the dynamic and cohesive information-sharing networks that generate this ‘current’ information, ‘background’ information would be little more than relics of an ineffective industry.

‘Background’ information can be identified well in advance of leaving the wharf. The ‘shelf-life’ of this information is relatively long – a useful tip about the annual movement of fish around a particular peninsula will still be useful next year, the year after, and in several years time.

13 Note that these terms are metaphors from gold-mining: Ward (1978) and Conway (1985) suggest that a peculiarly Australian identity characterised by rugged-individualism was, at least partially, developed in the context of the southern Australian gold-rush period of the mid 1800s. 14 In reference to a similar distinction made by fishers in the North American context, Wilson (1990:14) refers to “coarse- and fine- grained information”. 210

‘Background’ information can be stored for long periods of time, and most fishermen have logbooks in which are recorded a range of information about past shots.15 Logbook information may include times and dates, ‘lats and longs’ (latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates), depths, wind and tide conditions, the size of fish, the presence or otherwise of by-product or by-catch, indicators of sea-floor composition such as weed or rock, the activities of birds, mammals and large predators, sea-lice and other fishermen. The son of a shark fisher is likely to inherit his father’s logbooks, his background knowledge, contributing considerably to his chances of success. This information can act as a porthole into the past for a young skipper, and he may spend hours pouring over old logbooks looking for patterns, cycles, a clue as to where fish might be found.16 Nowadays, memorable shots can be entered and stored in computer programs, which are linked to navigation equipment,17 and can be recalled on subsequent trips, or even loaded into the navigation equipment of another boat. Needless to say, such information is highly valuable to those who can use it, and is guarded accordingly.18 Some fishermen simply store their background information in their heads, revealing it to privileged others sparingly.19

15 These log books record information additional to the basic compulsory information about location and catch required by the federal licence issuers. 16 Numerous fishermen have suggested that the patterns of environmental conditions and shark behaviours occur in 20 year cycles. 17 Global Positioning Systems [GPS] and Satellite Navigation [‘Sat Nav’] technology utilise satellites to provide highly accurate navigation and position referencing. 18 The isolability of digitally stored information from the individual who generated the coordinates has raised issues regarding the ownership of this information. One fisherman, while using his GPS to explain some oceanographic feature to me, quickly blanked out all of the information he had added to the map so that I could not see his shots. Certainly, the fisherman overestimated my ability to read his maps, not to mention my ability to act upon the information contained therein. I suspect that he would have concealed the data from almost anyone, employing the saying that ‘it is better to be safe than sorry’ when protecting such valuable information. Another fisherman took the precaution to store his coordinates in such a way that they were useless in isolation from a secret reference point known only to him. He explained that even if someone managed to access the program and steal his information, they would not be able to use it. 19 Durrenberger and Pálsson (1986:216) describe similar methods of information storage among Icelandic fishermen. 211

Though ‘background’ information may be identified with an individual, it is necessarily generated in a group over a period of time, and is comprised of personal experiences as well as those relayed through others. The skipper of the Rodondo was so positioned in a fishing family to have acquired the background information of multiple generations. Occasionally, I would tease his deckies by asking where they were next planning to fish. Typically, their waggish response – interspersed with laughter and winking – was that they would be making for “the g-spot”, or, “the gummy spot”. While deckies rarely know, or have any say over, where they are going in search of fish,20 the response given by the crew of the Rodondo was instructive: they expected their skipper to have a baseline knowledge of reasonably reliable grounds.

Current information

Sometimes, however, the best plans do not come to fruition, the most ‘reliable’ grounds prove otherwise. Even the most skilled fisherman cannot be assured of a good catch: every time he shoots the gear he must wait approximately six hours before he knows whether or not his calculations, observations, speculations – even his intuition21 – have been accurate. It is at these times when background information becomes much less relevant than what has surfaced in the net in the last few days, hours, or minutes: current information.

20 Wright (1992) found that crayfish deckhands were similarly uninformed. 21 While most fishermen have focal areas they favour within their ‘traditional fishing grounds’, several spoke of fishing unfamiliar grounds in an attempt to alter the fortune of a poor trip, or simply, to “see what’s there”. Folk understandings, anthropomorphisms of shark sociality, superstitions, ‘gut-feelings’, ‘hope-shots’, and ‘luck’ also contribute to the explanations given as to why skippers shoot in one place and not another, and why they are sometimes successful and sometimes not. These concepts will be taken up further in Chapter 6. 212

Reading the gear

One of the ways fishermen gather information is to ‘read’ the nets as the gear is hauled. Just as I used my arms like a blind woman to compensate for my inability to ‘see’ the relevant information that allowed me to walk on the deck, skippers use their 4200 meters of net as a sensor, to simultaneously gather information, detect fish, and catch them. The nets lay across the sea floor like a feeler, somewhat prosthetic, extending the skipper’s vision from the wheelhouse to the bottom of Bass Strait.

Though, by the time the gear is being hauled, the yield of the present shot has been determined, when fish come over the bow-roller and onto the deck there are many pieces of information that skippers can use to inform decisions as to where to shoot the gear next. While most shark bow-rollers are made of solid metal, some are fashioned from horizontal bars that allow the skipper, usually seated in the wheelhouse, to see the condition of the gear – angle, tension, contents – slightly before the net is pulled taut and guided onto the spool.22 In a business where even the smallest clue may prove vital to the success of the next shot, even the most subtle hint is seized upon. As a gross example, fish meshed with tails pointing west may be supposed to be swimming east. Stomach contents may indicate whether or not the fish have fed recently, if they are resting, or if they are likely to travel quickly. A smattering of fish in the last few nets may indicate the edge of a moving shoal. If the first fleet surfaces full of recently meshed (alive and active) fish, the shoal may still be in the area and the skipper may shoot back on them, perhaps before hauling the rest of the gear.

22 The barred bow-roller reportedly causes less damage to buoys and fish, as both pass into the gaps between the bars instead of being crushed against the uniform metal of the solid bow-roller (Figures 8, 14-15). 213

Reading the community

The only sure sign of fish in the water is fish on the deck – even on another boat. Shark fishermen transact current information because 8400m of net can detect at least twice as much as 4200m, 12,600m even more, and so on (Gatewood and Mace 1990:333). Shark fishermen distinguish between “finding” fish, and subsequently following and repeatedly harvesting the same shoal, or “staying on” fish. The likelihood of a fisherman ‘staying on’ fish is significantly enhanced if he cooperates with one or more other boats, if they ‘cluster’ on each trip. (Barth’s notion of ‘clustering’ will be discussed further in the next two chapters [1966:10]). Cooperating with, contributing information to, other fishermen is an ‘investment’ as these same others may be called upon for assistance at a later date. Any immediate losses incurred through sharing a shoal are far outweighed by the benefits of being able to stay on the fish longer, and to catch consistently over many trips.

There is a limit to how many boats can fish the one patch. Too many fishermen jostling for a portion of a single shoal can result in reduced individual accumulation, and possibly conflict among competing boats. Some shark fishermen reportedly “want to be heroes” and fish alone. However, most skippers assert that such behaviour is foolish. Heroes may be successful for a shot or two, but they will eventually shoot their gear somewhere the fish are not. They will zig when the fish zag and they will lose the shoal.

Some men tend to cooperate more than others. Those who fish alone, or rather, those who claim to, tend to be owner-skippers who own their own boat and quota, putting them in a relatively secure financial position that allows them to weather any economic troughs they experience as a result of impeded access to information about fish. Of 214 course, owner-skippers who acquired their quota on the basis of their own catch history in the mid-1990s have demonstrable access to significant accumulated knowledge, suggesting that they might be better positioned, than a less experienced skipper, to fish ‘alone’. The situation is complicated by information sharing practices between owners and hired skippers. The more experienced ex-skipper may direct the man running his boat, with the expectation that the hired- skipper withhold this information from others. The less experienced man may be compelled to share what he knows in order to gather more current information, or to help build information sharing relationships with other skippers. He may, on the other hand, be content to hunt on the basis of his boss’ information, and that which he can glean from more casual interactions with other skippers. It is the personality and social positioning of individual skippers, however, that seems to be the strongest indicator of whether or not he will claim to fish ‘alone’. Some men are simply less inclined to form ongoing relationships with other men, and are simply more content to fish ‘alone’. Even within a community characterised by cooperative action, there are those who prefer their own company and counsel: ‘loners’.

Steaming back to port after a poor trip on the Cooparchie in the autumn of 2001, we passed Steven’s vessel, the Ruby Mae, on her way to sea.23 I had, in the past, queried Steven as to who he fished with, to which he had consistently replied that he fished alone. A quiet, gentle, solitary man, Steven said that he preferred to do his own thing. Indeed, during a subsequent trip on the Ruby Mae I noted the lack of explicit cooperation with any other vessel or skipper. However, as the Ruby

23 Boats from the South Gippsland ports of Port Albert and Port Welshpool tend to fish at the same time. While the trips are not coordinated precisely or explicitly, it is not common that one boat would be returning to port as another is leaving. On this particular trip the Ruby Mae had been undergoing repairs that delayed her departure. 215

Mae passed us that morning a call came over the radio from Steven to our skipper, Pat, inquiring quite openly as to where we had been, what we had caught, and what the rest of the fleet was doing. Pat answered honestly, that we had done poorly, but had caught fish in such-and- such an area, caught nothing in others, and that he had heard that so-and-so had caught fish in another area a few days earlier. After the exchange was complete I quizzed Pat as to why he had replied as he did, why he had shared his information so freely. He explained that there was not much point in lying. Perhaps my dissatisfaction with his answer was evident on my face, because he continued: “we’ll be out again on Monday and you know who the first person I’m going to call is?”24 While Pat and Steven do not cooperate explicitly – the former fishing regularly ‘with’ a man from a nearby port and the latter fishing ‘alone’ – both men invest in, are bound to, a cooperative, informal, network of information exchange.

As this exchange demonstrates, transacting information does not necessarily resemble explicit cooperation. Though there are some who assert a preference for doing ‘their own thing’, all source current information from others in the community at some time. If ‘heroes’ are taken to be those who cooperate with no one, then there are no true heroes in the shark fishing industry. In practice, shark fishermen strategically cooperate and compete, share and withhold information, in order to enable the maximum individual return over an extended fishing career. The various ‘rules’ that guide participation in this network are discussed in the following Chapter.

24 When Alabama shrimpers are in a situation where the advantages of withholding information are limited, such as the near complete harvest of a shoal, White (1988:32) has described how “everyone rushes to discharge information exchange debts”. Also see Gatewood and Mace (1990:334). 216

Conclusion

Daffy often berated fisheries managers by saying that if he gave them the keys to his boat they might be able to start the engine, they might just be able to get the boat off the wharf, but that they would never be able to take it to Bass Strait and “make it pay”. His observation implied that without the embodied skill to negotiate the physical and social elements of the fishery, without knowledge of the tides, the weather and the conditions of the ocean floor, without the ability to coordinate their action with that of a crew and a boat, and without access to the networks through which both background and current information could be gained, even a man of enormous potential could not acquire the skills to become, to be, a shark fisherman.

Pálsson (1994:910) has described the interconnectedness of Icelandic skippers, their technology, crew and their environment as “literal”. This Chapter has gone further to argue that a literal connection exists among the men who call themselves shark fishermen. From the embodied knowledge learned by deckhands and employed, realised, in the performance of their duties, to the prosthetic bond between skippers and deckies, to the information sharing among skippers that enables their long-term economic survival in the industry, shark fishermen are bound in a vital and enabling system of knowledge and action.

The next chapter builds upon the discussion of information sharing among skippers. Of particular interest are the ways that competition and cooperation, individuality and group membership, are strategically negotiated by a collective of men, in the establishment of an acceptable identity. Collective investment requires some level of trust, or rather, of predictability. Predictability requires some commonality, shared guidelines for behaviour, such as those captured in what we may call 217 the ‘community of fishers’. These subtle social rules of interpersonal awareness and relating are inscribed on fishermen’s bodies and are evident in their speech and in their negotiation of space. To trivialise these guidelines, to destroy them, isolates individual fishermen, disabling the collective investment, and thus disabling both the ability and the identity of fishermen.

Negotiating Ambiguity: Sharing information among shark boat skippers

“You need competition to be an individual!”

– Dick Davidson, professional fisherman, Melbourne 2003

As a shark fisherman moves through the world he encounters people, objects, ideas and things that he can appreciate as discrete phenomena, that are delineated in some way. Indeed, these items are comprehensible precisely because they can be distinguished from one another. However, the boundaries between them are not spontaneous or necessarily enduring but, rather, are produced through iterative and transformative patterns of behaviour over time and context, and manifest in a variety of combinations. Understanding these boundaries, negotiating them skilfully, enables the fisherman to make sense of the world and his place in it.

219

The ambiguity of these boundaries has been described in the previous two chapters. In Chapter 3, rather than depicting individuals as acting in, or on, a physical world, I drew upon the Ingoldian notion of ‘relational thinking’ (Ingold 2000c:244) to describe a seamless and dynamic flow of action and meaning, ordered by shared categories of understanding, which emerge in relation to shared experiences. These categories make sense in relation to each other, or rather, as people experience the difference, such as the passing of ‘day’ into ‘night’. It is through the transgression of boundaries that categories of meaning are simultaneously clarified, and the potential for their reinvention enabled. In Chapter 4, I discussed the connections among shark fishermen themselves, stressing the mutually enabling roles played by men in the shark fishing community. In the present chapter I continue the focus on interpersonal relationships, considering the ways that Bass Strait commercial fisherman, particularly those who fish for shark with gillnets, negotiate group boundaries. Of specific interest is the way that fishermen employ the notion of ‘individuality’ in order to weaken apparently stable social boundaries, and hence facilitate their movement between groups, as productive circumstances dictate. Fishermen engage the ambiguity of social boundaries strategically, enabling both their performance and identity.

In various contexts, shark fishermen proclaim their individuality – "[Fishermen are] so individual and so self reliant! They don't need anyone else” – while in others they assert their commonality – “No matter where one goes in the world … the issues are generally the same”. Both assertions are vital to the role of the shark fisherman. Shark fishermen variously cooperate and compete, sometimes with the same people, in order to manage their long-term productivity, through variously sharing and withholding information about the location of shark. In some instances, perceived social contingency is negated 220 through repeated patterns of exchange that build trust over time, as will be illustrated by reference to explicitly cooperative relationships. However, as Malaby (2002:299) suggests, “it is the innovative application and combination of convention that creates new social forms and reflects true social virtuosity”. Fishermen are, indeed, ‘social virtuosos’, with refined skills for strategically adapting themselves, and others, to complex, and often multi-vocal, social contexts. One social factor does, however, hold fast. Despite shifting, and sometimes conflicting, allegiances, shark fishermen must actively participate in some form of coordinated action in order to operate as shark fishermen, a productive reality outlined in Chapter 4. Claims to ‘individuality’ allow fishermen to manage their social relationships. For example, they may wish to withdraw cooperation from one person or group and establish it with another. ‘Individuality’ is asserted largely as a trope for facilitating the movement in and out of particular social groupings as the context necessitates. Within a community where relationships are ambiguous, fishermen may exploit this ambiguity strategically, citing the publicly privileged notion of ‘individuality’ to legitimise movement across social boundaries.

The present chapter will explore the boundaries and ambiguities outlined above, and the ‘strategic ambiguity’ that facilitates the operation of the Australian shark fishery, in the following order. First, I will introduce the notion of ‘individuality’, both as fishermen describe themselves and as others attribute ‘individualism’ to them. Stereotypes of ‘heroes’ and ‘mateship’ will be used to illustrate this section. Secondly, I will describe the way that fishermen make explicit and ongoing cooperative partnerships, the way they ‘pick a partner’. Of course, fishermen also glean both background and current information from those encountered casually and, with such others, they may variously share or withhold information. These people, in turn, try to 221 gather information without giving too much away themselves. The third section will describe the more subtle games that fishermen play in order to elicit and withhold information, without openly declaring a partnership, nor explicitly refusing to cooperate. This third section returns to the notion that ‘individuality’ is used as a trope.

‘Individuality’ and Australian ‘mateship’

In the Australian context the notion of ‘individuality’ is embedded in the highly salient idea of ‘mateship’ (Carroll 1982:468, Ward 1978:216).1 ‘Mateship’ is epitomised in early Australian images such as the ‘bushman’, who was usually depicted as working-class, stoic, resilient, self-reliant, athletic, somewhat sardonic, at home in ‘the bush’ and uncomfortable in the city, loyal and generous to likeminded others and resentful of authority (Carroll 1982:467, Conway 1985:27). The ‘bushman’ was particularly loath to submit to those perceived to be ‘upper-class’ (such as rich landowners), urban, foreign and those who had once been regarded as equal (among others) (Carroll 1982:468). The ‘bushman’ is exemplified in popular Australian folk legends such as the ‘swagman’ in the popular ‘Banjo’ Paterson poem Waltzing Matilda, and the bushranger, Ned Kelly. Both are depicted as guilty of crimes that were, in the context of their experiences, justifiable.2 Both are commonly depicted as resisting police authority that was unnecessarily severe. Both died violently.

1 In 1999 Prime Minister John Howard sought to have the concept of ‘mateship’ incorporated into the preamble of the Australian constitution. Some groups raised concerns regarding the racist and misogynistic connotations sometimes attributed to the term, and the proposal was scrapped (New constitutional preamble 1999). 2 In his final moments before he was hung Ned Kelly proclaimed “My mind is as easy as the mind of any man in this world as I am prepared to show before God and man” (in Conway 1985:24). 222

Many qualities of the ‘bushman’ informed depictions of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps soldiers of WW1 who, under the ‘negligent’ command of British officers, fought and lost a hopeless battle on the beaches of Turkey. The story of the ANZACs has become one of the most important elements of Australian national identity and, every year, thousands of Australians, young and old, travel to Gallipoli Peninsula in Turkey to witness the site where 11,410 ANZACs died. Carroll (1982:468) notes, “the most admired man was, paradoxically, the self-effacing hero ready to die for his mates; in other words, the individualism was sanctified by its holder’s sacrifice for the good of the group”. Indeed, ‘mateship’ in Australian identity is often a combination of individuality and group loyalty. Illustrative is Ward’s (1978:216) ‘bushman’ who “exhibited … that ‘manly independence’ whose obverse side was a leveling, egalitarian collectivism, and whose sum was comprised in the concept of mateship”.

Ward (1978) and Conway (1985) have suggested a materialist basis for the ambiguous relationship between individuality and collectivism in Australia. Proposing that Australian and American ‘individuality’ are intrinsically different, Ward argued that the fecund frontier land in North America enabled settlers to claim tracts that were small enough to manage whilst being productive enough to sustain an entire family without external assistance. The contrasting situation in Australia was that pioneer allotments were either not fertile or not large enough to support their owners. The productive solution was a division of labour in which elements of work or investment were shared among a group and the resulting produce or remuneration distributed accordingly (Ward 1978:290-6). Building on Ward’s argument, Conway emphasised the colonial legacy of the country as contributing to the ambivalent nationalism that developed in Australia. Following their invasion in 1788, the British established Australia as a penal colony, and those 223 convicts who survived the journey from England had little fondness for the harsh new land in which they arrived. Even early free settlers from the United Kingdom struggled to survive in the hostile terrain. Conway (1985:22) provides a compelling account:

The pervasive authoritarian rigidity of penal times made patrism a forcibly imposed convention instead of the natural cement of society. The early settlers felt that they owed only superficial loyalty to the harsh paternal rule represented by the resident of Government House. What loyalty they might have felt was more to the distant motherland beyond the seas.

Thus if we are to understand the first stirrings of ‘mateship’ in Australian society, we must see it primarily as a necessary fraternity among exiles, not a voluntary league among brothers. Such mateship offered a negative rather than positive bond, one against an unwanted and arbitrary patrism. From its beginnings, the egalitarian spirit in Australian life had the uneasy, over-flaunted character of a grudging relationship based upon the urge for security. This explains why the ‘mate’ who had risen from the ranks to some position of minor authority or excellence was almost invariably reviled as a ‘scab’ or a traitor. He had taken a step away from the cosy leveling of brotherhood toward the more perilous identification with fatherhood and responsibility.

The tendency to direct antipathy toward those who achieve a success markedly above their peers is a trait commonly attributed to the Australian national character: ‘tall poppy syndrome’. Those perceived to be blooming above the rest of the bunch are subsequently ‘cut down’ to size, preserving the appearance of egalitarianism. In contrast, there is a certain fondness reserved for the perpetually downtrodden, often satirized as the ‘little Aussie battler’. This ethic of equity presents a problem for the deckhands described in the previous chapter, who, as part of their initiation into ‘manhood’, are fixed into a subsumed role vis 224 a vis their skippers. This position is tolerable if considered a liminal stage through which novices pass before they emerge as ‘skippers’, ‘professional deckies’ or ‘men’ by some other measure. Once a skipper, however, there is a persistent necessity to present the collective of ‘individuals’ as reasonably equal, again reflecting the peculiar tension in Australia between individuality and group membership. Of the ‘appropriately’ successful Australian male Carroll (1982:468-9 original emphasis) notes:

The kind of individualism based on too much success, wealth or power will take him beyond the valued reciprocities of egalitarian mateship. A man should be reasonably successful in areas which are not too threatening to others and remain an “ordinary bloke”, accessible, easy- going and sociable. Individualism is thus always tied in with a particular kind of social behavior or stylization, couched in terms of some approved, Australianist-related image of masculinity. Competitiveness among peers, deflected from areas which might freeze its outcomes into a rigid hierarchy of wealth and status, tends to manifest itself in the “trade-offs” of accommodation affected by, for example, parity of achievement in different professional fields of similar status, or the sublimations of sports.

An example of how the unusually successful are derided in the southern Australian fishing industry, is one that concerns a particular group, often labelled the ‘Big Boys’. Though membership in this group shifted slightly depending on the relative status of the person describing the group, those said to be ‘Big Boys’ were generally A- class licence holders who owned their own boats and a substantial quota holding. They were regularly accused (though rarely to their face) of being untrustworthy collaborators and as colluding with AFMA to achieve their own ends at the expense of smaller operators. At first glance, much of this derision seemed to stem from jealousy. 225

Indeed, I doubt that any ‘small’ fisherman would be unhappy if he were to magically become a ‘Big Boy’ overnight. However, the resentment directed towards ‘Big Boys’ is, at least partially, a result of the disruption they cause to the pervasive Australian ethic of egalitarianism. On occasions in which all fishermen were able to identify a common adversary – typically AFMA – the distinction between ‘Big Boys’ and others was substantially reduced: all were united, equally, in defiance of authority.

Tensions between manhood, ‘mateship’, individuality and equity in the identity of ‘fishermen’ promotes a situation of continuous paradox. Counteracting efforts to maintain an appearance of equity is the persistent valorisation of individuality and heroism. Before proceeding to discuss the ways in which this tension manifests in actual interactions among fishermen, and how the role of ambiguity facilitates the negotiation of this tension, I will expand upon the ways in which fishermen present themselves, and are represented, as successful individuals. Specifically, I will describe the labelling of fishermen as ‘heroes’.

Heroes

The image of fishermen as self-reliant, sea-faring, heroes is perpetuated both in popular folk imaginings and by fishermen themselves. The production of this heroic image contributes to the representation of fishermen as ‘individuals’. There is something about those who work on the ocean that makes them easy to romanticise, and facilitates their depiction as heroes (Acheson, 226

1981:276, Minnegal et al. 2003:64). Orlove (2002:xi) suggests:

Water [is] the favored element of storytellers, who are drawn to its unmatched capacity to stir the imagination.… By showing the puny and fragile nature of human existence, [the oceans] underscore the magnitude of the human will .… The sea is the realm that challenges and transforms the heroes of antiquity, like Odysseus …. It defines as well modern heroes and antiheroes, like Captain Ahab.

Those who successfully engage with the ocean, who can undergo or overcome the challenges, have the potential to be transformed into heroes.

Like mateship, the notion of heroism is complicated by ambiguity regarding the relationship between the individual and the collective. Heroes are sometimes depicted as a group, such as the ANZACs. There is a tendency, however, to single a person out for veneration, though others often compromise the boundary around this ‘individual’. Sporting heroes, for example, often modestly deny their individual prowess by referring to the facilitating efforts of the entire team. Superheroes, as an extreme example, rarely seek out colleagues, though they often grudgingly accept help from, and responsibility for, a comically inept ‘side-kick’ or alter ego. This other person typically has qualities that complement the core, superhero identity, though they are necessarily a mere component of the superhero package. The individual prowess of superheroes is often enabled through the coordinated activity of those around them, as with the ‘Scooby Gang’ that supports Buffy in the television program Buffy the Vampire Slayer (BTVS) (Wilcox 2005, Wilcox and Lavery 2002). “Assisting Buffy anyway they can, the Scoobies are Buffy's most valuable asset: ‘You're the slayer and we're like... the slayerette's!’” (The Scooby Gang 2005). Capturing the tensions among the individuals within the gang, Burr and Jarvis 227

(2005:270) explain that the Scooby Gang is:

based upon non-hierarchical structures and individual freedom of choice. But in this ‘democratised’ [Giddens, 1999] family, individuals may hurt each other by leaving or by choosing not to meet each others’ needs. Nevertheless, Buffy endorses the alternative family and offers the positive message that individuals can cope with and survive its drawbacks.

Often, heroes are tragic figures, their heroism tainted with death or marring.3 Superheroes are often ‘born’ through some physical or emotional mutation. The experience of a hero is ambiguous, often simultaneously the object of admiration and pity. Consider the following examples of heroes born at sea.

In Hemingway’s (1952) classic novel, The Old Man and the Sea, the poor and aged fisherman, Santiago, ventures further from port than the others in his village, and pits himself in a lone battle with a huge marlin. With the fish at one end of a fishing line and himself at the other, Santiago ponders his predicament:

He had seen many that weighed more than a thousand pounds and he had caught two of that size in his life, but never alone. Now alone, and out of sight of land, he was fast to the biggest fish that he had ever seen and bigger than he had ever heard of (ibid:53).

Santiago eventually captures the fish, and though he loses the majority of the carcass to scavenging sharks, and nearly perishes himself, he earns the esteem of his fellow fishermen through his individual triumph. A similar story is told in the 2000 film of Sebastian Junger’s

3 In season 5 of BTVS (Buffy the Vampire Slayer 2001), Buffy kills herself in order to save the world, though she is resurrected by her friends so that she can continue to fight evil. 228

novel, The Perfect Storm (Junger 1997). Billy Tyne is the quiet but commanding skipper of the Andrea Gail, a commercial fishing boat from Gloucester, Massachusetts. Billy has not been finding enough fish to satisfy either his crew or the owner of his boat. Billy challenges the doubts of his crew, and ignores warnings of an impending storm by striking out for an isolated location in search of a bumper catch. Like Santiago, Billy finds fish in remarkable numbers, rescuing the crew from financial destitution, and he is again venerated. Billy’s heroism is tainted with tragedy, however, as the boat is shipwrecked and all hands are drowned on the return journey.

Fish themselves or, rather, the pursuit and capture of fish, can act as symbols that forcefully dispose the image of fishermen to heroism. Pálsson (1990:119-20) qualifies the Lévi-Straussian notion that fish are less ‘good to think with’ than terrestrial beasts by suggesting that Icelandic fishermen use fish as symbols that are “of a ‘different order’” to animals that are engaged with on land.4 Indeed, images of fish are used in a different way to those of animals that have legs. For

17 Tisha's Presentation at Rockhampton example, domestic animals (Ascot-Neimen Brafords 2004). Note that are often represented in ‘Tisha’ is the cow.

4 Kalland (2002:213) has written extensively of the symbolic uses of the whale, images of which have been appropriated by both anti-whaling and environmental groups such as the WWF, as well as pro-whaling communities who seek to have their roles as responsible hunters of a marine resource recognised as ‘traditional’ and legitimate. Also see Tacon (1989) and Willis (1990). 229

isolation from humans, their inherent qualities seeming to justify their lone depiction. Though prize-winning animals at agricultural shows may be photographed beside a proud owner, the salient aspect of the image remains on the qualities of the animal itself (Figure 17). However, when wild animals, such as foxes, pigs or crocodiles are hunted, they are often depicted with the hunter. Due to the limited accessibility of the environment they inhabit, fish photographed by Australian professional and recreational fishers, usually depict the fish at the moment of capture, at the transition from 'free', 'un-owned', 'hunted', to 'controlled', 'tamed', ‘caught’, and usually beside the proud captor. However, these photographs are somehow not really of the fish at all. Rather, what is being photographed is the success of the person over the fish and perhaps over the “dangerous and alien environment” (Acheson 1981:276) of the ocean itself. Depictions of fish as prey, diametrically position fishermen as hunters: the grander the fish, the more heroic its captor (Figure 18).

The romantic depiction of those who work on the ocean 18 This image is from the web site of Melbourne organisation Proline Fishing is persuasive, even to those Charters. The caption lures potential who work closely with clients with the promise of experiencing triumph over a finned adversary: commercial fishermen.

Imagine the exhilaration of a day Often, this image is shark fishing … with friends or colleagues on Bass Strait. Picture the reinforced through emotion of mastering a Mako Shark, opposition with a negative who like the Marlin, battles furiously in blinding runs and acrobatic leaps stereotype. For example, as it tries to throw the hook and regain its freedom. several years after the

230 railway was built, bypassing Port Albert, an article appeared in a local newspaper, The Foster Mirror (1921:56), in which commercial fishermen were depicted in terms of two opposing perspectives:

Under no other circumstances would Port Albert be practically losing the train, and the bulk of the Yarram people regret that it has to be so; but a number of the meaner-spirited ones are going about in extra-sized hats, their paltry natures being exalted by the pleasure of taking something away from a smaller man (or place). They remark that anything is good enough for the “old fish”. As if any slurs need be thrown on the treasures of the deep or the brave, hard-working men that follow the calling of fishermen.

A marine biologist, while perfectly aware that he was indulging in romanticism, told me how he nonetheless loved the “very idea” of fishermen on their boats, catching fish. As will be discussed further in Chapter 7, there is a sense in which some fisheries ‘experts’ are strongly drawn to the image of the rugged hunter. As one fisherman was told by a fisheries ‘expert’, “You’ve got to understand: they want to be you!” Indeed, one manager appeared to glow with pride as she was described by her colleague as “a fisher”. Though he was referring to her recreational pursuits, there was certainly a sense that the symbolic capital invested in the iconography of the working-class fisherman – the tanned face, strong forearms and work-worn appearance, the stoic resilience, self-reliance and individualism – conveyed some compliment to the young fisheries manager.5

Stereotypes are never merely labels that are applied to people, but are fed by, and feed into, the performance of those they characterise (eg.

5 Elsewhere I have described how stereotypes of rural workers and lifestyles in Australia can mask the productive realities experienced, and how these ideas about rural workers are sometimes reflected in state management policies (King 2001). 231

Dickie 1999). Before experiencing my first fishing trip, I was told by several shark fishermen, with some pride, that I should watch A Perfect Storm, as it realistically depicted the fisherman’s lifestyle. Recall Greg, the shy 20 year old deckhand who found it difficult to talk to women (page 142). Three years after I met him, he had developed an image that was strongly reminiscent of the romanticised sea-faring heroes described above. For a start, he had begun to skipper a boat affording him a status that was immediately more senior, more manly, than that of his age-mates. But more than that, Greg was no longer a timid youth, but had grown into a man, with a solid upper body and a stance that seemed to project his presence upwards and outwards. His scruffiness only added charm to his rugged appearance. Stoic and masterful, carefully overseeing activities on the boat as the crew unloaded, with his hands on his hips and his long, fair hair tossing in the strong wind, he immediately reminded me of the gallant Vikings Figure 19 Movie star George ‘Gorgeous George’ portrayed in stories Clooney as Billy Tyne in The Perfect Storm. Clooney has repeatedly been voted ‘sexiest man from my childhood. alive’, in various entertainment forums. There to meet him at the wharf was a pretty young girl who climbed aboard and threw her arms around him, clearly proud of the image Greg presented to those who observed their reunion. Indeed, other observations lead me to suspect that many young men style themselves according to a stereotype of a ‘ruggedly handsome sea-farer’ in order to channel some of the romantic charm invested in the role (Figure 19). 232

Fishermen participate in their own discursive creation, and part of this process involves regularly and explicitly claiming their self-determinism. As noted above, one shark fisherman glowingly described his colleagues with the words: "(They are) so individual and so self reliant! They don't need anyone else” (original emphasis). A frown fell across his brow as he continued in a low voice. “That's why I hate bureaucracy so much. Trying to put them into a slot!" His words suggest that to deny the individuality of shark fishermen assaults that which is quintessential to their role. Owner-skipper, Jake, seemed to fit the stereotype of my imagination. With his shaggy blonde curls and ruddy complexion, he certainly looked like the rugged, sea-faring hero. He was particularly fond of a local singer’s tune, Lone Sea Hunter. He felt the words captured the essence of what it was to put to sea in search of fish.

Chorus: Lone sea hunter, out at sea Danger surrounds, but he is so free (Tippet and Elliott 2001).

If these words are taken to capture something of the experience of commercial fishing, then individualism (line one), and ambiguity (line two), are combined to create an image of a hunter, perhaps a heroic figure. After years of working for other men Jake seemed to relish this independence.

The sense of independence is not limited to those who own their own business. Both owner-skippers and hired-skippers regularly cite the absence of a task-master as one of the most appealing aspects of their role. Despite responsibilities to the man who owned the boat he skippered, Fat’s occupation afforded him considerable scope for independent, day-to-day, decision-making. As he explained: “I’m my own boss”.

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Even deckies note the independence their occupation affords them, seemingly contrary to the experiences described in the previous chapter, in which deckies were depicted as a literal extension of their skipper. However, with reference to the Newfoundland fishermen Anderson (1972:134) also commented that an ideal relationship among crew members promotes productive action that is coordinated with minimal explicit instruction. There is a sense in which even deckies can operate in apparent isolation. That is, as long as they ‘choose’ to do that which does not provoke censure from the skipper: as long as they do not display ‘bad habits’. Anderson (ibid) notes:

it seems that the ideal skipper-crew relationship is one where crewmen remark of the skipper that “he’s so quiet, you hardly know the man is up there” [in the wheelhouse] or “he hardly says a word”, and orders rarely have to be given.

Bass Strait deckies say something similar. Several described the ideal skipper as one who does not continually give instructions but, as Danny expressed it, allows the crew “to get on with [their] job”.

Fishermen, skippers and deckies alike, often describe themselves, and are described, as hunters (Anderson 1972:131, Minnegal et al. 2003:57). Because shark fishing occurs without the aid of fish-finding technology, shark fishermen, in particular, are hunters: they personify the stereotype of the gallant, sea-faring provider, and they actually search for, pursue, catch and then kill – hunt – their prey. However, if heroes are those who operate without the help of others, then there are no true heroes in the shark fishery, as all periodically draw upon others for information and assistance. Sometimes, these exchanges are explicit and ongoing, sometimes they are conducted more tentatively, and at other times fishermen seek to extract information through 234 participation in games that aim to trick other players out of information without relinquishing any themselves. These various types of cooperative exchanges will be considered below, in the second section of this chapter, before turning, in the final section, to consider the application of ‘individuality’ in facilitating these exchanges.

Pick a partner

Despite claims to individuality, most shark fishermen participate in repeated exchanges of information with one or two other fishermen. That which is transacted is both the ‘background’ and ‘current’ information described in Chapter 4. Both types of information are necessary to the long-term financial success of a shark fishing business, enabling fishermen to firstly ‘find’ and then to ‘stay on’ shoals of fish. This cooperation leads to boats ‘clustering’ around shoals of fish (Barth 1966).

Barth’s description of the “clustering” of Norwegian herring boats bears some resemblance to the cooperative fishing practiced by shark fishermen in Bass Strait. There are also important differences. Barth describes how skippers with reputations for locating concentrated schools of herring with their fish-finding technology will be followed by those in the fleet with no such reputation. The puzzle, for Barth (1966:10), is that while “there can be no doubt that a vessel’s chance of finding herring is greater if it strikes out on its own”, Norwegian herring skippers nonetheless cluster consistently. Barth explains that ‘good’ skippers will be able to secure a ‘good’ crew, and that a skipper who is first to arrive at a school of herring will necessarily do better than those who follow. By following others, however, low repute skippers avoid responsibility should fish not be found, while being reasonably confident of making a sufficient living on the left-overs of a school. 235

Durrenberger and Pálsson (1983:328) have challenged many aspects of Barth’s account, including the apparent rigidity of hierarchies among herring fishers as well as the claim that individual boats are likely to do better fishing on their own. They suggest that the best information about the location of herring is ascertained by fishermen who disperse to locate schools and then share information.6 Bass Strait shark fishermen cluster, but in a way reminiscent of Durrenberger and Pálsson’s model for success. Indeed, any who dared to engage in the explicit tagging described by Barth would suffer considerable negative consequences (see below).

Pooling information about the location – or absence – of fish reduces the costs associated with finding fish in isolation (eg. fuel, time and effort Anderson 1972:127, Durrenberger and Pálsson 1986). However, by the time the nets are lifted the shoal from which the catch originated could be six or more hours swim in any direction. As Joe says, “they’ve got tails: they swim away!” One shot will not capture an entire shoal, and it can be economically viable to determine the direction and speed of the fish, to give chase, and repeatedly fish the shoal for several days. To track, ‘stay on’, the fish can be difficult and the more information a fisherman has the better his chances of success.

The ‘success’, indeed the survival, of a shark fisherman is not limited to the temporal dimension of a single voyage, but is the average of many trips that fluctuate over seasons and years, with changes in crew, gear, and environmental conditions. Good catches compensate for poor catches, and poor catches are tolerated with an understanding that future catches will be better. Sharing

6 Barth’s work has been discussed at length in the context of the ‘skipper effect’ debate, the focus of Chapter 6. 236 information with other skippers can reduce the various costs involved in finding and staying on fish, and help to stabilise fluctuating returns. Stable returns are vital to the survival of a fishing business: bank loans, bills, and crew wages must be paid with regularity, lest banks foreclose, suppliers refuse credit, and deckies quit. Unlike seasonal fisheries, where boats are tied up for part of the year and crew are hired at the beginning of each season (eg. Wright 1992), a break in the flow of knowledge, action, and money among those in the shark fishing community would result in the collapse of an operation. Momentum must be maintained to ride the economic troughs. Sharing information and clustering on shoals contributes to economic security.

Sharing too much information, too many fish, however, can be detrimental to ones’ own success. Hence knowledge is meted out strategically. Throughout a long career, one may well anticipate being in a situation to benefit from cooperation with any number of fishermen, and care is taken not to unduly upset a potential informant. Information is withheld in a subtle game, whereby fishermen are careful to give the impression of cooperation (Anderson 1972:124). As Gordon suggested, with a gleam in his eye, “the trick is to say a whole lot without giving anything away!” The veracity of information exchanged among fishermen is regularly under consideration by fishermen themselves. Therefore, the more trustworthy the informant, the more reliable is the information. In order to reduce the uncertainty with which one collaborates with others, it is necessary, in the words of one skipper, to “pick a partner”.

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Establishing Trust

Partners are chosen on the basis of trust, established through repeated exchanges over time, and the perceived integrity of the person.7 When I asked Hooper how he decided with whom to cooperate he explained simply: “See who tells you bullshit [then] rule them out!” Partners can usually be relied upon to refrain from ‘telling bullshit’. Trustworthiness is not demonstrated through actual cooperation or actual betrayal alone, however. Rather, the way that one generally conducts oneself in the community is often regarded as an indication of the potential reliability of a fisherman. Mack felt that Urry’s infidelity in his marriage rendered him an undesirable partner: “If he’d do that to the people he’s supposed to love, what would he do to me?!” Talking to Jock about partnerships, he recounted an exchange between himself and a man named Oliver. The story was told to demonstrate the untrustworthiness of the latter man. Jock, a renowned skipper, had just started running a boat for one of Oliver’s ‘friends’, Morry. Oliver, who was employing skippers to run his own boat at that time, approached Jock and asked him if he would like to run his boat instead. Jock squinted in mock incredulity and disgust, imitating his response: “Are you Morry’s friend?”

“Yeah…?” was Oliver’s unwitting response. Jock proceeded to tell Oliver, in no uncertain terms, that he would never work for him, as he had just showed his merit by trying to poach a skipper from a so-called ‘friend’. “I won’t work for ya ‘cause I don’t trust ya!” Of course, Jock had no intention of working ‘with’ Oliver either. Determining who is a trustworthy partner, who will reciprocate with information about the

7 Fishing in the vicinity of, and being in regular contact with, another boat can have other advantages, including safety and companionship. The fishers of many species form close bonds and exchange information and assistance, both in Australia and abroad (McGoodwin 1979, Stiles 1972). 238 location of fish, who can be compelled to comply with the arrangement, takes great attention, investigation and patience and can tax a fisherman’s finances, time and reputation. Consider a fisherman who calls another on the radio to inform him about the location of a patch of fish. He is taking a financial risk, despite the potential benefit of being able to track the fish more accurately with another. The other fisherman may simply never return the favour. Worse, he may shoot the nets in the thickest part of the shoal (the rightful position of the man who ‘found’ the fish). Or he may deliberately or inadvertently alert surrounding fishermen to the location of the patch (White 1988:32).

In terms of the temporal costs of picking a partner, a potential collaborator may be appraised over a long period, a sense of his character etched and a pattern of his behaviour generated, over a multitude of small, sometimes incidental encounters. The more numerous these encounters and the longer they have been occurring, the more predictable his actions and the more secure the relationship. However, it may take many years to establish a trusting bond, and even then, trusting bonds may be eroded.

Ronald, for example, an experienced fisherman approaching middle age, began sharing information with Hayden when the younger man began skippering. Though Hayden described Ronald as having ‘taken him under his wing’, suggesting that Ronald had shown considerable generosity by placing trust in the young skipper so quickly, Ronald had known Hayden and his family for decades, and had had ample time to observe Hayden and appraise his character. While Ronald invested time in his relationship with Hayden, he was taking a well-considered risk.

A poor judgment of character, a partnership that is not respected, or 239 one that turns sour, can affect a shark fisherman’s reputation in the community. Likewise, a close, trusting, persistent relationship with one person can preclude an alliance with certain others. Stable relationships are generally openly known in the community. As one skipper noted, “everyone’s got their little group”. A shark fisherman may say, ‘Dick, Harry and I tend to fish together pretty regularly’. In naming these partnerships fishermen anchor them as sites of regular transaction, and they become features of the social landscape. Other fishermen may say, ‘Tom usually fishes with Dick’, or ‘ask Harry about Dick: they work together’. These partnerships act as items of information themselves, and to negotiate the community of shark fishers successfully requires an awareness of the existing social terrain. For example, recall the story from Chapter 3 in which Walter used his knowledge of the relationship between Victor and Allen to extract information from Victor (page 158). Though these bonds may not last forever, and despite a fisherman’s protestations of autonomy, his previous alliances contribute to his characterisation by others in the group.

When I first met Alex, for example, he often depicted himself as a member of a particular faction, and as distinct from the ‘Big Boys’. However, several years earlier, Alex had been on explicitly friendly terms with one of these men. Openly cooperating, the relationship between the two men had been unambiguous. However, various tensions had created a level of mistrust between Alex and his one-time ‘partner’, as well as others he described as Big Boys. Contrasting them to the group he considered his own, Alex mused, “According to them [the Big Boys] we’re pretty loose cannons. I don’t know what they think of me and [my group]”. Nonetheless, many of those fishermen who had known Alex for some time classified him according to different criteria. Some represented Alex, to me, as a core member of the Big Boys. Despite 240 declarations that he was no longer in regular and open collaboration with any Big Boys, Alex could never quite shake the association. His prior relationships, both political and personal, had branded his actions unpredictable to some: consequently, Alex was a high-risk partner. In the words of one fisherman, Alex “runs with the hounds and sleeps with the foxes”.

A man’s reputation, the image that others sketch over many years, can impact upon his future opportunities for collaboration. Just as individual identity is a retrospective amalgamation of one’s various roles and performances (Mead 1936), the image of a shark fisherman is coloured by all the hues of his past. Given the implications of a bad choice, shark fishermen invest a great deal of time and effort into gathering a sense of who to trust and who to regard with congenial scepticism.

Sharing

Partnerships among fishermen vary in levels of explicit cooperation. Some men spoke of regularly and explicitly calling their partners on the radio to inform them of their progress, while others engage in what Anderson (1972:135) has called “prestation reciprocity” where information is repeatedly exchanged in a more understated – and ephemeral – transaction. Given the nature of the environment in which fishermen operate, many of the exchanges that concern current information, and which result in the clustering of boats, occur over the radio (Acheson 1988:50, Anderson 1972, Palmer 1990a,b, Pálsson 1991a:123-7, Stiles 1972).

Partners discuss what they have seen and caught, their predictions for forthcoming trips, as well as information about other fishermen. They 241 tend to coordinate their trips, leaving around the same time and working in a similar region, often communicating on a particular radio frequency organised prior to departure. It often makes sense to make plans before leaving land so that potential interlopers can not eavesdrop on radio transmissions at sea (White 1988:32). Various radio units are fitted to commercial vessels, and though many shark fishermen speak together via mobile phones with extraordinary regularity whilst on land, the inadequate telephone reception in Bass Strait means that transmitter radios are still the primary form of communication at sea. As long as they are in range and on the same frequency, conversations can be surreptitiously heard by anyone. Indeed, some (although not all), fishermen monitor the airwaves by continuously ‘scanning’ the frequencies for dialogue. Given that privacy can not be assured, various tactics are employed to decrease the potential for eavesdroppers to glean information that could direct them to a coveted patch of fish. The ability to avoid giving away secret information is one of the most important aspects of a fishing partnership.

The strategies used in “voice-to-voice” (Anderson 1972:128) exchanges among fishermen have been considered elsewhere (Acheson 1981, 1988, Anderson 1972:128, Barth 1966, Durrenberger and Pálsson 1986:219, Palmer 1990a,b, 1991, Pálsson 1991a:122-4, Stiles 1972:50, White 1988:32) and exhibit remarkable similarities with Bass Strait shark fishermen. Common tactics are underestimating catches, hinting at false intentions, being deliberately vague, and manipulating frequency bands and strengths to isolate communications to particular people.8 However, so is the reluctance to be seen to be ignoring the ‘hails’ of other skippers (eg. Anderson 1972:124). Some of the more derogatory

8 Boats may pull up alongside each other and reduce the strength of their radio signal so that it only reaches the intended boat, although this may be costly in terms of fuel and time. 242 gossip exchanged among fishermen referred to men who did not, would not, or could not be relied upon, to answer their radio, even in an emergency. More often than not information is entwined within seemingly innocuous exchanges among partners.

Sometimes explicit codes are employed to convey information. “A few” fish, “a bit”, “some” or “not much” fish may refer to a specific amount. Standing around on the wharf one afternoon, an older shark fisherman quizzed his hired skipper as to how many fish constituted ‘a few’. Upon receiving his answer, Daffy seemed surprised and a little chuffed, noting: “a few fish is still the same amount it was when I was fishing”. Though Daffy’s comment suggests that there may be some stability in precise codes used in the same location over extended periods, I cannot be sure as I did not have access to such refined information, nor was I inclined to pursue it. What is certain is that communicating fishermen must share prior knowledge of the codes employed in order for them to be effective (White 1988:32). Another tactic, when enquiring after a partner’s location, is to ask, “how far off the island are you?” In order to determine a location from the response one must know which island is being referred to. Describing a similar tactic, I was told of a cray fisherman from Tasmania who would alert other fishermen to the location of his pots (to avoid gear conflict), with suitably vague comments such as: “You know where you were last trip? Well, I’m four mile sou’west of there”.

At other times, recognisable patterns of inflection, emphasis or idiosyncratic speech signal a multiplicity of messages in a communication. Shark fishermen attend to tonal fluctuations of the voice, as well as pauses, timing and details of content in order to glean the unspoken information contained within conversations, and in order to keep their own secret knowledge concealed. Sometimes these subtle 243 messages are so well disguised that they are not recognised by the intended party, as in the following story recounted one night in the Port Albert Hotel.

During the second week of a low yielding trip, John received a hail from his partner, Bottle, who had been doing similarly poorly. After lamenting the lack of fish, Bottle pronounced that he was going back to port. John, who was somewhat further south, said he was similarly discouraged and would head for port also. Bottle sighed, noting that, on top of everything else, they had run out of sugar for their coffee, and that the deckies were complaining. “How far away are you? Can I swap you some sugar for some coffee on your way past?” John replied that this was fine and that he would be there presently. Pulling up alongside Bottle’s boat, John sent his deckie to throw a bag of sugar across. Upon catching the incoming missile Bottle’s startled and tired deckie promptly threw it back. An incensed and perplexed John marched out onto the deck to hear Bottle screaming, “What are you doing? Get your nets in the water!” John had evidently failed to see the intended message in his partner’s hail, and had not seen the fish piled high on the deck as he approached with the bag of sugar.

While shark fishermen gain valuable information from their partners, a wealth of additional knowledge can be extracted from other fishermen with whom explicit cooperation is not established. Whatever the tone of the relationship shark fishermen negotiate with each other – characterised by giving or withholding – it is important to stress that these relationships are formed among people who know each other. Those with whom an ongoing relationship is unlikely, with whom repeated encounters are unlikely – strangers, interlopers – are unlikely to be engaged cooperatively. However, shark fishermen tend to know the majority of boats and skippers encountered on the water, either 244 through personal experience or reputation. It is during encounters with these men, either on land or at sea, that additional information is gleaned.

Competitors as ‘rugged individuals’

Conversations among fishermen in which information is withheld has been referred to as “deceptive banter” (Acheson 1988:104) and “the art of lying” (Anderson 1972:121). However, to describe exchanges in which fishermen are not entirely open with each other as ‘deceptive’ underemphasises the cooperation implied through participation in games that progress along mutually respected guidelines (Palmer 1993b). In the film Dogfight (1991) Berzin (Richard Panebianco) attempts to explain the importance of ‘bullshit’ to his friend Birdlace (River Phoenix):

Birdlace – You know what Berzin? I think you and me are full of shit.

Berzin – Let me tell you something about bullshit. It’s everywhere. You hit me with a little. I buy it. I hit you with a little. You buy it.

Birdlace – Right.

Berzin – Doesn’t make us idiots. That’s what makes us buddies!

Like Berzin’s qualification on the function of ‘bullshit’, I approve of White’s (1988:32) reference to the affected ‘small talk’ employed by fishermen as “open secrecy”. I also favour McGoodwin’s (1990:137) expression when he calls the tension between the pros and cons of cooperation and competition, “the skipper’s paradox”.

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The style of ‘individuality’ typically expressed by southern Australian fishermen, one in which a person claims and demonstrates a particular kind of autonomy within an integrally connected social and productive network, resembles the ‘rugged individuality’ described by Jentoft and Davis (1993:365). They contrast the individuality expressed by ‘rugged individuals’ with that associated with those termed ‘utilitarian individuals’, who more closely resemble the Homo economicus model of a self-interested, rational, economic maximiser:

Independent-mindedness and self-reliance would mean quite different things to rugged and utilitarian individualist small boat fishers. In the former, one would expect these qualities to be rooted and understood in relation to implicit, socio-personal associations among self, family, and friends, and the socio-material dynamics and meaning of the labor process. In the latter, one would expect these qualities to be rooted and understood in relation to explicit, instrumental associations between economic goals and the social-material resources necessary to achieve them (ibid).

Though the composition of the Bass Strait fishing community is significantly different to the Nova Scotian example used by Jentoft and Davis, the notion of utilitarian and rugged individualism is useful for considering different ways in which individuality might be attempted in the Bass Strait community. Utilitarian individualism privileges the direct and selfish economic advancement of the nuclear family. Rugged individualism, on the other hand, is used as a trope for facilitating strategic participation in cooperative networks that subsequently enable the financial success of nuclear families. Though both rugged and utilitarian individualism appear to facilitate economic security, utilitarian individualism among Bass Strait fishermen may disable the cooperation necessary for that very success (see Bourdieu 2000 for an Algerian comparison). Interlopers who attempted to benefit from the 246 fish-finding skills of established fishermen, to reap information without investing in the community, would achieve limited success (see below). Rugged individualism, however, enables fishermen to regulate their cooperation with others, to variously share and withhold information, using the commonly recognised justification that each man has a right to advance his own lot.9

A competitive game

Under the guise of seemingly innocent chatting, casual to-and-fro, the men who work the waters of Bass Strait in search of shark play an unremitting game with each other during which current information is shared, meted out and withheld. These long conversations occur over extended periods of time, and multiple encounters, with no two exchanges being exactly the same. The object of the game is to gather as much information as possible from other (usually) fishermen, while generally withholding as much as possible, and all the while ensuring

9 While the distinction between rugged and utilitarian individualism made by Jentoft and Davis (1993) is an extremely useful one, two important differences between the Nova Scotian and Australian examples must be noted. Jentoft and Davis (ibid:362) engaged a range of skippers whom they were able to classify, almost equally, as either ‘high rugged / low utilitarian ’ or ‘high utilitarian / low rugged’. This distinction tended to reflect a difference between, respectively, older, long-career skippers and younger skippers who had experienced most of their careers in the context of significant government intervention in management. In the Australian context, fishermen of all ages comment negatively on the intervention of the nation-state, and those who might skilfully negotiate the bureaucratic terrain of management (see Chapters 7 and 8) cannot be predicted according to age. Further, the cost of making a financial investment in any Australian Commonwealth fishery is so high that it is virtually out of reach to young fishermen who have no family (financial) assistance. Consequently, there are very few younger fishermen in a comparable position to the older. Secondly, according to Jentoft and Davis (ibid:365), the Nova Scotian fishermen they encountered presented themselves as ‘individuals’ in order, at least partly, to reclaim some of the dignity eroded as a result of their traditionally low material and class status. To suggest the same in the Australian case would be to ignore the complexity of the productive requirements of, particularly, shark fishermen, as well as the peculiarly Australian expression of individuality and class in which egalitarianism has significant importance (see discussion of ‘mateship’, above). 247 that future opportunities to source information are not threatened by poor relations that result from blatant non-cooperation. It is a game of skill and tactics, a verbal dance as complex as any physical task performed on the deck. As one skipper put it: “A lot of work is done sitting on a fish box, talking, smoking a fag. A lot of work”.

Competition in fishing is somewhat like a game of chess: though the object is to outwit your opponent, both players must adhere to the rules. Like chess, the game is often played between friends. On one particular trip, Brocky and Joe annotated their own competitive efforts to ‘out-fish’ each other, explicitly using chess terminology. After each of a series of maneuvers at sea, Brocky pronounced over the radio, “check”. The game culminated, however, when Joe made a decisive counter-maneuver as Brocky and his crew slept. Joe marked his victory with an audacious statement, steaming up to Brocky’s nets and tying a plastic bag to his flag with a note inside. The note read, “check- mate”. Without an overlapping recognition of what is an acceptable level of trickery, at what point truth should be offered, of what is unacceptable, of how to skillfully negotiate the social networks and mores of the fishing community, such deceptive games could not be sustained. To participate in a competition implies adherence to a set of collectively appreciated rules: in a community, cooperation is implicit in competition (Jentoft and Davis 1993:359).

Skilled players are adept at reading verbal and bodily cues that can suggest when someone is being earnest, when they are not being entirely truthful, when they are offering hints only, talking in code, or being deceitful. They are similarly proficient at presenting their own cues strategically (Goffman 1959). The game is played, at some level, at all times. Consequently, some shark fishermen, indeed, south-east Australian fishermen generally, are hypersensitive to speech 248 characteristics and body language. This grew frustrating for me at times. Every tiny twitch, glance, pause, bead of sweat, laugh, grin, grimace or blink seemed to have a meaning that informed the topic of conversation. Even though a fisherman may accept that someone’s behaviour related to the mood they were in, the success of their football team on the weekend, a family issue, or the weather, their contextualised behaviour could be interpreted to imply something about that person’s character, to better predict any future behaviour that might relate more directly to the capture of shark. Fishermen are continually watchful for hints that might reveal a concealed motive on the part of another, while being careful not to give the impression that they themselves have anything to hide.

Occasionally men choose not to answer their radio, and may claim that they did not hear the hail, that the radio was temporarily broken, or that it had accidentally been turned off. Such deception may effectively exclude some people from clustering on a shoal. However, any advantage may be countered by a loss of trust among other potential collaborators, unless one can convince others of a feasible explanation. While refusing to cooperate may be profitable in the short term, gaining a reputation for this behaviour could affect one’s access to information and assistance in the future. Rather, a form of “open secrecy” (White 1988:32), in which fishermen engage in seemingly casual ‘small talk’, can be used to elicit or withhold information without giving the impression of non-cooperation (also see Palmer 1993b).

Recall Steven, owner-skipper of the Ruby Mae, who explicitly requested information when he encountered another boat returning from sea as he was embarking on a fishing trip (page 215). Though a self-professed ‘loner’, Steven was skilled in the ‘open secrecy’ required of him in order that he be permitted to ‘cooperate’ when it was strategically 249 advantageous. During a fishing trip on the Ruby Mae, Steven received several radio calls from Richard, a fisherman with social allegiances in a number of ports, including Steven’s. Richard, with affected nonchalance, gave the impression that he had nothing else to do but chat. I had the impression that Richard used the term “mate” somewhat more often than he tended to on land. Though Steven and Richard were friends, they were not partners. Over the course of several meandering chats, however, Richard made quite specific requests regarding the location of the Ruby Mae as well as of other boats in the fleet. These requests were accompanied by prestations of current information for Steven. At one point, however, Steven seemed to detect an anomaly in Richard’s account of what he had heard, and asked quietly, “I thought you said Travis was out off Prime Seal when we were talking before…?” Without hesitation, Richard casually drawled a reply, pleading his ignorance: “Oh, I wouldn’t have a clue mate”. Though Steven did not challenge Richard further, he appeared unconvinced by his response, rolling his eyes slightly to the deckies as he continued the banter. Though clearly sceptical of the information being transacted, Steven continued to engage.

Not limited to the boat radio or even a fish box on the wharf, this dialogue occurs in pubs, in homes, on the phone, at meetings, at restaurants, family gatherings, at barbeques and in buffet queues. So detailed is the knowledge of fishing regions possessed by some fishermen, that a seemingly worthless hint from a loose-lipped deckhand or a few words from a drunk skipper, can reveal someone’s “secret knowledge”. Many skippers therefore refrain from telling their deckies any valuable information. Walking into any pub in any fishing port along the coast of south east Australia one will hear the hum of professional fishermen hard at work.

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In order to engage with the community of fishermen, one must be somewhat proficient in these social skills. One female net-maker complained that some fishermen would try to trick her into revealing her clients, or her designs, supposing that her gender rendered her unskilled in withholding important information. Being an active fisherman, and of a large and multi-generation fishing family, she negotiated requests for sensitive information deftly. I still grin to think of her in a cocktail dress at a community function, gracefully deflecting a business related inquiry, while casually chatting to a thwarted fisherman at the bar.

I, too, became increasingly aware of what to look for, of how to read the signs, and how to regulate my own behaviour, words and accent to convey – or mask – my intended meaning. Simultaneously, I became aware of those who were obviously oblivious to these signs, to the cues they were emitting. They gave forth a cacophony of ‘mixed messages’, and failed to respond appropriately to the intended meaning of those around them. Ewan professed to have figured out the physical ‘signs’ that one AFMA manager exhibited when he was ‘hiding something’: “[He] blushes and swallows and raises his eyebrows. I could tell you the whole sequence”.

After my first fishing trip I was approached with a number of friendly enquiries: had I enjoyed the experience, was I surprised by anything that emerged in the net, did I see any islands and did I know their names? Wide-eyed and bubbling with enthusiasm, I replied that I had had a wonderful time ‘thank-you-very-much’, that we had gone to sea and caught 3½ tonne of fish (a well known fact once the fish were landed) and that it was all very exciting. One fisherman chuckled, “Gee Tan, I thought you’d be a softer touch than that”. His backhanded compliment represented one of the few times I saw the game made 251 explicit. Usually, these conversations are played out without direct reference to the information trawling that is occurring simultaneously. Fishermen usually resist entering into explicit short term cooperative arrangements, with those other than their partners, for a number of reasons. One is that a great deal of pleasure is gained from these games, and many fishermen take considerable pride in their performance (Anderson 1972:121). The majority of fishermen I have met have a fabulously waggish sense of humour: their speech is characterised by rapid and sharp-witted verbal sparring that draws heavily on metonymic references to local fishing conditions, personalities and collective stories that span generations. Those who perform skilfully are afforded considerable prestige within the local community. One must be deeply invested in the community, steeped in historical knowledge and current conditions, in order to participate in these exchanges, and in order to detect any anomalies entwined in an account. Charlie verily shook with laughter as he noted that one of the best tricksters in Bass Strait was Daffy, who liked to tell the truth as if it were a lie. Indeed, many of the stories told by fishermen describe the elaborate trickery that occurs among men. Though these tales act to illustrate the social terrain among people in the community, and perhaps the untrustworthiness or cleverness of a particular person, a lot of the appeal of these stories lies in the skill of the performance itself. However, more relevant to the current discussion, is how participating in precisely executed trickery, deceit, and strategic cooperation can facilitate the appearance of individuality while simultaneously maintaining cooperation.

Cooperation versus ‘poaching’

Unlike the herring fishermen described by Barth (1966), it is poorly regarded for a shark fisherman to follow another skipper and attempt to 252 fish the same shoal. The community valorises the ability to find fish on one’s own and ‘poaching’ behaviour is discouraged. In the past, an interloper may have been greeted with violence. While such extremes are now rare, ‘poaching’ is sometimes still actively discouraged. It is looked upon as base, gross, shameful and indicative of one who cannot compete as an individual or as a man. One of the more vicious pieces of gossip I heard about anyone was that their success in fishing was due largely to the kindness of a kin member, without whom fish would never have been located.

James, a wily fisherman, told me how he had foiled a couple of would- be free-riders by circumnavigating Tasmania without putting his nets in the water. He simply steamed from one random position to the next, dropping the anchor for the night, hoisting it in the morning and steaming off with the interlopers in pursuit. Implicit in his story was that he could spare the fuel while the interlopers were desperate to find fish, so the journey had cost them relatively more than it had cost him. More importantly, his story illustrated the inappropriateness of such blatant tagging behaviour, and the requirement for fishermen to participate in the social dialogue, one that venerates individualism, before being allowed to cooperate. I asked James what it would take for him to consider helping a newcomer. As was mentioned in relation to the identification of deckies who were ‘skipper material’, James replied that he would help a newcomer “once they passed the attitude test”.

Chris, a friend of mine from Melbourne, who was something of a keen angler, described his experience of failing ‘the attitude test’. He told of his repeated, and comically inept, attempts to learn the fishing spots of Jack Pompei, one of the legendary Pompei boat builders of Victoria. Jack had built Chris’ father a recreational boat – a miniature trawler – and helped maintain the boat at its berth on the Western Victorian 253 coast. On recreational fishing trips, Chris would follow Jack into coastal waters and tag him all day, watching Jack circle inexplicably, pausing, as if to drop his hand lines, and then taking off again in an attempt to shake his uninitiated pursuer. One day Jack finally called him to come closer and Chris thought his fortune had changed. Jack waited until they were within shouting distance and screamed: “I’m never going to tell you Chris, so GET LOST!!”

When I emailed Chris to tell him that his story had informed my research, I noted that I had described him as “the 'city slicker' who 'performed badly', I'm afraid”. He responded with feigned indignation, though further disclosing the extent to which he had failed to negotiate the social terrain with which Jack was familiar, and the implications of his clumsiness.

Performed badly?? That's because that bastard would never show me any of his fishing spots! Guarded them like an old dog he did. And anyone who doesn't live within 5 mins drive of Mordy creek is a city slicker to Jack.

In future though, I do think you need to mention the fact that Chris, over two summers of following Jack around, managed to catch two sneakers, one banjo shark, one anchor, large amounts of seaweed, and to hook himself on at least half a dozen occasions.

While unworthy to receive certain information, Chris did understand the games that needed to be played in order to do certain other business. Getting mechanical work done on the boat was never a matter of booking a time for Jack to do the repairs. It required that the younger man corner the elder with a bottle of Jack Daniels whisky, listen to his stories, endure his teasing, and share in the drinking. Before anything was done about the boat, he had to pass ‘the attitude 254 test’. As an uninitiated member of the community, shaping Chris’ ‘attitude’ involved treating him somewhat like a deckhand, forcing him to invest in a particular social relationship, rendered the more solid through the exchange of liquid.

For established commercial fishermen, however, this ‘attitude’ must be manifest in carefully executed displays of cooperation and, importantly, individualism. The following quote illustrates the importance placed on maintaining the appearance of self-reliance, even as one draws on the assistance of others. The quote is from Joe, the ex-shark fisherman described in Chapter 4 (page 187), who had switched to fishing in Corner Inlet in the late 1990s. Initially unfamiliar with seasonal changes that signalled the need to switch target species, Joe periodically made poor catches, until Neville gave him some advice. Grinning, Joe explained:

I suffered for a month until Neville threw me a biscuit. [Neville said], “Joe, you know, really you should be starting to look at a bit of this”. Neville never gives you too big a biscuit, he doesn’t want to actually feed you, he just wants to stop you from starving, so you can find your own food, you know. And I'm much more appreciative of that than I would be of being given a three course meal every day. Because it makes you learn, you know.

To be ‘given a three course meal every day’ would have caused Joe to lose face and would have implied an inability to provide for himself and his family on his own merits. Rather, it was precisely Joe’s ‘attitude’, which emphasised the primacy of being able to catch fish on his own, that gave him access to cooperative assistance. Joe’s refined skills of cooperation manifested in a show of individualism, which, in turn, facilitated his access to shared knowledge.

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Shark fishermen employ their individuality to variously claim and deny social bonds, to render these boundaries ambiguous. Heath and Ian were great friends, but, according to Travis, they incorporated elaborate trickery into their friendship. Travis chuckled with glee, “I’ve sat here and listened to Heath and Ian lie to each other all night! And they both knew they were lying to each other!” The boundary between individuals and groups can change according to the context of the exchange. A ‘friend’ in one situation can be an ‘enemy’ in another. Let us listen in on an exchange between Heath and Ian, who, in the context of the following story, operate as collaborators rather than competitors. Note how Heath and Ian, and the other fishermen involved, employ the trope of ‘individuality’, explicitly, to equivocate a particularly rigid social barrier.

The Mega-Mac

In Chapter 3, I recounted a story about entering a restaurant in Canberra in the company of some shark fishermen and encountering a group of trawl fishermen. In this story, the boundary between ‘us’ (the shark fishery affiliated people) and ‘them’ (those aligned with the trawl fishery) was palpable and perhaps due, in part, to the circumstances of the upcoming meeting in which all were involved. Let me say something about this context.

The following morning was to be the first joint Management Advisory Committee (MAC) meeting between those in the shark, trawl, non-trawl and Great Australian Bight (GAB) fisheries. MACs are part of the Australian Fisheries Management Authority (AFMA) structure, with MACs for the various fisheries providing information to the AFMA board to assist them in decision-making. Each MAC is comprised of some AFMA staff, plus a number of other stakeholders including 256 environmental representatives, scientists and commercial fishermen, all appointed by AFMA. Individual MACs had been held earlier in the week, to discuss both particular issues, and those pertaining to the impending mega-MAC.

The ‘mega-MAC’ was being held as part of the process of bringing all four fisheries under one administrative banner, the South East Shark and Scalefish (SESS) Fishery (Figures 3-4). The amalgamation itself was occurring in order to facilitate the environmental assessment that all fisheries were required to perform under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (s147-54). As part of this ‘strategic assessment’ process various environmental issues had to be officially addressed and documented by the environment department of AFMA and presented to the Commonwealth environmental agency, Environment Australia (EA), and the minister responsible for fisheries,10 for approval. The five year time-frame for implementation, as outlined under the Act, was supplemented with hurdle deadlines in order to assess the progress of the strategic assessment process. At the time of the mega-MAC, AFMA was approaching a deadline. They had to demonstrate, within a few weeks, that strategic assessment was progressing towards completion. As part of a preliminary assessment, EA had presented AFMA with 28 issue criteria to be addressed. Some applied to all fisheries while some were relevant to particular modes of fishing only. Each individual fishery was compelled to present their case to EA in a pro formâ document, an enormous bureaucratic task. Partly in order to avoid doubling up on shared issues, AFMA proposed to amalgamate the four fisheries. Though the bureaucratic steps towards the amalgamation were already well underway by the time the mega-MAC was held, and no plan was in place to reverse this process,

10 At that time the minister responsible for fisheries was Senator Ian McDonald, a lawyer. 257 the mega-MAC was billed as an opportunity for respective MACs to discuss the possibility of an amalgamation.

One of the primary concerns for commercial fishermen, which emerged in both private conversations and in the shark and non-trawl MACs that occurred prior to the mega-MAC, was that under a shared banner all perceived environmental positives, and problems, had the potential to be depicted as common across the four fisheries. Mindful of the impact of public perception (King 2005), many fishermen were concerned that the amalgamation would lock them into a relationship with potentially deleterious consequences. There was a sense of anxiety about these consequences, as many details about the amalgamation were not fully understood by those present, neither the commercial fishermen nor the AFMA staff. This is not a reflection on the ability of these people to fully comprehend the issues. Rather, the general uncertainty was a result of the administrative complexity of the task, and the unprecedented – unpredictable – legal ramifications.

Over the days during which the individual MAC meetings were taking place, there was considerable opportunity for informal discussion regarding the mega-MAC, particularly considering that most of those involved were staying at the same hotel. Indeed, perceiving the propensity for informal discussion to sway the outcome of proceedings – more than the official MAC debates – several commercial fishermen arrived in Canberra a day or two early, meeting with those they deemed to be in a position to manipulate events, and some left before the mega- MAC even took place. Among commercial fishermen generally, expressions of hesitation towards the amalgamation dominated the conversations I witnessed, and many expressed an outright lack of support for the process. On several occasions, men from different fisheries approached each other and attempted to establish some 258 constructive dialogue on the issues, to glean some sense of where each perceived the relevant boundaries to be, and what they were likely to suggest at the mega-MAC, so as to reduce the stifling uncertainty that pervaded the tone of interactions. Within this environment of tension and uncertainty, allegiances were at once strengthened and called into question, social boundaries were ambiguous and opportunities were presented for the reinvention of social relationships, for the movement across social boundaries.11

After leaving the restaurant in Manuka and returning to the hotel, we – that is, those associated with the shark fishery – found that we had the hotel lobby and bar to ourselves. This area had constituted a common meeting place over the past two or more days, where people from various fisheries could be encountered and engaged in discussion. Until this time I had interacted little with dedicated non-trawl fishermen, less with trawl fishermen, and had had virtually nothing to do with the men from the Great Australian Bight (GAB) Fishery. Given the highly salient nature of the official fisheries divisions at this time, and particularly after the interactions at the restaurant that evening, I was keen to talk to the non-trawl fishermen I had encountered, who shared many common issues with shark fishermen,12 and who seemed very friendly. But for the time being I enjoyed the company of the shark group, chatting lightly on several non-fishing related topics.

Presently, several non-trawl boys arrived and, with polite greetings exchanged, took a place at the other end of the room where the

11 Various additional factors contributed to the air of uncertainty in Canberra that week, not least of all the unresolved Fischer case (see Chapter 1). 12 At the time of the mega-MAC official plans were underway to partially amalgamate complete administration of the Southern Shark Fishery and the South East Non-Trawl Fishery, not simply the MACs. Indeed, the fisheries are currently administered under the one banner: the Gillnet, Hook and Trap (GHAT) fishery. 259 television was showing the French soccer team winning the 2003 Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) World Cup. Eventually Ian, an easy-going non-trawl fisherman approached us and, with some vague comments about the soccer, attempted to initiate a conversation. Though I could not say what it was that his presence brought, the mood did become a little tense, and though the exchange was certainly amicable he did not stay for long. Some time later, perhaps after a drink or two, he returned and, this time, he stayed a little longer. Again, the conversation was light and somewhat strained. This time, however, as he stood to leave, I affected all the nonchalance I could, palpably aware of my perceived association with the shark fishery, and mentioned to him that I would probably wander over and watch the soccer with them later. Thankfully, he did not seem to mind.

Indeed, the non-trawl fishermen were very friendly, welcoming and characteristically funny. I found myself drinking into the early hours of the morning with Ian, his friend Heath, and a couple of others. The atmosphere was quite relaxed by this stage and conversation shifted between mega-MAC related issues as well as soccer, wine-growing and funny stories about the drunken antics of various fishermen.

Late in the night, another non-trawl fisherman arrived in the lobby bar. Garth, however, had interests in other fisheries and so his allegiances were too ambiguous to reassure the men on the couch of his loyalty to the particular interests of non-trawlers. By arriving alone he had roused the suspicions or, at least, the curiosity of the other men. The non-trawl fishermen seemed to choose their words cautiously when talking about the other industry factions encountered during the day. It became apparent to me that Garth had not dined with the other non- trawlers. Heath prodded in a cautious but friendly jibe, “Have you been out with the enemy?” 260

“Don’t make me sick!” spat Garth, in mock disgust. They proceeded to talk briefly about the trawl fishery, but only in general terms, before Garth retired. The looks exchanged among the fishermen when Garth had left suggested that the effectiveness of his explicit efforts to convey cooperation had been limited.

Soon afterwards, several rather intoxicated trawl boys arrived in the lobby and immediately sat down with us. Struck by the volatility of the situation I rapidly regained some sense of sobriety. Self-consciously polite banter and wary looks were exchanged among the men, along with the briefest of introductions. Rather than describing themselves with phrases such as, ‘I’m on SENTMAC’, or, ‘I run a trawler out of Port Lincoln’, only first names were exchanged. Though they did not necessarily know each other personally, they knew each other’s group affiliation and proceeded on that basis. For the purpose of the forthcoming discussion in the lobby, only the categories of ‘trawl’ and ‘non-trawl’ were salient.

Malcolm drew a deep breath and raised the topic of the mega-MAC, suggesting that the commercial fishermen involved needed a plan, or, at least, a common objective. He felt that going into the mega-MAC with a united front, and saying that they did not support the amalgamation, offered the best outcome for all concerned. Throwing his arms open wide, both focusing attention on those present and simultaneously symbolising the ‘openness’ of what he was about to say, Malcolm explained:

If it was just us, sitting around, I’d say, ‘fuck yous’! But when we’re in a room with them over there [jerking his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the nearby AFMA offices] we’ve got to put our differences aside and get together so we can stick it to AFMA!

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While Ian and Heath nodded in agreement, sombrely, congenially, none of the men proposed a practical plan. Though deliberately polite, the tone of the exchange remained tense, with an absence of the joking and teasing that so often characterises an exchange between commercial fishermen. Malcolm articulated the difficulty of overlooking the tensions between non-trawlers and trawlers by noting, gently, forgivingly: “I know you don’t like us”. Both Heath and Ian interjected at this point and diplomatically smoothed Malcolm’s claim away, explaining that they had never “had it in for trawl”. Without specifying particular incidents, Heath and Ian tactfully suggested that past antagonisms between the fisheries had occurred in the process of “protecting our own businesses”, which, they added gently, was “right”. All the men quickly agreed that it was, indeed, right and proper to protect one’s own business. Heath and Ian continued, stressing this point a number of times, as a way of rationalising both the behaviour of non-trawlers and trawlers alike. The conversation ended with a tentative sense of commonality, the barrier between the trawlers and non-trawlers temporarily lowered through the strategic assertion of a common ‘individuality’. In a similar way, though not often as explicitly, commercial fishermen profess their ‘individuality’ in order to justify uncooperative behaviour.

Conclusion

In this and the previous chapters I have suggested that Bass Strait fishermen, particularly shark fishermen, are implicitly interdependent. I have described how they incidentally draw on each other for current information and ‘pick a partner’ to ‘work with’. A form of rugged individualism is certainly reflected in their desire to direct the performance of their own productive activities, and in the heroic individualism located in romantic images of fishermen. However, few 262 conform to the stereotype of the ‘high utilitarian/low rugged’ individualist described by Jentoft and Davis (1993). Rather, they perform as a complex and dynamic collective, using the trope of individualism to facilitate their strategic movement among social groups. There is a sense in which utilitarian individualism conflicts with the performance of being a fisherman and with being a member of a group of ‘individuals’. In later Chapters, I will analyse the tension between the performance of cooperation and the trope of individuality, both as it is experienced by fishermen and as it is manifest in the abstract. The following chapter, however, continues to focus on the performance of fishermen of their particular, rugged, individualism. In particular, I will describe ways in which fishermen mask their own interdependence through reference to ‘luck’. Exploration of the ethnographic material will be supplemented by an analysis of an academic debate that has been occupying maritime anthropologists since the 1960s: the ‘skipper effect’. Through reference to the ‘skipper effect’ literature, which relates to the supposed inherent individual skill of skippers, Chapter 6 advances the thesis that fishing skill is located in collective performance. 263

Luck, Skill and the ‘Skipper Effect’: Locating the source of skipper success

I keep them with precision. Only I have no luck any more. But who knows? Maybe today. Every day is a new day. It is better to be lucky. But I would rather be exact. Then when luck comes you are ready.

– Ernest Hemmingway, The Old Man and the Sea (1952:25).

The horse has to want to race, it has to have the will to win – and I usually know when it does. The more you work with horses, the more you understand them – therefore you make your own luck, I suppose.

– Bart Cummings, racehorse trainer, Champions Exhibition, Federation Square, Melbourne, 2006

Billy used to tell Mick that the latter had a ‘gift’ for catching shark. If Billy and Mick had been Icelandic, Billy might have suggested that Mick had a certain ‘fishiness’, an ability to catch fish facilitated not by mere practice, perseverance or the equipment at his disposal, but by something ‘in the blood’ (Durrenberger and Pálsson 1985, Pálsson and Durrenberger 1992). Mick himself rarely referred to the source of his 265 skill in such terms, however, usually noting that he had worked consistently hard during his early career to become a skilled practitioner (cf. Poggie 1979). On occasion, he modestly denied that he had a gift, explaining that he had been raised in a fishing town, in a fishing family, watching, emulating and practising the actions of his predecessors and peers, so that the skills he plied reflecting his embodied knowledge of everything contained in the world he knew. His skill was not a ‘gift’, it was, he said, “second nature”. Alternatively, and tentatively, Mick referred to various items in his sole possession that bestowed ‘good luck’ upon him, in the form of safe and fruitful voyages, such as his ‘lucky cap’ and ‘lucky socks’.

There is something common to Mick’s two explanations of his success. According to the first, Mick’s individual success could not be isolated from his long-term and ongoing investment in a collective of fishermen. Similarly, when Mick implied that a talisman contributed to his fishing prowess, he attributed the source of his ability to something beyond himself and yet, at the same time, something to which he must remain connected. Nonetheless, Mick, like other shark fishermen, often behaved as a rugged individualist (Jentoft and Davis 1993), strategically denying his reliance on other people and things. For Mick, as for others, the boundary between the personal and the collective is blurred, malleable and ambiguous, tempered by various tropes such as ‘individuality’ and ‘luck’.

In the previous three chapters I discussed the ambiguous boundaries that order the worlds of fishermen. In Chapter 3, I considered the relationship between fishermen and the natural environment, suggesting that the meanings held by fishermen both result from and inform their activities in the world. In Chapters 4 and 5, I focussed on the bonds among fishermen themselves, arguing that the activities of 266 fishermen like Mick are literally enabled through investment in a collective that acknowledges individuality as a defining trait of fishermen. In the last chapter I argued that ‘individuality’ is often used as a trope by fishermen to facilitate their self-extraction from particular information-sharing relationships, enabling them to form alternative bonds, as the productive situation demands. The present chapter continues to explore the ambiguous boundary between the individual and the group, and the strategies used to facilitate transgression of this boundary. In particular, I consider how appeal to various ‘mystical forces’ and particularly the notion of ‘luck’, act to alleviate the disruption caused when the notion of collectively enabled skill threatens the image of the self-reliant individualist.

The chapter begins by describing ‘mystical forces’ and ‘luck’ mentioned by those in the fishing community of Bass Strait. As is the case with the gankas described in Chapter 3, the majority of fishermen would doubtless publicly dismiss such notions as superstitions or old wives’ tales. However, as with gankas, I am interested in how taboos and prescriptions function as tools for negotiating the social terrain of the community. What is common about these tools is that they bring into question the persistent tendency to reduce fishing success to individual – particularly skipper – merit (Acheson 1975, Bjarnason and Thorlindsson 1993, Goodlad 1972:74, Heath 1976, Löfgren 1972:99, Poggie 1979, Thorlindsson 1988, Wadel 1972:107).

The tone of the chapter alters somewhat in the second section, when I consider the ethnographic material in the context of an anthropological issue that has been debated since the early 1980s: ‘the skipper effect’. In this section, I consider attempts by anthropologists, and others, to determine a measure of individual skill among skippers that is distinct from access to technology or simple effort. Much of the ‘debate’ 267 stemmed from what Gatewood refers to as “confounded measures” (pers.com. 2005) or a lack of clarity on what, exactly, was being isolated. Rather than propose a new statistical formulation of skipper ability, I will argue that the isolation of skill to one person in an inter- dependant fishing community is an exercise in reductionism rather than a reflection of productive reality. To support my contention, I refer to the uninterrogated prevalence of ‘luck’ in the skipper effect literature, suggesting that both fishers and anthropologists have tended to refer to ‘luck’ in contexts where statistical anomalies mask slippages between individual and collectively enabled skill.

Luck in fishing literature

Analyses of ‘luck’ and ‘fishing magic’ in relation to both industrialised and non-industrialised fishing communities has tended to emphasise one of two explanations. Some focus on the relative tendency towards such observances by those experiencing varying degrees of safety in their nautical pursuits (Malinowski 1922:112, 233-4, Poggie et al. 1976, Poggie 1979, Poggie and Pollnac 1988). Influential is the early work of Malinowski (1922), who described the Kula ‘ring’, or exchange networks, among the inhabitants of southwest Pacific islands during the early 20th Century. Argonauts of the Western Pacific describes how Islanders who ventured to sea for extended voyages were more likely to employ ‘fishing magic’ than those who were not venturing far from the relative calm of lagoons (ibid:112, 233-4). Taking an explicitly ethnographic approach (ibid:25), Malinowski describes how the Argonauts use magic to temper the anxiety associated with the very real risks of calamity at sea (ibid:40). Throughout Malinowski’s account, however, he regularly reflects on the socialising capacity of magic, outlining how it facilitates the Kula ring and, subsequently, acts as a framework for the exchange of other objects and sentiments important for the social and material 268 functioning of the region (ibid:81-100, 427). Less frequently, he ponders the absence of reflexivity in regard to this underlying function. In the following excerpt he considers both (ibid:83 original emphasis):

The Kula is thus an extremely big and complex institution, both in its geographical extent, and in the manifoldness of its component pursuits. It welds together a considerable number of tribes, and it embraces a vast complex of activities, interconnected, and playing into one another, so as to form one organic whole.

Yet … they have no knowledge of the total outline of any of their social structure. They know their own motives, know the purpose of individual actions and the rules which apply to them. …. If you were to ask him … he would answer … by giving his personal experiences and subjective views on the Kula. …. For the integral picture does not exist in his mind; he is in it, and cannot see the whole from the outside.

Like Malinowski, I think ‘fishing magic’ reflects concerns about safety as well as social and economic success. This brings us to the second, broad category of explanation, one related to the ethic of social egalitarianism, discussed in the previous chapter as manifest in the notion of ‘mateship’.

Palmer (1990a:98) explains that ‘luck’ or ‘chance’ have often been used in order to explain the success or failure of fishers, in order to divert responsibility from the individual, to maintain the appearance of egalitarianism. He cites Zulaika, who states, “luck ensures that fishermen are less responsible for their lack of success” (1981:77). Palmer (1990a:100) goes on to describe how luck is variously invoked by the Maine lobstermen he worked with, depending on whether the social context emphasised competition or cooperation:

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When cooperation is of primary importance in an interaction, the other individual is held responsible for his success while his failures are claimed to be the result of bad luck. When competition is the goal of the interaction, another lobsterman’s success becomes a matter of luck while he is held responsible for his failures.

Just as the ‘little Aussie battler’ can be excused for his failures through reference to ‘bad luck’, the ‘tall poppy’ can be dismissed as merely ‘lucky’ (see Chapter 5). Palmer stresses that emic accounts of fishing success must be considered in the social context of the account.

In other work on fishing and rituals, Palmer (1989) proposes an ‘alternative’ explanation for the prevalence of mystical explanations in fishing. He neatly synthesises earlier critiques of ‘fishing magic’ that refer to emic notions of danger and sociality. Palmer (ibid:63) suggests that in contexts of high danger, where the consequences for non- cooperation could be dire, adherence to a set of principles – taboos, for example – can have “an identifiable positive influence on the cooperation between co-acceptors”. Certainly, the ‘point’ of magic may reflect a multitude of complimentary, overlapping or conflicting desires, for rewards that may be material, physical, social or cosmological. Furthermore, this ‘point’ may be unapparent to those concerned. In the context of the present exploration I will focus on the use of ‘fishing magic’ for tempering conceptual disturbances between notions of collectively realised skill and dominant discourses of ‘individuality’.

Superstition and luck in the Bass Strait fishing community

In 2002, the Lakes Entrance Family History Resource Centre released Casting the Net: Pioneer Fishing Families of the Gippsland Coast, a collection of oral histories incorporating the predecessors of many of 270 those still fishing the region (Ellis and Lee 2002). In the introduction of the book it was noted that fishing is “dependent” upon two factors: “[the] weather and a myriad [of] sometimes almost mysterious unknowns” (Ellis 2002:1). Daffy, an ex-shark boat skipper with a flare for the poetic and dramatic, expressed a similar sentiment: “The fishing industry is run by two women: Mother Nature and Lady Luck! Without those two women on your side, well…” and, as Daffy’s voice trailed off, his head shook, suggesting that the outcome could be grim. As the previous chapters have described, Mother Nature or, at least, the productive environment in which fishermen labour, is experienced and known tangibly. Skills to negotiate this sometimes challenging and dangerous world can be embodied, and even taught to others. Though Mother Nature can be manifest in either a glorious sunny day or a gale- force wind, both can be anticipated with the aid of technology, and negotiated with the physical and technical skills honed through experience. Though a great deal of the knowledge of fishermen lies beneath the level of discourse, it can nonetheless be realised through a skilled performance, or implied through the censure of a poor performance. Luck, however, is more difficult to identify, harder to predict, and almost impossible to control, precisely because it tends to emerge in situations that elude explication. Luck is a ‘mysterious unknown’. According to Zulaika (1981:80), who spent almost five months at sea with Spanish deep-sea fishermen who identified ‘luck’ as a key factor in their success, “luck at the conceptual level means ‘arbitrary causation’, ‘beyond understanding’”.

One of the reasons luck is difficult to understand is that it challenges the notion that each individual is responsible for his own success, a concept that is integral to the self-stylisation of the fishermen described in previous chapters. The boundary between the individual and the phenomena encountered in the world ‘around’ was portrayed as salient, 271 and yet highly ambiguous. ‘Individuality’ was described as a tool that facilitated the flow of knowledge and action among individuals, thus enabling individual achievement. Luck is similarly ambiguous. Like the gankas described in Chapter 3, luck simultaneously transgresses and reinforces a boundary. While it may attach itself – either permanently or fleetingly – to a single person, the origin of luck seems to lie beyond that person. When the cause of someone’s fortune or misfortune is ‘beyond understanding’, or, rather, beyond the individual, luck can act to reconcile the external influence without threatening to overtly disrupt the boundary of the individual.

Alan described Bruce, his partner, the man with whom he had chosen to work in order to facilitate his own fishing success, as follows: “He’s a good fisherman Bruce, a real good fisherman. He’s just had bad luck”. Though I do not know the details of the ‘bad luck’ to which Alan referred, he clearly identified the ‘luck’ as separate from Bruce’s personal skill, and beyond his control. While Alan’s words served to absolve Bruce, somewhat, from responsibility for shortcomings in his personal abilities, it did not challenge the notion that Bruce was an autonomous figure, with talents all his own. Alan’s comments, however, allowed that factors other than individual ability – inexplicable factors – could affect one’s performance.

Nick had been fortunate in some of the talents he had ‘inherited’ from his father, though he had not received them all (Lee 2005:21):

Like all successful professional fishermen, Nick Schulz has that instinct to detect fish in the water. For Nick, the water appears to ‘lift’ over a school of fish or a colour or visual effect indicates ‘fishy’ water. He recalls his father stopping frequently on the way down river to taste the water. When he found ‘sweet’ water he stopped and they started 272

fishing. That was one of the few family skills Nick was unable to pick up.

Steven shuddered and physically cringed on the several occasions when I wished him “good luck” before a trip, chiding me for increasing the chances of his misfortune. “Don’t you know it’s bad luck to wish someone good luck!” For some of the fishermen Zulaika (1981:88) encountered, too, it was considered unlucky to be offered good luck, and they preferred the expression “shit on luck”. For Steven, it was better to wish someone “good fishing”, which is what he said to others, or even, “I hope you kill lots of fish”, as I occasionally teased. To invoke luck in any way, it seemed, tempted the caprice of fortune, a force that Steven could only hope to temper through a certain mystical etiquette. Unlike the Spanish fishermen who have a fatalistic attitude towards luck (Zulaika 1981), various rules for negotiating luck are evident within the community of Bass Strait. As with the professional baseball players described by Gmelch (1980),1 some commercial fishermen allude to ‘fishing magic’ as though careful adherence to collective prohibitions – ‘never depart on a fishing trip on a Friday’ – and individual customs – ‘I may have a better trip if I wear the same outfit I wore the last time I had a good trip’ – can afford the practitioner greater control over events that would otherwise be completely unpredictable. “Magic is a human attempt to impose order and certainty on a chaotic, uncertain situation” (ibid:317). Though there is a reluctance among Australian commercial fishermen to admit that such old wives’ tales have any bearing on fishing success, the details are nonetheless widely

1 In his discussion of professional baseball in the United States, Gmelch (1980) describes how ball players, particularly those in high-pressure roles (as are skippers), employ various rituals, talismans and taboos in order to court ‘good luck’ and avoid ‘bad luck’ during play. Adherence to such ‘rules’, the use of such “baseball magic”, explains Gmelch, is common in many societies, even those that privilege secular and scientific explanations over the religious or mystical. 273 known, indicating that ‘fishing magic’ is considered to, at least, warrant consideration.

Lucky socks and smoking marijuana in the fo’c’sle

A well-known prohibition was that against leaving for sea on a Friday, and Mick never did. When I asked him why, he conceded that he could not explain the reason, but that, because of the uncertainty inherent in fishing, particularly sharking, he was disinclined to do anything to reduce his chances of success, even if he did not understand it, or fully believe in it. He proceeded to talk about the intense pressure on skippers to find fish, and how, when fish evaded him, and he had exhausted secular explanations, he racked his brain to deduce what made the trip different from a more successful voyage (reminiscent of the Quinlogan [Philippine] fishermen described by Veloro [1994:152] and discussed below). He brought his hands up, palms facing inwards and fingers upward, seeming to appeal partly to his own head and partly to something above him. “Am I wearing the same socks? My lucky socks. Am I wearing the same hat?”

“You’d wear the same socks for a whole trip?!” I teased, insensitively. He shrugged his shoulders and turned his hands palms up, a serious look on his face. Other skippers had their own superstitions, he explained, quietly. He added, “Though they would never admit it”.

One such rare admission came from Steve, a scallop fisherman of some renown, a man who exuded a sense of strength and control over his surroundings. We were talking about personal log books (as opposed to those required by management), used by many fishermen to record the details of previous ventures. In his comically jovial and boisterous way, Steve explained: 274

The fisherman, he writes everything down in his log book: what he caught, what he was eating, what kinda mood he is in. So he can look back and say ‘how was I feeling last trip or last year’ or, ‘I was in a really bad mood when I caught that big load’. And because fisherman, he works with Mother Nature he is very superstitious! You see? So he says ‘I was in a really bad mood when I caught that big load so how am I going to get in a bad mood again?!’ So you call your crew. [Steve imitates an exchange between a skipper and a deckie]. ‘You’ve been smoking the marijuana in the fo’c’sle haven’t you?’!

“‘No Steve, no!’

“‘YOU’VE BEEN SMOKING THE MARIJUANA IN THE FO’C’SLE HAVEN’T YOU?!!’ [Steve imitates punching a deckie]. “Boof! Boof!”

Steve, like his audience – four anthropologists – laughed. Then, he grew quiet, the effect of his joke having taken the appropriate effect. As a postscript he added, with a grin, “Of course it doesn’t always work. Sometimes the deckie comes up and says ‘What did you hit me for Steve?!!’” He laughed again. The implication was that by playing such a game of luck he ran the risk of upsetting his deckie without having the desired effect on the catch. Nonetheless, acknowledgement of these ‘superstitions’ offered Steve some sense of ‘control’ over that which was unpredictable: Mother Nature.

Steven, whose family members targeted a variety of fishes, adhered to another well-known proscription against taking bananas to sea.2 Steven was a pragmatic man, ‘skipper material’, direct and

2 Various ‘rational’ explanations were offered by different fishermen, as to how this fishing phobia had come about, the most compelling being that it had arisen in the context of Caribbean ‘banana boats’, which were prone to sinking, not due to their cargo, but to their poor design. 275 uncomplicated in his words and actions and I did not expect him to base any of his behaviours on a mystical ban on bananas. However, when he described how a new deckie had brought a large bag of bananas onto the boat, one would have been excused for thinking that Steven had somehow confused ‘bananas’ with ‘explosives’. Steven explained that, luckily, he had seen the bag before they had departed for sea, quickly emptied the contents over the side, and harshly admonished the deckie for his negligence. I pressed him as to why he thought bananas were such bad luck. He simply reiterated his statement that this was the case. “You just don’t take bananas on the boat! It’s bad luck!”

Though the banana rule is well known in the industry, not everyone seemed to take it as seriously as Steven. After several days at sea upon the Daryl R, I noticed that there were no bananas aboard, though there were other fruits. I asked Danny, a deckhand, why there were no bananas, and if he considered them bad luck. While familiar with the superstition, Danny said that it could not be substantiated. In fact, he continued, they used to take bananas to sea, but nobody ate them and they spoiled. Unsure what to make of Danny’s response, I was keen to test the banana rule, and plotted to get a banana on board.

On the next occasion I went to the wharf to watch the Daryl R being unloaded I brought a banana cake. By this point in my fieldwork I had heard the banana rule from so many people that I felt strangely apprehensive about intentionally planning to break it, and also about playing a trick on my friends. My apprehension over the bananas seemed melodramatic, however, as I stepped out of the car into the bright sunlight, and was greeted to the sights and sounds of men and women laughing and lifting, sweating and swearing, teasing and tallying as they performed a familiar productive exercise. After greeting those 276 on the wharf I sat on the edge next to the wheelhouse, where the skipper was keeping a record of the fish as they were conveyed from the hull to the crates that would take them to market. Removing its covering and sitting the cake in front of me, I waited for an interval and shouted to the skipper: “Hey Fat, I’ve got a cake for you!” He immediately came to the door and stretched out his hand with a grin: “Beaudy Tanya! Cake!” Upon olfactory inspection, however, he paused and muttered quietly, “Banana…” He then turned and shouted to the deckie in the galley behind him, “Here Danny! You want some fruitcake?!” Later that night, at the Port Albert Hotel, another deckie thanked me for my ‘fruitcake’, though he noted that he had been too busy to sample it before Danny had eaten the entire thing. Though I hesitate to cite this incident to support the notion that south east Australian fishermen adhere to a banana avoidance rule – I doubt that either Fat or his deckies truly felt themselves to be in mortal danger as a result of the bananas in my cake – Fat’s reclassification of the offending item suggests that the prohibition was, at least, salient.

The various responses to the banana rule – from disbelief to explicit adherence – indicate that attitudes to fishing magic are not uniform across the community of fishers, nor are particular prohibitions stable across time, but change in accordance to shifting social contexts. A fisherman who catches steadily across an entire fishing trip may consider his success a product of personal skill, while he who catches the same total amount on the last day of the voyage is more likely to consider himself ‘lucky’ (Zulaika 1981). In Bass Strait, many men speak of a ‘gut feeling’, or a sense that fish might be present, but as with the Spanish fishermen, this ‘gut feeling’ becomes more salient in particular temporal circumstances. Typically, shark fishermen will set out to sea with a particular location in mind, calculated using the practical tactics described in the previous chapters. However, 277 fishermen appear to be more likely to draw upon their ‘gut feeling’ towards the end of a trip. While some sought to make up for a poor load with a ‘hope shot’ or ‘blind shot’, those with a good load sometimes shot the gear in order to ‘have a look’, or to try their luck without the pressures imposed by an empty boat and disgruntled deckies. Just as Mick sometimes explained a poor trip to himself by appealing to something beyond himself, in the realms of the mysterious, it is when personal skill has seemingly been exhausted that fishermen acknowledge extra-personal causality.

Other ideas about luck have changed more substantially, and over a longer period. For example, women were once considered bad luck on boats (Seevers 2004:6), and while female deckies are still remarkable within the industry, they are rarely associated with a gender specific curse. Certainly, this shift cannot be isolated from the many changes that have occurred in gender relations, specifically in regards to productive roles. The notion that something beyond the individual can enhance or detract from one’s ability, or propensity to succeed, however, is still common, as the following story indicates.

In 2002 I attended the launch of Casting the Net, the oral history mentioned above. The launch was a ‘who’s who’ of blue-blood fishing families. Wearing a dress and high-heels befitting the occasion, I arrived in the company of several young women who belong to one of the longest established fishing families in the area, the Michelsons. They were also, in their own words, active “fishermen”. The hall was decorated with sepia photographs, fishing relics and industry curios. Lynda, Hayley, Danielle and I meandered around the hall with the others, until the Michelsons came across a historical document that denounced the presence of women on fishing boats as ‘bad luck’. The girls affected indignation, gathering around the document, clucking and 278 citing themselves – indeed their grandmothers! – as evidence to the contrary.3 Though, clearly, the women dismissed the notion that gender had any bearing on their ability to fish, or that males and females were attributed with various degrees of luck, the idea that individuals could possess inherent and inalienable luck in fishing was not wholly absent from their discourse. They were not arguing against the notion of ‘luck’ itself, but against the notion that women, in particular, were ‘bad luck’. The explanations given for catches taken aboard the Michelson family purse seining boat, the Maasbanker, are instructive.

When I first met the Michelsons, I was struck by their dedication both to various forms of fishing and to each other. As an example of the former, Lynda’s father, Harry, was known to fish Lake Tyers for notoriously evasive and low-value fish, merely for the challenge. Among the five of Harry’s six children whom I knew, from pre-schooler to grown man, not one expressed a desire to pursue any career but fishing. At the time I met them, the role of skipper was slowly being handed from Harry to Lynda’s elder brother, Adam. Skippering the Maasbanker is a role that carries a lot of responsibility: ‘finding fish’ entails not only detecting a shoal, but estimating its size, deciding whether to shoot the gear or to wait for a better opportunity and, when opting for the former, directing the boat and crew to a safe and successful haul (see Gatewood and Mace 1990). Though Adam had fished, side-by-side, with his father all his life, there was a sense of nervous anticipation about Adam’s appointment to the wheelhouse, the fear being that he might not ‘find fish’. There was a concern that his success would not necessarily reflect his undoubted application and knowledge of the technical

3 Two years later, in a book by the girls’ Aunt Joy, they are honoured as women who contribute significantly to a traditionally male-dominated industry (Seevers 2004:6). 279 demands of purse seining. Rather, a more fundamental and vital attribute was being tested: could he court the favour of both Mother Nature and Lady Luck? When Adam caught his first shoal, or ‘patch’, as skipper, the family threw him a ‘patch party’.

My own luck was compared to that of the Michelsons one day when I ventured to sea with them. This particular trip happened to be the maiden voyage, in Bass Strait, of twelve-year-old Christopher, Harry’s second youngest son. Chris and I set out with great anticipation – a pair of adventurers – keen to witness the impressive hauls that we had both seen unloaded at the wharf in Lakes Entrance. The trip was a dismal failure, however, the boat circling for days without shooting the gear once. The Michelsons, and the rest of the crew, teasingly declared that I was ‘bad luck’. I protested: why was I bad luck? Why not Chris? Adam and his younger brother, Steven, politely conceded that perhaps Chris was the problem. Yes, it was possible. But, of course I knew, as Adam and Steven did, that Chris, his veins filled with Michelson blood, associated with fishing in multiple aspects of his life, was less disposed towards ‘bad luck’ than a woman from a farming family. Years later, they still refer to me as ‘a Jonah’.

What was it about Chris that disposed him towards luckiness, ‘fishiness’ perhaps, and what was it about me that drove the fish away? If we are to assume that nothing mystical occurred, then luck itself must be considered, or rather, that which is labelled ‘luck’. Both Chris and Adam were destined to be luckier than I, not because of some mystical quality in their ‘blood’, but due to their life-long involvement with the industry, their embodied skills, and their knowledge of that which must be attended to in order for success to prevail. Like Mick, they were more likely to have a ‘gift’ for finding fish. Indeed, Mick – a first cousin once removed – shared some of the Michelson’s genes, 280 blood, ‘fishiness’. However, like Mick, their ‘luck’ coincided with an intense and lengthy involvement in the fishing industry. This was a fact not lost on any of the Michelsons. If fishing skills are produced through experience and dedicated practice, then Mick and the Michelsons make their own luck.

‘Luck’ may be cited as a way of explaining skills gleaned from a complex combination of circumstances, experiences and encounters, because the knowledge imparted is often beneath the level of articulation. As discussed in Chapter 3, embodied knowledge is only evident in performance. Successes directly resulting from skilled performances may be so complicated, combining a multitude of actions and circumstances, over such a long period of time, that the cause of the success is too cumbersome or complex to name.

There is another reason why ‘luck’ is commonly used to describe collectively acquired and enabled skill that results in apparent coincidences. ‘Luck’ does not disrupt the boundary between an individual fisherman and those around him. Indeed, ‘luck’ can be attached to a single person. I was surprised when Mick cited his ongoing involvement with his peers and ancestors as contributing to his fishing success, because he was acknowledging that at least some of what Billy attributed to his mystical ability, his ‘gift’, was the result of the millions of tiny interactions he had had with others in the industry. As discussed in Chapter 4, openly attributing one’s success to the coordinated action of others challenges the individualistic ideal held by fishermen. Mick’s admission was something of an anomaly. Typically, and in public especially, fishermen avoid acknowledging, or do not recognise, collective skill. ‘Luck’ acts to smooth away the disruption to the individual ideal that arises when collective, temporally dependent, inexplicable skill becomes apparent. At this point I will turn to a 281 consideration of ‘luck’ as it appears in anthropological attempts to identify the source of individual success in fishing.

The ‘skipper effect’

The ‘skipper effect’ debate began, in earnest, in the early 1980s, with the publication of a number of articles by Durrenberger and Pálsson (Durrenberger and Pálsson 1983, Pálsson and Durrenberger 1982, 1983). Based upon data from the catches of Icelandic cod and herring fishermen, Pálsson and Durrenberger (1983:525) critiqued the emic belief that “some skippers have a mysterious capacity that allows them to enjoy greater fishing success than others”. Further, they admonish social theorists, particularly Barth (1966) and Heath (1976), for uncritically accepting the ‘myth’ that “the differential success of skippers is related to some innate quality, or characteristic” (Durrenberger and Pálsson 1983:328). Rather, they argue that almost all of the variation in success in the cod fishery can be accounted for, statistically, by reference to boat size and the frequency of voyages, while in the herring fishery, where the fish aggregate less predictably than cod, success is primarily a matter of luck.

Durrenberger and Pálsson sought to test for the presence of a skipper effect by isolating as many factors as possible from the catches attributed to cod skippers between 1979 and 1981, and herring skippers between 1959 and 1961. To do so they employed a path model, in which independent variables are ranked in relation to their effect on a dependent variable, in this case, catch (Pálsson and Durrenberger 1982). In the analysis of cod catches they found that while the size of the boat determined the amount of gear used (length of gillnet or lines), neither the amount of gear used, nor the age of the skipper (which they equated with experience), significantly accounted 282 for the variation in catches. Further, they noted that the size of the boat was not correlated with the frequency of voyages (ibid:233). However, they found that the number of trips and the size of the boat accounted together for over 85 percent of the variation in catches (Pálsson and Durrenberger 1982:238, 1990:131). They acknowledged that the ‘prestige’ of the skipper affected his ability to garner a skilled and stable crew, increasing his catching ability (Pálsson and Durrenberger 1982:239). When the widely publicised catches of skippers in earlier years were taken as a measure of ‘prestige’, Pálsson and Durrenberger found that there was very little left to be explained by those factors they wished to isolate, such as “the mechanical condition of the boat and its equipment, the weather, the skill of the crew, and the skipper effect” (ibid:230).

When Durrenberger and Pálsson (1983:332) applied the same model to the herring fishery, however, they found that they could account for only 40 percent of the variation in catch by considering boat size and trip frequency. They acknowledged that a portion of the 60 percent of unexplained success may have been the result of a skipper effect, and tested for evidence of long-term success among skippers. However, they found only a small positive relationship between a skipper’s success from one season to the next, a factor they felt discredited the skipper effect hypothesis (Pálsson and Durrenberger 1990:131). Durrenberger and Pálsson suggested that the differences between the cod and herring fisheries did not invalidate their argument that there was no skipper effect. Rather, they proposed that enormous variation in catches from year to year, plus the random behaviour patterns of herring, rendered the myth impossible to dispel. “The skipper effect offers some explanation for a phenomenon that has none – the very large random factor in herring fishing” (Durrenberger and Pálsson 1983:333).

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There was a strong response to Durrenberger and Pálsson’s work, much of which rested on disagreements over how the ‘skipper effect’ could be isolated, and what, exactly, was being singled out for investigation (Gatewood 1983, 1984a,b, Hilborn 1985, Hilborn and Ledbetter 1985, McNabb 1985, Thorlindsson 1988, White 1992). The statistical methods favoured by Durrenberger and Pálsson, as well as their interpretation of that data, were “hotly debated”, and at length (Durrenberger and Pálsson 1985, Gatewood 1984b, Gatewood and Mace 1990, McNabb 1985, Pálsson and Durrenberger 1984, Pálsson and Durrenberger 1990, Thorlindsson 1988:199, White 1992).4 In addition to challenges made on the basis of the statistics, Durrenberger and Pálsson’s dismissal of the skipper effect ‘myth’ was challenged with qualitative accounts of individuals contributing to their own fishing success (Acheson 1981, 1988, Byron 1980, Gatewood 1984a, Hilborn 1985, Hilborn and Ledbetter 1985, Poggie 1979, Thorlindsson 1988, White 1992). The debate failed to reach any resolution (McGoodwin 1990:140), however, most likely, I suggest, because of confusion over

4 Gatewood (1984b), for example, noted that correlations Durrenberger and Pálsson had dismissed as ‘insignificant’ did, indeed, indicate a statistically significant correlation, and the importance of this correlation had been dismissed on a subjective basis. “From Pálsson and Durrenberger’s own results, it would seem that the proper conclusion is that the skipper effect does have some grounding in fact – the exact opposite of what they conclude” (ibid:378-9). Durrenberger and Pálsson (Durrenberger and Pálsson 1985, Pálsson and Durrenberger 1984) responded by stressing that their assessment of the correlation was made in the context of the folk accounts of the skipper effect, which assumes that the ‘mysterious capacity’ of ‘fishiness’ is an almost perfect predictor of success. This myth, they claimed, was accepted in the earlier work of Barth (1966) and Heath (1976). Another critic, Thorlindsson (1988), argued that when the catches of Icelandic herring skippers, and not boats, were compared over time, there was a significant correlation, indicative of a skipper effect. While Pálsson and Durrenberger (1990:132) conceded that Thorlindsson’s information “may” support the existence of a ‘skipper effect’, the data were statistically weak. Both Gatewood (1984b) and McNabb (1985) challenged the statistical tools applied by Durrenberger and Pálsson, the latter suggesting that the Pearson correlation coefficient used by the two acted to mask the very skipper rank-order correlation they attempted to illuminate. Durrenberger and Pálsson (1985:544-5) reworked their data using the method suggested by McNabb, and presented very similar results. 284 what Durrenberger and Pálsson were attempting to isolate.

As Durrenberger and Pálsson repeatedly stated (eg. Durrenberger and Pálsson 1985, Pálsson and Durrenberger 1983), they distinguished between two models of the skipper effect: the ‘commonsense’ and the ‘stereotypic’. The former was used by Icelandic fishers to explain short term success, and took into account things like boat size, the amount of time spent at sea, and learned skill, such as knowledge of cod schooling patterns, details of ocean beds, and perhaps an ability to coil rope and perform other such tasks. They acknowledged that these skills contributed to the catches of individuals. The “stereotypic” model resembled the folk myth, which asserted that some people have an innate “ability to find and catch fish”, a ‘fishiness’, granted them upon conception (Pálsson and Durrenberger 1992:453). This ‘fishiness’ was typically used to explain success over longer periods: entire years and careers (Pálsson and Durrenberger 1983:513). While they proposed that certain characteristics may account for a heightened propensity for ‘fishiness’ – “a better memory for patterns … some innate ability to compute the odds, a photographic memory for detail” (Pálsson and Durrenberger 1982:228) – their interest lay in the folk model. Slippages between the commonsense and stereotypic models of the skipper effect – both in the comments of others as well as their own, a point upon which I will expand below – meant that Durrenberger and Pálsson had to repeatedly clarify their focus (Durrenberger and Pálsson 1985:545):

Gatewood calls attention to (the confusion) in a discussion of the general issue, saying that he may be “thinking of the skipper effect not in the magical-mystical sense of ‘being in the blood’, as … Icelandic skipper say, but rather in a simple statistical sense”. It is just that “magical-mystical” sense of the stereotypic model that we discussed, not 285

the common-sense model, because that is what the puzzle is, and what is relevant to Iceland.

I suggest that the slippage between the two ‘models’ Durrenberger and Pálsson identified was never resolved, because, though factors such as boat size and trip frequency can be statistically controlled, there is no way to separate acquired and innate skill. To use an analogy that they themselves employ in one of their later papers, it is as difficult to distinguish between the ‘fishiness’ of a fisher and the success he reaps due to consistent effort, as it is to distinguish between the intelligence of a student and achievements made through diligence (Pálsson and Durrenberger 1990:136). That which is measurable – the catch – is not affected by the source of the achievement.5 Rather, the success that is deemed to emanate from the skipper can be defined as “the residual after other variables, effort and boat size, have been taken into account” (ibid). This type of statistical method may – though I argue below that it does not – isolate the skills, mystical or otherwise, of one person. However, it does not distinguish between a plethora of personal skills, which, as Gatewood notes, include “intelligence, experience, being lucky, having good dreams, or whatever” (in Pálsson and Durrenberger 1990:136).

What can be separated is the distinction between the folk model of ‘fishiness’, and an actual, statistically demonstrable, effect. As Durrenberger and Pálsson (1983:526) note, the former is an explanation for past success, and is “not constrained by such mundane realities” as catch records. Durrenberger and Pálsson (1983) discussed how the folk

5 Pálsson and Durrenberger (1990) note that there are other measures of success, including personal satisfaction, a sense of freedom and relaxation. Variations in the way fishermen measure satisfaction in fishing has been addressed, most notably by Gatewood and McCay (1990) and Jentoft and Davis (1993), and more recently by Endter-Wada and Keenan (2005). The focus of the skipper effect has, however, remained on the ranking of skippers according to catch figures. 286 model itself evolved, a project they tackled convincingly and uncontentiously.6

A persistent issue in the skipper effect debate, however, was that raised by Gatewood (1984) soon after the publication of the original articles. Durrenberger and Pálsson (1983:518) explained that a skipper’s reputation directly influenced their ability to secure a good crew, the frequency with which they could be convinced to work, the weather in which they would labour, plus the size of the boat the skipper could hope to secure from a boat owner. Gatewood (1984b:378 original emphasis) responded by noting that the:

size of boat and number of fishing trips (related to crew factors?) are really indirect measures of skippers’ previous success. Hence, the fact that boat size and fishing effort account for roughly 88 percent of the variance in catch can be taken as a confirmation rather than a refutation of the skipper effect.

Initially, Pálsson and Durrenberger (1984:379) replied by suggesting that if Gatewood was correct, then there was definitely no skipper effect in the herring fishery, where the correlation between boat size, trip frequency and catch is non-existent, though there may have been some effect in the cod fishery. They later refined their argument in response

6 As Thorlindsson (1988) stresses, any understanding of the social organisation of fishing communities must take into account the prevalent forces on production systems. Durrenberger and Pálsson (1983:518-20) showed how the notion of a skipper effect arose as Iceland gained independence in 1918. For the latter half of the previous millennium, Iceland had been subject to Danish trade monopolies, which prevented capital accumulation and stipulated forced labour arrangements among the landless. Whereas fishing had been a largely subsistence industry, fishing became a means of acquiring capital, and competition between skippers grew, both for fish, and for reliable crews. The ‘rhetoric’ of the skipper effect aided skippers in their ‘impression management’ (Goffman 1959), a factor critical to fishing success. Icelandic fishers shifted from attributing their catches to the benevolence of gods, to recognising the efforts of competitive individuals as determining the fish that were taken from a passive ocean. 287 to Thorlindsson’s interpretation of the data (see footnote 6), to concede that there may be a slight skipper effect in the herring fishery (Pálsson and Durrenberger 1990:132).

It is in the later discussions of the Icelandic fishing industry that Durrenberger and Pálsson, particularly the latter, approach what I consider to be a more satisfactory resolution to the skipper effect ‘puzzle’ (Pálsson 1989, 1991a,b, 1993, Pálsson and Durrenberger 1990). For example, when they ‘revisit’ the skipper effect issue in 1990 they note, albeit briefly, that in the scholarly literature, “fishing tends to be presented as an individualistic act independent of social context” (Pálsson and Durrenberger 1990:137). They suggest that one of the reasons for the focus on the individual is that scholars are influenced by the appeal of the ‘lone hunter’ stereotype. Another “reason for the emphasis on individual skills … is that many social scientists, inspired by the theory of Durkheim, operate with a rigid distinction between individual and society” (ibid:138). Representing fishing as an individualistic act that occurs in nature, not society, they suggest, is somewhat problematic. Their concession towards the collective element of fishing seems to end there, however, and they return to focus on their “major point”, which was situating the emic understanding of the ‘skipper effect’ in the context of prevailing Icelandic social systems of production (ibid).

Others took up the issue of collective skill in their criticisms of Durrenberger and Pálsson, focussing on how the synergistic quality of fleet fishing, or clustering, obfuscates the ‘skill’ that can be attributed to a single person (Bradshaw and Eaton 2003, Russell and Alexander 1996, 1998, Ruttan 2003, Squires and Kirkley 1999, Thorlindsson 1988, White 1992). As White (1992) explains:

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In fleet fishing the potential effects (and evidence) of differential fish- finding skills are effectively erased from aggregate landing statistics typically used to test the ‘skipper effect’ (ibid:450).

Landing statistics report total amounts of fish brought to the dock; added precision in expressing such figures … would not distinguish independent from imitative deployments on the fishing grounds (ibid:452, n.1).

White (1992:450) argues that when clustering occurs in order to better enable individual boats to catch a mobile species, the “fleet effect”, or enhanced fishing success afforded participating boats, disguises any individual skill, or ‘skipper effect’. Or, as Squires and Kirkley (1999:2012) explain:

[because] management is introduced as a residual variable, there is a danger that in what we refer to as management we also include the effects of factors that do not depend on management but rather on the particular environmental conditions of the firm.

However, even those who have noted the difficulty of isolating individual skill in fishing have tended to continue to attempt to do so, by refining the measures from which the residual is isolated. Thorlindsson (1988) and Bradshaw and Eaton (2003), for example, suggest that the skipper effect is most easily isolated among those with outstanding reputations and, presumably, catches. Nonetheless, Bradshaw and Eaton (2003) agree with Russell and Alexander (1996:436), who note the near impossibility of quantifying individual “fishing ‘skill’”. Bradshaw and Eaton (2003:37) aptly capture the complexity of the skill that is embodied in the performance of the individual:

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In our consideration of the practice of excellent fishing, we were confronted with an enormously complex activity that wove the observable and the seemingly mundane with subtle differences and invisible cognitions in a complicated copresence of past experiences, present circumstances, various technologies, and relations with other individuals and knowledge.

I acknowledge that the focus of Durrenberger and Pálsson’s argument was refined over the years, and that their focus on the production discourses of Iceland provided an excellent example of how such discourses are deeply embedded in social contexts. Further, I think their challenge to social scientists to rigorously investigate the validity of assertions made by informants is warranted. However, I suspect that a key flaw in their statistical analysis of the skipper effect was that it conflated the catches of individual skippers with individual skill – whether mystical or acquired. As the previous chapters have argued, fishing skill is located across individual and temporal boundaries. One person’s ability to catch fish has roots in the skills of both contemporaries and predecessors. It is as misleading to consider skill as the relationship between one individual and the environment, just as it is problematic to distinguish too sharply between individuals, humans in general, and the non-human world. Rather, if we take Ingold’s (2000c:240) suggestion that we should think about the world in a way that is ‘relational’, we may consider ‘skill’ to be the realisation of people performing in the world, to be, perhaps, truly ecological (Ingold 2003, Milton 2002, Pálsson 1994).

The skipper effect debate, like the folk rhetoric itself, has persisted over the years because of reluctance by fishermen, and by the scholars involved in the debate, to challenge the notion of individual skill. The extra-individual understanding of skill contradicts the image of ‘rugged individualism’ so familiar to both fishermen and those who like to think 290 with fishermen. I am not proposing that individual skill is unimportant in fishing success. As Bjarnason and Thorlindsson (1993:391) note, “People are… experts on their own conditions and should therefore be taken at least as seriously as the scholars observing them”. However, some explanation for lack of resolution on the ‘skipper effect issue’ may be found by interrogating the key premise upon which it rests: individual skill. More consideration needs to be given to the collective skill evident in many fisheries, including the shark fishery of Bass Strait. I will now consider references to luck, as well as ritual and taboos, in the literature, identifying where these references may be ‘covering up’ instances of collectively enabled, individual skill.

The role of luck in the ‘skipper effect’ and in Bass Strait

Within the literature on the skipper effect, and in the words of Bass Strait fishermen, there are many references to luck. While there have been numerous discussions of the relationship between fishermen and luck, ritual and taboo (Byron 1988, Löfgren 1989, Malinowski 1922, Mullen 1969, Poggie et al. 1976, Poggie and Pollnac 1988, van Ginkel 1987, 1990, 1994, Zulaika 1981) few have specifically addressed the relationship between the mystical sources of fishing success and the skipper effect. There are two notable exceptions, addressed below. Typically, however, luck is invoked when there is ambiguity regarding the source of particular abilities or attributes.

In Pálsson and Durrenberger’s seminal article, To dream of fish – The causes of Icelandic skippers’ fishing success (1982), they offer the following as an explanation for the persistence of the skipper effect ‘myth’: “Another reason the idea of the skipper effect persists is that it ‘resonates’ well with other Icelandic cultural concepts of luck, daring, individualism, and the hero” (ibid:240). It seems that notions of ‘luck’ 291 and ‘individuality’ resonate well within other cultures, too, including the community of scholars who have investigated the skipper effect over the years.

Pálsson and Durrenberger (1990:131) account for unexplained variance in the herring catches they analysed in terms of the unpredictable schooling patterns of the species: “herring catches are a lottery”. They note that Hilborn and Ledbetter (1985), too, were compelled to defer to ‘luck’ as an explanation for catch variation. Indeed, after isolating a number of factors that contributed to differential catches among salmon purse seiners in British Columbia, including vessel attributes and “skipper skill and motivation”, Hilborn and Ledbetter suggested that “the remaining 66-71% of the variability in catch is unexplained and may be attributed to random chance” (ibid:54-5). Despite their findings that catch rates were primarily dependent upon ‘random chance’, Hilborn and Ledbetter inferred, from their results, that “skipper skill and motivation are major determinants in catching power” (ibid:55 emphasis added).

Poggie (1979:10) notes that “success is a multidimensional phenomenon related to a number of psychocultural variables, including those identified by the beliefs of fishermen themselves”. Poggie conducted a survey among fishermen, some better catchers than others, as to why some fishermen were particularly successful. Of the options, most pertained to the performance of the fisher or to their access to equipment. The only option that explicitly attributed success to something beyond the individual was labelled, “all equal, luck and contacts”. While only a small proportion of fishermen selected this category it was much more likely to be selected by less successful fishermen than by more successful fishermen. While Poggie (ibid:8) assessed the validity of most of the options, he found that “it was not 292 possible to test the category of ‘contacts, luck and all equal’ because we lacked measures of these variables”. Rather, this category was left uninvestigated, in the too hard basket.

Acheson (1988:91), who has worked with lobster fishermen in Maine for many years, has noted that, “Though the evidence is subject to qualification, one of our earliest studies demonstrates that the income of lobster fishermen cannot be explained solely in terms of capital equipment and effort”. Acheson notes, however, that attempts to pinpoint why “some men earn more than others using the same equipment in the same area” (ibid:91) has been hampered, partly, by “the cult of secrecy” (ibid:104) that Maine lobster fishermen adhere to, as well as the difficulty of articulating territoriality that is informal and continually being negotiated through subtle interactions on the water and the formal requirements of the nation- state (Acheson 2003:53-56). And, of course, there is the problem of quantification. As in Durrenberger and Pálsson’s work, however, Acheson hints at a notion of ‘skill’ that encompasses both learned proficiency as well as something more mystical. He describes an early 1970s study of economic and social variables that aimed to determine the relationship between Maine lobster boat skippers’ effort and their catches (ibid:163-4):

Statistical analysis of these data using both bivariate and multiple regression techniques revealed no overwhelmingly strong relationship between any physical input and lobster catches…. The large unexplained variance in both the bivariate and multiple regressions suggests that either a great deal of the variance in income is due to one or more variables not included in the equation or that chance plays a large role in influencing catch. In cases of this kind, economists have come to assume that output is attributable in large part to ‘skill’.

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In this passage, indefinable ‘skill’ and ‘chance’ share a similar role. Though ‘chance’, in this instance, may refer to all individual abilities that lie beneath the level of discourse, such as an embodied understanding of how to walk on a moving boat, ‘chance’ may also refer to those abilities generated through participation in a group. Indeed, as Acheson (1988:1) explains on the opening page of The Lobster Gangs of Maine, “Survival… depends on ties with fellow lobstermen, the ability to negotiate with lobster dealers, and the sharing of certain skills”. This is not to say that Maine fishermen profess to be any more cooperative than Bass Strait shark fishermen: “In American folklore, the Maine lobster fisherman often appears as the last of the rugged individualists. He is his own boss and his own man, willing to defend his independence with violence if necessary” (ibid:1-2). If ‘skill’ – in the sense of a ‘skipper effect’ – incorporates both inarticulable corporeal knowledge and abilities that are generated and realised through group cooperation which is explicitly denied, it is small wonder that this ‘skill’ remains obscured behind the rubric of ‘luck’.

Rituals, taboos and luck garner their efficacy from a shared recognition and collective adherence. Such explanations promote socialisation among ‘co-acceptors’ – weakening the distinction among individual group members – while providing an explanation for cooperation that does not compel self-professed loners to “defend [their] independence with violence” (Acheson 1988:2). As Oskal (1998:2) explains in a Norwegian context, ‘fishing luck’ is something which is at once both individual and collective:

Some people have good fishing luck. When, for example, two people who know the water and weather equally well fish at the same time and same place and get dramatically different results, we say that person has fishing luck.… Where it comes from is unclear…. If I have bad 294

fishing luck, I can borrow yours and fish in your name and in your place. Fishing luck is seen as a resource and a blessing which can be used for common benefit.

‘Luck’, in the context of the ‘skipper effect’ material, has been discussed explicitly by Veloro (1994). Veloro worked in the Philippine fishing villages of Panacan and Quinlogan, considering the different production systems of each group of fishermen, and their corresponding discourses of fishing success. Veloro found that the fishermen were influenced by their production systems to offer particular explanations for success, either ‘luck’ or ‘skill’, but that these explanations were often confounded within the one social group, and were by no means uniform across communities and contexts. She suggests that fishermen employ various ‘rhetorics of success’ that correspond to particular social contexts, systems of production and patterns of social organisation among people (ibid:160).

Veloro suggests that while the difference between folk notions of “practical ability” and “luck or supernatural forces” (1994:158) may appear simple, ‘ability’ itself is often used to denote both learned skill and innate ability. While the former refers to skills such as coiling rope or understanding tide charts, the latter can be manifest in good eyesight, or perhaps, as Pálsson and Durrenberger (1983:515) put it, “a better memory for patterns… some innate ability to compute the odds, a photographic memory for detail”. In an attempt to untangle the issue of the skipper effect more generally, and the ambiguous role of luck and skill in fishing success, Veloro (1994:158) investigates the folk model itself. “Skipper effect as a folk model of fishing success, has been confounded by the fact that it sometimes refers to the skipper’s practical ability and sometimes to his luck”. She proposes distinguishing between ‘luck’, ‘innate ability’ and ‘acquired skills’ in 295 future scholarly research (ibid).

While I agree that ‘luck’, ‘innate ability’ and ‘acquired skills’ are often confounded when a ‘skipper effect’ is referred to, teasing them apart will not solve the disruptive effect of ‘luck’ in the skipper effect conundrum. Rather, I propose that ‘luck’ regularly lurks in folk accounts of a ‘skipper effect’ because it helps to disguise that which is inconsistent with the very premise of a skipper effect: collective skill. Indeed, I propose that ‘luck’ is often employed by scholars as an explanation for individuated catch statistics which are inexplicable by reference to individual skill.

More appropriate is the approach taken by White (1988, 1992) who described the synergistic fleet effect of Alabama shrimp boat clustering. In the early 1970s, this fishery was structured and operated in a manner comparable to that of the pre-quota southern Australian shark fishery.7 As with shark fishermen, the shrimpers described by White considered their prey to be elusive and sometimes attributed their success to “pure dumb luck” (1988:32). As such, many relied on information they gleaned from other shrimpers, either in the form of explicit exchanges or by recognising how a boat manoeuvres when “she’s in the shrimp” (ibid:28), and cluster in order to partake of the shoal. White identified a number of ways that shrimpers clustered, and categorised them according to their varying degrees of cooperation and competition. As with shark fishermen, there are those who tend to rely greatly on information from others and those who prefer their own

7 White posed the hypothesis that clustering would occur in fisheries where the target species were mobile and elusive, where environmental, economic and technological conditions allowed for multiple boats to work one patch of fish, and where communication technology facilitated various clustering configurations. While I would add a caveat prerequisite that fishermen must envisage ongoing interactions with the same group in order to participate in cooperative exchanges, the shark fishery of Bass Strait meets the criteria proposed by White (1988:35). 296 counsel. White’s categories did not apply to particular fishermen, however, but characterised patterns that individuals switched between as context and mood dictated. “Flexibility and switching of strategies are hallmarks of individual behaviour in shrimping. There is also an aggregate flexibility which results from simultaneous operation of varied individual strategies” (ibid:30). White found that the ‘aggregate flexibility’ between cooperating and competing among Alabama shrimpers meant that it was virtually impossible for shrimpers not to cluster at some point: “almost any strategist will be dissuaded from prior intentions… if he discovers a boat obviously turning around on shrimp” (ibid). It seems that there were no true ‘heroes’ in the Alabama shrimp fishery, either. Through a general pattern of spreading out to find shrimp and then converging upon a shoal, shrimpers maximised their hunting potential and increased the aggregate catch of the fleet. The individuals within that fleet also caught marginally better than they would have had they fished in isolation (ibid:34).

While White explicitly discussed the ‘skipper effect’ only briefly, his consideration of ‘skill’ was akin to Durrenberger and Pálsson’s in that he focused upon how shrimpers evaluated the skill of other skippers. “Many shrimpers believe that individual skill and experience, or simple good luck, make a difference in ability to find shrimp” (White 1988:34). Rather than trying to isolate and assign a numerical value to some ‘objective’ measure of ‘skill’, however, White (ibid) questions the feasibility of such quantitative aims:

Whether or not there is a statistically identifiable ‘skipper effect’, subjective evaluations of ability result in broad sampling of the environment, and synergistic information flow results in a ‘fleet effect’, ie., in optimal fishing for most boats.

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White did not completely discount the possibility that some shrimpers were more ‘skilled’ than others, either in the commonsense or stereotypic sense. However, he explained that clustering facilitated a levelling out of catches at sea, such that those who repeatedly found shrimp would forgo some to interlopers, while those who would otherwise catch poorly were able to land more shrimp by encroaching on somebody else’s patch. Thus, genuine distinctions between the ‘skills’ of various skippers would be ‘masked’ in the landed boat catch records used to rank skippers. The crux of White’s paper was that individual skill could not be statistically isolated using catch landing figures because stable and elevated catch rates were enabled through synergistic fleet activity: a ‘fleet effect’. Individual success could not be isolated from group activity.

White’s depiction of how shrimpers combine their skills synergistically aptly reflects the situation among shark fishermen. However, an understanding of the relationship between individual skill and collective activity could benefit from further discussion. While White implied that the ‘fleet effect’ statistically obfuscated any existing ‘skipper effect’, there remained an assumption that there was ‘individual skill’ to be detected. In relation to the shark fishermen of Bass Strait, rather than holding on to this unsatisfactory distinction between the individual and the collective, it is more fitting to consider collective activity as the basis upon which fishing proceeds. Protestations of individuality enable the kind of flexible aggregation both White and I have described – the strategic movement across social boundaries – and justify the individual accumulation of capital. While I do not deny that some skippers are ‘better’ than others, none are so good as to ‘become’ fishermen without the assistance of predecessors and colleagues.

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Again, it is pertinent to consider the use of the term ‘luck’. White (1988:34) refers to a ‘skipper effect’ that combines both commonsense and stereotypic emic understandings: “individual skill and experience, or simple good luck”. Velero (1994:158) groups the attributes of an individual skipper in a similar way, when she refers to a skipper effect that incorporates ‘innate ability’, ‘acquired skills’ and ‘luck’. While ‘individual skill’ and ‘innate ability’ are inherent (stereotypic), and while ‘experience’ and ‘acquired skills’ are accumulated through practice (commonsense), ‘good luck’ hints at some mystical quality that is somehow manifest beyond the individual. In some cases, ‘luck’ may be used to explain that which cannot be rationalised, completely random occurrences. In others, fishermen may adhere to mystical prescriptions as a safeguard against dangers at sea. Or, as Palmer (1990a) notes, fishermen may cite ‘bad luck’ in order to excuse the failure of a friend or speak of ‘good luck’ to account for the success of an adversary. I propose that fishermen may refer to ‘luck’ in order to smooth the conceptual disruption between entrenched understandings of individuality and manifestations of synergistic benefits which individual fishermen accrue as a result of skilled group cooperation.

Conclusion

This chapter has drawn together some of the ethnographic data and anthropological literature to illustrate how claims to individuality are maintained in contexts of group cooperation by relegating slippages to the domain of ‘luck’. The intrusion of others into representations of individual success is corrected by anonymising the facilitators, thus maintaining the appearance of fisher autonomy. As has been illustrated through reference to the ‘skipper effect’ debate, analysts, too, are susceptible to discourses of the ‘rugged individualist’: even when denying a ‘skipper effect’ they may appeal to ‘luck’ rather than 299 thoroughly investigate the social domain. As mentioned earlier, however, this masking process should not be regarded as deliberate or calculated on behalf of either fishermen or scholars. Rather, I would suggest that the dominance of neo-liberal sentiments in the industrialised West disposes all concerned to notions that privilege the individual over the collective. The following chapter considers the role of the nation-state in promoting peculiarly neo-liberal brands of individualism and community, a perspective that does not accommodate the tempering presence of mystical sentiments such as luck and fishing magic. Unlike the ‘rugged individualism’ embodied by fishermen, where bonds to likeminded others are tacitly vital, the ‘citizen’ proposed by the nation-state resembles a strictly bounded, economic maximising ‘utilitarian individualist’. Without tropes and tactics such as those described in this and the previous three chapters – the use of ‘prosthetic’ deckies, gleaning and withholding information and references to ‘luck’ – the ‘individual’ in the southern Australian commercial fishing industry begins to take on a different appearance. In particular, the boundaries between him and his environment – including the ocean, fish, boats as well as other fishermen – begin to crystallise into something solid. In contrast to the malleable, ambiguous boundaries that have so far been described as facilitating the meaningful movement of fishermen through their physical and social worlds, the next two chapters consider conceptual boundaries that are markedly more rigid.

The Cartesian Spectre: The ambiguity of ‘individualism’ in centralised management

The experience by persons of their individuality is a function of the way they are so constituted in the instituted practices of the state and of its agents.

– Bruce Kapferer, Bureaucratic erasure (1995:82).

The lives of Bass Strait shark fishermen are inextricable from the lived experiences of creative and re-creative activity within a network of physical and social features. Or, as I was repeatedly told by various shark fishermen, “it’s not just what we do, it’s who we are!” The lives of Bass Strait shark fishermen are also somewhat ambiguous.

In Chapter 3, I described how the meanings generated among fishermen and their physical environment are circumstantial and, sometimes, even contradictory. Though the worlds of shark fishermen are ordered 301 by various physical and cosmological boundaries – such as between land and sea, above and below the waterline – it is their ability to, variously, emphasise and transgress these boundaries which enable them to move fluidly and meaningfully through their physical and social reality. Few other categories of people inhabit the physical domain encountered by fishermen (naval personnel and cruise ship staff are two exceptions), and even fewer are also privy to the social reality of fishermen. Fishermen inhabit a domain that is rarely represented as the ‘proper’ abode of people (Minnegal et al. 2003:64). And yet they are often characterised, and self-identify, as uncomplicated, everyday Australian men. In their actions and representations, fishermen are associated with contradictory stereotypes of the ordinary, accepted and conventional, and the unusual, remarkable and transgressive. There is a sense in which fishermen perform ambiguity – strategically presenting themselves as collaborators or competitors – and, as such, come to symbolise the very ambiguity that enables them to negotiate seemingly contradictory roles.

In earlier chapters, I discussed the ambiguity of boundaries among shark fishermen themselves, particularly between shark boat skippers and deckies. This relationship was described as ‘prosthetic’, with those deckies engaged in the act of catching shark described as bodily extensions of their skipper. These bonds blur the boundaries between skipper and deckie. However, the prevalence of these ‘prosthetic’ relationships posed a curious conundrum as they occur in relationships among self-professed ‘individuals’. In Chapter 5, I expanded upon this conundrum further, focussing on the contradiction between claims to ‘individuality’ and serial cooperation among skippers as they go about the business of hunting shark. I described the role of ‘ambiguity’ as facilitating strategic alternation between cooperation and competition: a fisherman can assert his ‘individuality’ in order to extricate himself from 302 a cooperative relationship, enabling him to invest in a different relationship or course of action. Such claims to ‘individuality’ are a trope, however, as shark fishermen are implicated and deeply embedded in the lives of others, and inextricably bound to their own personal histories, and those of their family and acquaintances. How a fisherman has behaved towards others in the past acts as vital social data, compiled in the collective memory of the fishing industry, and drawn upon by other fishermen in the negotiation of future encounters between individuals. To cooperate and compete, perpetually and strategically, sometimes simultaneously, to be ‘ambiguous’, is a skill. Bass Strait shark fishermen are neither truly ‘individual’ nor explicitly cooperative, but rather, they perform – embody – an ambiguity that enables them to move fluidly and meaningfully through physical and social reality. In the previous chapter, I described how this performed ambiguity is difficult to name, and how the disruption to explicitly acknowledged boundaries is sometimes masked by fishermen and anthropologists through the use of such tropes as the notion of ‘luck’. ‘Luck’ – a performance enhancer or detractor attributable to something beyond the ‘individual’ – is sometimes used to ‘explain’ the ‘unexplainable’: collectively enabled individual success.

In this chapter, I consider experiences and understandings of ‘individuality’ that differ markedly from those explored in the thesis so far. Compared to earlier chapters, the present discussion concerns the activities of people at a broader, somewhat more decontextualised and abstracted level. That is, I examine the role of bureaucracy and the nation-state in defining and regulating individuals and their relationship to their environment. While the previous chapters have focussed on the experiences of fishermen, this chapter expands the discussion to include people who work as agents of the state. Particular attention will be given to those civil servants who manage Australian 303 commercial fishermen: staff of the Australian Fisheries Management Authority (AFMA). As in previous chapters, the notion of ambiguity will be central to the discussion. However, whereas previous chapters have described a style of ambiguity which facilitates the strategic action of complex social individuals – ‘strategic ambiguity’ - this chapter considers how the structures and processes of nation-state bureaucracy posit people and environments in a manner that generates a style of ambiguity that is ‘rigid’ rather than fluid – ‘rigid ambiguity’.

‘Rigid ambiguity’ alludes to an experiential condition, or a state of being, arising from the way in which the nation-state defines the individual citizen, or particular environmental phenomena. The majority of both people and things are bureaucratically classifiable according to sets of rigid, generic qualities, rights and obligations defined for the purpose of centralised monitoring and administering of subjects and territories. Blau (1956:60) draws upon Weber when he defines bureaucracy according to its purpose as “an institutionalized method of organizing social conduct in the interest of administrative efficiency”. For the sake of ‘administrative efficiency’, complex social individuals are periodically compelled to conform to generic roles, associated with predetermined bundles of rights and obligations which accord with the specific concerns of various administrative sections of state (eg. health, education, transport). Rather than performing ambiguity by strategically manoeuvring an entire personality into a different, but nonetheless coherent, role, ambiguity emerges in the bureaucratic context because people are compelled to divide themselves up, simultaneously conforming to multiple roles that are each defined using limited and specific criteria. In each bureaucratic context, the corresponding, essentialised, fractured person represents the entirety of that person, while other qualities are rendered irrelevant or, at least, the jurisdiction of another bureaucratic department. Some individuals 304 find that they are unable to tailor their own presentation, their own personal history, according to the available criteria: they fall outside all categories, simultaneously conform to multiple categories, or cannot fully reconcile the available categories with their lived environmental parameters. To complicate matters further, when the specific concerns of different bureaucratic branches are considered concurrently, the complex social individual may be simultaneously essentialised in a variety of ways. Problems arise when the particular qualities relevant to these generic roles cannot be sustained concurrently without compromise. Feelings of uncertainty, confusion, conflict and frequent official censure can become the ‘rigid’ experience of ‘transgressive’ individuals.1 Just as the strategic ambiguity performed by fishermen

1 Typically, individuals are pressured to comply with laws or protocols, although in some cases the bureaucratic boundaries are altered to avoid continuous breaches. Foucault has established a wide scholarly appreciation of situations in which people and things are deemed to fall outside the bounds of classification, and the repercussions of such transgressions (Foucault 1973, 1977). Consider the censure of the Bakhtiari family, refugees who arrived in Australia between 1999 and 2001. The family claimed to be from Afghanistan but were placed in detention centres due to the government’s assertion that they were, in fact, Pakistani. Despite initially verifying that the father of the family was from central Afghanistan, the testimony of linguists that the Bakhtiari’s were, indeed, Afghani, the young children’s drawings of Taliban executions (supporting their claims to refugee status), and various desperate pleas from the family, the documentary evidence was scant and contradictory. Regardless of eleventh-hour documented verification from the Afghan government that the family were Afghan citizens, the Australian government deemed the matter finalised. The Bakhtiari family were deported to Pakistan in December 2004, from where they crossed into Afghanistan (McGeough 2005). The failure to conclusively classify the Bakhtiaris in terms of the relevant bureaucratic criteria resulted in years of uncertainty and trauma for the family. In some cases, boundaries can be changed to accommodate those who consistently fall outside them. Prior to 2001, those who entered Australian territories without appropriate documentation could apply for temporary refugee visas. Many of these people arrived by boat, via islands to the north of the country. In 2001 the Australian government passed laws to recognise these islands as ‘excised offshore places’. Those apprehended in excised offshore places were subsequently ineligible to apply for an Australian visa, and yet were subject to Australian law, and could be detained on cooperative Pacific islands until they were officially classified by the Australian government (Government of Australia 2005). Note that in both cases, it is the nation-state that ultimately decides how bureaucratic boundaries are to be applied, and that in both cases this interpretation favoured the aims of the nation-state. 305 affords them certain benefits, rigid ambiguity can result in punishment.

The purpose of the current chapter is to chart what happens when essentialised subjects or citizens – ‘commercial shark licence holders’ – encounter other essentialised citizens – ‘civil servants’ – in the context of managing a bureaucratically defined and represented environment: ‘the ocean’ and ‘commercial fisheries’. In order to demonstrate the rigid ambiguity generated in this context, I consider the experience of complex social individuals fulfilling essentialised roles as defined within the bureaucratic context of the Australian Fisheries Management Authority. While previous chapters have drawn upon the notion of a ‘prosthetic’ relationship between individuals, in order to convey their mutual connection, the current chapter juxtaposes the notion of ‘amputation’ in order to emphasise the simplification, the reduction, the essentialisation, of individuals within a bureaucratic context.

These essentialised subjects, amputees, do not exist in the same way as socially and environmentally embedded, complex people. Rather, essentialised people are symbols pertaining to particular aspects of a complex social individual. In addressing this relationship between symbol and symbolised, I will employ another symbolic tool: Descartes’ss notion of the ‘ghost in the machine’, or the Cartesian split between mind and body. The idea of a central force directing the activities of a responsive and yet passive and peripheral body, which correspondingly sustains the very same centre, is metaphorically ideal for a consideration of a centralised governing core and a collective of citizens. A section at the beginning of this chapter will be devoted to describing Descartes’ dilemma. In order to demonstrate the prevalence of dualistic cosmological representations in Western popular culture I will draw upon the notion of ‘Big Brother’. I will then consider the applicability of Descartes’ model to a study of bureaucracy in the Australian context. 306

The second section will develop material introduced in Chapter 2, relating to a particular bureaucratic phenomenon that was implemented in the Southern Shark Fishery around the time I began fieldwork. Individual Transferable Quota, or ITQ, refers to an administrative system operated by the Australian Fisheries Management Authority, which directs the activities of thousands of fishermen around the country (ABARE and FRDC 2005:8-9). The structure of this system closely resembles a Cartesian model of centralised administration of peripheral bodies. Through a consideration of how this model of interaction impacts upon the lives of actual people – fishermen and civil servants – we see that there are unforseen consequences that compromise the coherence of complex social individuals when they are rendered in a bureaucratic context. Fishermen express frustration stemming from the perception that their complex circumstances are trivialised within a bureaucratic context, and yet regularly demand equitable treatment from AFMA staff. Fisheries managers display great dedication to the maintenance of an essentialised persona, but are necessarily unable to completely disregard their own opinions and feelings towards particular fishermen.

What follows is a description of several public servants, including Frederick, Margaret, Quinton, Tristan and Neville. All are skilled negotiators of the bureaucratic fisheries management system operating in Australia. Their skills are based upon their ability to prioritise, dynamically and strategically, those characteristics in people that are relevant for a particular bureaucratic function. Essentialising their clients – fishermen – is an important component of their skill, as this enhances the efficiency of large-scale administration (Blau 1956:60, Kapferer 1995, Weber 1965). However, in these stories we see how they also essentialise themselves, bracketing off various traits, beliefs or opinions, in order to maintain a consistently detached, anonymous, 307

‘professional’ relationship with colleagues and clients. This compartmentalisation resembles a temporary ‘amputation’ of otherwise integral aspects of their personalities. In this way, they act as personifications of the nation-state, embodying a disinterested and fractured perspective on administrative tasks, generic citizens and real people. Of course, the traits, beliefs and opinions of complex individuals – like Frederick, Quinton, Margaret, Tristan and Neville – sometimes breach the rigid compartments employed to maintain the common order, once again resulting in a form of ‘rigid ambiguity’.

A consideration of Descartes, the development of his ideas, and a consideration of how these ideas continue to exert an organising force upon modern Western conceptions of order, will help to explain the ambiguity experienced by both fisheries managers and commercial fishermen.

Descartes and state centralisation

The reason for considering Descartes’ss model is not to debate the validity of the proposition itself. In previous chapters, I have described the lives of shark fishermen as a continuous stream of doing and knowing, of experiencing and understanding the world simultaneously. Through these representations I am consistent with the present trend among social theorists to dismiss Descartes’ss suggestion of a distinction between mind and body (Dennett 1991, Ingold 2000c, Midgley 2000, Žižek 1999). As Dennett (1991) notes, however, it is the imagery of a centralised power, of a duality between mind and matter, that is difficult to truly renounce, and which continues to pervade our broad notions of order. Dennett (ibid:107) chides materialists for continuing to focus on the brain as the locus of consciousness:

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Let’s call the idea of such a centered locus in the brain Cartesian materialism, since it’s the view you arrive at when you discard Descartes’ss dualism but fail to discard the imagery of a central (but material) Theater where ‘it all comes together’.

Žižek (1999:1) suggests that it is precisely due to the incessant attempts of Western philosophers to overcome the tendency towards dualistic understandings of the world, that “Cartesian subjectivity continues to be acknowledged by all academic powers as a powerful and still active intellectual tradition”.

Writing in the 17th Century, Descartes spent much of his career explaining and debating the order and nature of human existence and consciousness (Anscombe and Geach 1970).2 One of Descartes’ss primary concerns was to articulate the distinction, and relationship, between tactile human bodies and the intangible spirits that he believed to animate them. The association between ‘body’ and ‘mind’ or ‘body’ and ‘soul’ proposed by Descartes was complex. He described a system of muscles, bones and neurons, controlled, directed and driven by a force that could exist apart from the body and in an unrelated form. However, rather than conceiving of an empty vessel occupied by a driver, Descartes stressed that the essential division between body and mind coexisted with an inextricable bond between the two. Sensations affecting the body – pleasures and pains – were experienced by the mind as emotions. Descartes’ss body and mind were substantially different, however, in terms of their perseverance. The amputation of individual body parts would not necessarily compromise the integrity of the mind. However, once the mind, or soul, departed, the body was no longer

2 Descartes wrote about, and debated, many issues including those regarding the ontology of the soul, the origin of emotion and physical sensation, the existence and nature of the physical world, of ourselves, and, indeed, of God. Volumes of exegesis exist, and many of Descartes’s thoughts are recorded as correspondence, most notably with Hobbes, and with Princess Elizabeth. 309 capable of life. Descartes argued that the mind did not reflect the body in appearance, substance or form, preferring to envisage the mind, or soul, as unimaginable, as like God (Koyre 1970).3 Koyre (ibid:xiii) paraphrases Descartes’ss challenging ideas when he explains:

The soul is a purely spiritual being…. The idea of the soul does not include the idea of the body, and [we can] perfectly well deny the existence of our body without being in the least obliged to renounce, or even to modify, the exercise of our consciousness…. Conversely, the idea of matter, of body, does not and cannot include consciousness. Body is neither less nor more than extension; and extension can only be an object of thought, not its subject. Yet we know, or we feel, and are perfectly certain that we have a body, that we are united to it, that with it we form a real and intimate unity. We are not in the body as the pilot is in the ship.

However, throughout his career, Descartes struggled to consistently represent the body and mind as simultaneously unified and distinct (Monroy-Nasr 1998).4 Perhaps influenced by the philosophical mood of ‘reason’ and ‘logic’ advanced by predecessors such as Aristotle and Bacon, Descartes seemed unable to resist the logic of secular relationships (Koyre 1954:x-xiv). For example, in Principles of Philosophy, Descartes explains, “we must realise that, although the human soul gives form to the whole body, its chief seat is in the brain; it is there alone that it performs, not only intellection and imagination, but even sensation” (Descartes 1970:229). Indeed, some critics suggest that the distinction between mind and body was never truly realised in Descartes’s work (Monroy-Nasr 1998, Sorell 1995:84-6).

3 Descartes was deeply religious and referred all of his papers to the decrees and approval of the Catholic Church (Koyre 1970). 4 Though some scholars suggest that Descartes initially prioritised the division of body and soul, and that later he showed a preference for a sense of union, Monroy-Nasr’s (1998) textual examination of Descartes convincingly suggests that elements of both extremes pervaded all of Descartes writings. 310

As scientists, philosophers and social theorists seek an ‘explanation’ for how people ‘are’ in the world, by explicitly attempting to smooth away a particular boundary between mind and body – and even between mind/body and external matter – the effect is often to reiterate that very boundary (Barth 2000). The ‘ghost in the machine’ haunts Western cosmologies, traversing the ambiguous terrain between myth and reality, life and death, the witting and the dumb, continually re- emerging in the structures that are fabricated in, and that order, our societies. As Žižek (1999) has discussed, centralised management in modern nation-states is reminiscent of the centrally focussed model of Cartesian dualism.

The Nation-State

The nation-state is notoriously difficult to define since it is simultaneously both product and producer of society. Many attempts to untangle the ‘reality’ of the nation-state – what it is, how it operates and how it affects citizens – are evident in both popular culture and scholarly endeavour (Anderson 1991, Balibar 2004, Gellner 1983, Gülalp 2006, Handler 1988, Herzfeld 1997, Hoffman and Faulks 2004). A number of brief examples will illustrate how dualistic conceptions of the nation-state manifest in popular Western ideology. In television series like The X-Files5 and Alias, layer upon layer of anonymous government departments and shadowy officials hide ‘the truth’ from the everyday folk they ultimately control. As in other Western countries,

5 In the episode, Musings of a cigarette smoking man (The X-files 1996), the mysterious agent known only as ‘Cancer Man’ speaks with a fellow ‘shadowy figure’, reflecting upon their clandestine roles in the shaping of world events:

How many historic events have only the two of us witnessed together, Ronald? How often did we make or change history? And our names can never grace any pages of record. No monument will ever bear our image. And yet once again, tonight, the course of human history will be set by two unknown men... standing in the shadows. 311 these programs are extremely popular among Australian audiences (Australian Film Commission 2006). In Orwell’s famous novel, Nineteen-Eighty-Four, London is part of a totalitarian society ruled by a metaphorical nation-state in the form of a clandestine figurehead known as ‘Big Brother’. Citizens are observed and coerced by the panoptic gaze of ‘Big Brother’, aided by loyal functionaries who are coordinated in a complex administrative system. Nineteen-Eighty-Four, originally published almost 60 years ago in 1949, is still widely acclaimed for its predictive content. The suggestion that ‘Big Brother is watching’, or that the nation-state is surreptitiously policing its citizens, is now thoroughly integrated into Western discourse.

The persistent salience of Orwell’s story has spawned the recent reality- television game-show, Big Brother. The game begins when a group of willing participants are chosen to live in an isolated, purpose-built house for several months. Hidden cameras and microphones capture every move and utterance of the housemates, from group dynamics to private conversations, and this information is broadcast continuously. Furthermore, the participants obey the commands of an unseen Big Brother (fabricated by the program operators), under threat of expulsion from the house. The object is to win a popularity contest with viewers, who successively vote out housemates until only one – the winner – remains. The success of the concept has meant that few in the Western world have not had access to the Big Brother phenomenon in the last few years. In Australia, Big Brother has consistently rated in the top ten annual programs since it first screened in 2001 (Australian Film Commission 2006). As one British commentator reflects (McKenzie 2006):

The impact of Big Brother was to be seen on the front pages of the tabloids and overheard in the office and on the tube, producing a 312

'collective shared experience' for the nation.… The viewer was given a position of power over the contestants. We were privileged in our knowledge, we could see what the contestants could not. We knew… long before they did.

In these comments, published on a website dedicated to evangelicalism, there is a strong sense of how the Big Brother idea functions to reinforce Descartes’s – particularly Christian – notion of dualism. The viewer’s experience approximates that of a powerful and privileged overseer, perched on their couch, voyeuristically observing contestants and affecting their chances of winning by voting them out of the game. Or, to look at it another way, a nation of viewers is aligned by a shared knowledge that is ultimately controlled by a media company, over which viewers have limited control. Both ways of looking at the Big Brother experience reinforce the idea of a governing minority that is dependent upon, and yet which controls, the willing masses.

The idea that a person, or group of people, control everything from some privileged vantage point is typically derided by scholars. Žižek (1999:336-9) is representative, asserting that there is no puppeteer pulling the strings of society and compelling individuals to dance to a common tune. And yet, it can hardly be denied that the system of centralised institutions that constitute the state does exert some form of organising force upon society (Anderson 1991:6, Collmann 1988:77, Gellner 1983:3-5, Kapferer 1995, Milward et al. 2000, Risse 2002). These institutions are tacitly manifest to citizens in everyday encounters with the police, legal and government documents, the media and state officials. Like the ghost in Descartes’s machine, the notion of the nation-state is somewhat ambiguous, difficult to identify positively and holistically, and yet tangibly evident to all those who live, day to day, under its governance. The difficulty of identifying the nation-state is compounded by the fact that citizens never encounter ‘the nation- 313 state’ itself, but rather, engage with one of its most efficient tools: bureaucracy.

Bureaucracy

Much of the current discourse used to discuss the nation-state, bureaucracy and bureaucrats originated in Weberian texts. According to Weber, the nation-state, and the bureaucratic system that supports it, arose as a developmental successor of feudal systems of governance. Like other systems, the modern nation-state controls subjects through the threat of violence, and occasionally by actual physical force. However, Weber’s (1965:2 emphasis added) notion of the modern nation-state “is a human community that successfully claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory”. In other words, while it may be argued that citizens of the modern nation-state comply with certain rules wittingly in exchange for civil, economic and physical security, the persuasive power of the nation- state is to represent subject compliance and government benefaction as normative.6 Though many Western countries still pay lip service to a personified head-of-state, a truly efficient bureaucratic system has no need of an actual King or ‘Big Brother’ to issue regular decrees. Rather, “the state has taken their positions and now stands in the top place” (ibid:6).

The abstruse phenomenon called the nation-state is generated by the sum of coordinated actions of administrators, and instituted with some

6 The attention Weber gave to the relationship between a government and its charges was not, in itself, a new direction in philosophy. Rather, his work emerged upon a foundation of hundreds of years of scholarly consideration by thinkers such as Rousseau, Hume, Locke and Plato. All addressed the role of normative mutual obligation between a head-of-state and citizens – a ‘social contract’ (Barker 1947). Weber’s attention to more contemporary nation-states, and the subsequent use of nation-state terminology that is more relevant to modern examples, make Weber’s writing most useful to the current discussion. 314 consistency via a standardised register of rules (both legal and administrative), which are communicated among administrators. Perfect, or ‘ideal-type’, bureaucracies operate according to “abstract rules” that are uniformly applied to a range of individual people and scenarios (Blau 1956:29). Such a system of uniformity, regularity, predictability and accountability, promotes temporal, administrative and financial efficiency in the operation of the nation-state (cf. Wittman and Geisler 2005).

When abstract rules are applied to an individual, the effect can be to disembed the person from the context of their life, rendering them an abstract or theoretical person. As Kapferer (1995:82) has noted:

bureaucratic processes… specify particular human beings (dead or alive or who may never have existed), but the totality or profile of the individual is one which has its significant elements defined in the bureaucratic system. It is disembodied, as it were.

Real people are fractured into bureaucratically relevant elements, their entire person defined within the bureaucratic context by those relevant elements. In bureaucratic space one can be imagined as a sliver of an otherwise complex people – as just a fisherman, just a bureaucrat, just a number – depending on the criteria of the relevant bureaucratic procedure.

Depending on the elements identified as relevant, a single person can simultaneously meet the criteria of multiple ‘citizens’. As Kapferer (1995:82) puts it, “depending on the bureaucratic task, the individual as bureaucratically identified may be very different and separated things …. A classified part of the individual will operate as the totality”. Or, as it is often put by fishermen and bureaucrats alike, one person may wear many ‘hats’. The notion that one can change their ‘hat’, or 315 emphasise their personification of particular elements, qualities, or perspectives, enables one to play different roles as the situation dictates. However, while each role is, at most, a fragment of the complex socially embedded person, for the bureaucratic task at hand the essentialised citizen is taken as the whole person. Factors, characteristics or attributes that may otherwise complicate or contradict the pertinent features of a bureaucratically defined ‘citizen’, may never emerge as a point of conflict because the offending factors are amputated from consideration. The strategic negotiation of ambiguous identities that commercial fishermen employ to such great effect is disabled in the bureaucratic context, precisely because abstract citizens are represented according to simplistic, coherent, uniform and rigid features.

The duplication and fragmentation of the individual, in a bureaucratic sense, is different to the notion of a multiplicity of ‘roles’ comprising a single, actual person. In the latter case, as George Herbert Mead (1936) evoked compellingly, one’s individual identity, the ‘I’, is a retrospectively reconstituted amalgamation of a variety of personal roles, each referred to as a ‘me’. The individual has agency to strategically emphasise, alter, or create particular roles – adopting a different ‘me’, or ‘changing hats’, accordingly – as the situation dictates, thus influencing their overall identity, or ‘I’. Strategic self-presentation is a vital aspect of our ability to engage successfully and convincingly in a range of social situations (Goffman 1959, Harré and van Langenhove 1999, Henriques et al. 1988). Though representing people as essentialised and standardised citizens may be a useful administrative tool, symbolic citizens cannot accurately capture the complexity of a real person. As we learn from Kant, our subjective experience of the world “is the positive ontological condition of reality itself” (Žižek 1999:158 original emphasis). Real people do not exist as homogenised citizens devoid of context and 316 contradiction.

Nonetheless, such fragments of people can be imagined, represented symbolically, as, say, John and Jane Citizen. Symbolised people are features in a bureaucratic landscape, in bureaucratic space – in law, political discourses, policy directives, bureaucratic documents and in formal encounters with nation-state officials. The legal validity and rigidity of bureaucratic roles restricts the propensity for individuals to maintain an overall appearance of ambiguity. Rather, they are compelled to represent themselves – or are represented by nation- state administrators – in a range of standardised personas that exist simultaneously. All of the roles may be difficult to reconcile in the one person without the periodic prioritisation of one or another – perhaps either ‘collaborator’ or ‘competitor’. By simultaneously shining a torch on a plethora of characteristics, the nation-state illuminates inconsistencies, forcing them from the protective shadows of ‘ambiguity’ and into the unforgiving spotlight of ‘contradiction’ and ‘transgression’.

In the next section I will demonstrate how these essentialised citizens are manifest in bureaucratic space, using the example of ITQs. Within this system of management, fishermen, as well as fish, boats and other elements of the commercial fishing experience, are represented in essentialised form. A centralised body, the Australian Fisheries Management Authority, coordinates these representations and the corresponding complex individuals are compelled to act according to AFMAs constructions. Individual performances can be clumsy, or simply impossible, because the particular qualities that the representations omit can problematise the ability of complex individuals to act in the way the management model demands. 317

Fishermen in Bureaucracy – the implementation of Individual Transferable Quotas

As I explained in Chapter 2, AFMA is a statutory regulatory body charged with managing the activities of the commercial fishermen who fish the Commonwealth waters of Australia. Emblematic of the centralised management techniques reflected in many AFMA procedures, the AFMA offices are in the centre of the national capital, Canberra. Harkes (2001) notes that top-down management is facilitated by having fisheries ‘experts’ in the one, central location. From this central position, AFMA employees are privy to an enormous amount, and range, of information on Australian fisheries, gathered through a bureaucratic structure that stretches all the way to the wheelhouse of individual boats. Shark boat skippers, for example, are required to complete data forms for every shot, detailing, among other things, what they caught, and where. This information is sent to AFMA, stored, and subsequently applied to the various ‘management tools’ used by AFMA to manage the fishery. ‘Management tools’ are not physical implements, but, rather, are theoretical plans, arrangements or strategies according to which the management of an entire fishery is orchestrated. These overarching directives provide homogeneous rules that uniformly apply to all eligible ‘fishing licence holders’. Recognised and enforced by physically peripheral agents of the state, including State and Territory fisheries officers, management tools enable AFMA employees to control commercial shark fishermen at sea from an office in Canberra. Individual Transferable Quotas are one such management tool.

Just as citizens in bureaucratic space are fractured and simplified in order to facilitate administration, the ITQ management system rests upon simplistic models of human-environment interaction. In these 318 simplified models complex individuals, personal agency, external influences and environmental fluctuations are rendered secondary to the outcomes predicted by the models. Probably the most influential model – the ‘tragedy of the commons’ – predicts the behaviour of economically rational individuals within an open-access commons. The ‘tragedy of the commons’ has been an influential behavioural model applied in a range of natural resource management contexts globally (McCay and Acheson 1987, McGoodwin 1990:90, Neves-Graça 2004), and has been commonly used to rationalise moves by centralised Western nation-states to privatise fisheries in the form of Statutory Fishing Rights (Acheson 1994a:11), such as those used in the Australian context (see Chapter 2).

Tragedy of the commons

‘The tragedy of the commons’ theory, which came to prominence in Hardin’s 1968 paper of the same name, has been an influential behavioural model applied in natural resource management contexts globally, and is often cited as justification for the creation of exclusive fishing rights (Acheson 1994a:11, McCay and Acheson 1987, McGoodwin 1990:90). Hardin asserted that in a situation where autonomous individuals were allowed unrestricted access to a dwindling natural fund, a self-interested race to exploit the resource would result in the accelerated depletion of the commons: an environmental and economic tragedy. Behaviour that was economically and productively rational at the individual level was both economically and environmentally disastrous for the society as a whole.

The message that most natural resource managers take away from the ‘tragedy of the commons’ model is that the way to compel people to protect a resource is to give them a stake in conserving that resource. 319

Privatisation achieves this by assigning to the individual the costs of what they harvest, in terms of impact on future productivity.

Indeed, the measures proposed in the 1989 Australian policy document New Directions (see Chapter 2) reflect the assumption that assigning ownership rights to ocean resources will encourage the ‘owners’ to conserve it. At a public information session on ITQs held in Melbourne in early 2001, Jeremy, an AFMA employed marine scientist, patiently explained to a room of anxious and defensive fishermen and their family members that ITQs were necessary in order to prevent “what is known as ‘the tragedy of the commons’”. Jeremy explained that if a limited number of fishers were granted proxy ownership of the right to fish, in the form of Statutory Fishing Rights, or SFRs (see Chapter 2), they would be more likely to conserve the potential of the fishery, because the perpetuity of their privileged investment was dependent upon the health of the resource.

Numerous objections have been raised in response to the model, discussed at some length by McGoodwin (1990:89-96, also see Berkes 1985 and González-Laxe 2005). The responses of social scientists are probably best summed up by Ciriacy-Wantrup and Bishop, who point out that fisheries are not truly open-access, nor are they private property, but are somewhere in between. McCay and Acheson (1987:195) paraphrase Ciriacy-Wantrup and Bishop: "common property refers to diverse institutions... grounded in specific social and historical experience”. Frequently, Hardin’s model is used to describe an open- access common that does not exist.

There are two related points of contention relevant to the current discussion, both to do with the failure of the ‘tragedy of the commons’ model to capture the complexity of real life common property use 320 scenarios. The first assumption is that shark in Bass Strait are available for exploitation by any who choose to do so. This assumption is problematic for a number of reasons. Firstly, the restrictions placed upon entry to the shark fishery in the 1980s by the Australian Fisheries Service, and the further restrictions enforced under the Fisheries Management and Administration Acts (1991), place an almost insurmountable barrier before those wishing to enter the fishery. Secondly, the economic outlay required in order to enter the shark fishery is so high that entry is virtually restricted to those who are financially assisted by a family member or benefactor.7 Thirdly, as demonstrated in Chapter 4, the knowledge and skill required to operate at a financially viable level is typically restricted to those with ongoing social and productive ties to the community of shark fishermen.

The second assumption implied by those who employ the ‘tragedy of the commons’ model is that fishermen operate as truly autonomous beings, uninfluenced by those with whom they live, labour, recreate and reproduce. Challenging this assumption, McGoodwin (1990:93) observes, “it is clear in real-life situations that few users of common property are so unencumbered by societal restraints that they can behave as selfishly as the model predicts”. McGoodwin (ibid:94) proceeds, quoting McEvoy in order to emphasise the assumption that he finds “most objectionable about the tragedy-of-the-commons model”:

The farmers in Garrett Hardin’s ‘tragedy of the commons’ are fundamentally autonomous, self-serving, irresponsible creatures, as

7 While the cost of entering the shark fishery before quota was so high that new entrants were almost always financially assisted by the family members from whom they acquired their licence (Collins 2005), the financial costs associated with entering the shark fishery subsequent to the introduction of ITQ management has increased significantly due to the price of purchasing or leasing ‘quota units’. 321

radically alienated from each other as they are from the grass on which they feed their cows.

In a comparable criticism, economist Douglas North, a major contributor to the branch of social science known as institutional economics, notes that models like the ‘tragedy of the commons’, which predict human behaviour to be always self-maximising, tend to neglect the "complicated … motivation[s] of the actors" (1991:17). He observes that although few economists actually believe models can accurately predict human behaviour, they nonetheless regard these models as pretty good tools for approximating behaviour (ibid). North, and an increasing number of fisheries economists, have recognised the need to consider alternative strategies for fisheries management, strategies that anticipate realistic results rather than economically idealistic reflections of a theoretical model (consider the recommendations and observations of Acheson 1987:63, 1994, Feeny et al. 1996, Hirshleifer and Rasmusen 1992, Kuperan and Abdullah 1994:131, McGoodwin 1990:73, Stolpe 1991, Townsend 1995a,b, Wilson 1982:417, Wilson et al. 1994).

Indeed, as I demonstrated in Chapters 3-6, shark fishermen are fundamentally interdependent, displaying an integral relationship with their social and physical environment. Those wishing to participate, long-term, in this community must undergo a lengthy and gruelling period of initiation, which is almost beyond those without significant social ties to others in the industry. There is a sense in which the emic understanding of the men in the shark fishing industry is anchored to those individuals and relationships that facilitate the catching of shark, while the bureaucratic perspective shifts the focus from fishermen to the act of catching of fish. Should a fisherman be compelled to trade out of his quota, he effectively sells his right to be a shark fisherman. By ceasing to perform his role as ‘shark fisherman’, he distances 322 himself from that very identity. Furthermore, he withdraws his knowledge from the pool of background and current information that other fishermen draw upon to locate shark.

From a bureaucratic perspective, however, the exodus of any particular fisherman would have a minimal effect on the official operation of the fishery. The role of ‘fisherman’ or, rather, ‘fisher’, remains in the fishery, officially recognised by the existence of a fishing licence or quota documentation that belongs to someone. As far as the bureaucracy is concerned, the role of fisher could be filled by any number of eligible citizens, regardless of their relationship to the fishing industry, environment or community. Indeed, this role may be filled by someone operating under a company name which renders them anonymous to other community members. Even if that particular role – let us call it, ‘Fisher 42’ – became redundant, the ITQ units previously attached to Fisher 42 remain in the fishery, continuing to represent the opportunity for someone to catch shark. Connected via a paper-trail, or perhaps manifest in a complex arrangement of electronic data, the ITQ units retain their link to centralised management. Under a system which focuses on abstract opportunities, rights and obligations, where the ITQ units themselves are the stable and inalienable element of the fishery, it is fishermen who are transferable.

The bureaucratic process of assigning ITQ units to fishermen acts to essentialise the individual to the bundle of rights and responsibilities associated with the quota. ITQs are an appealing ‘tool’ in the centralised administration of disparate and dispersed commercial fishers, as the TAC functions as a measure of ‘conservative management’ regardless of the fleet configuration. Nation-state bureaucratic structures that regulate the behaviour of many millions of people, most of whom will never meet, designate appropriate behaviour 323 for theoretical individuals, for anonymous, interchangeable citizens. In bureaucratic space, shark fishermen are represented as rigidly defined, theoretical, disembodied ‘shark licence holders’, with corresponding obligations pertaining to their SFRs. These obligations and rights are regulated and policed by a centralised agency, staffed by civil servants who are compelled to engage simultaneously with fishermen in a way that is congruent with bureaucratic directives – impartially – and to negotiate the range of complex personalities encountered through face- to-face interactions with actual fishermen. Rendered at once as complex individuals embedded in physical and social networks and as interchangeable ‘shark licence holders’, shark fishermen are frozen, rigid, across the boundary of the actual and the theoretical. Shark fishermen are ambiguous in bureaucratic space, though it is not an ambiguity that can be strategically employed to negotiate their presentation. Rather, shark fishermen in bureaucratic space are ‘rigidly ambiguous’.

I must stress that there is little individual AFMA staff can do in order to untangle the bureaucratic quagmire that besets fisheries management. Rather, managers operate within tight performance parameters that prioritise outcomes and actions (Nespor 1989). Former industry managers, Currie and Golding (2000), have produced a compilation designed to alert current British managers to the risks of a ‘results oriented’ outlook on management. Contributors to their book address the pressure on managers to continually produce tangible ‘results’ in order to demonstrate their productivity, while research and consideration time is often deemed unproductive and hence undesirable. Fisheries management staff in Australia are similarly compelled by bureaucratic structures to make rapid decisions with “significantly incomplete knowledge” (Productivity Commission 1999:204). Decisions are made incrementally, according to broad goals 324 designed to encapsulate the largely unknown marine resource, and these decisions are sometimes reversed upon ‘discovery’ of an unforseen legal or administrative barrier. Furthermore, this management takes place within a closely tied two-party political system, where the public popularity of resource management decisions can significantly influence party popularity. Fisheries management in Australia has become twisted into a bureaucratic knot that simply cannot be undone without major overhaul of the entire system. However, such action would no doubt result in litigation and further bureaucratic complication that may have little effect upon the ecological sustainability of either fish populations or commercial fishing communities.

Civil-servants

Ideal-type bureaucrats

As a product of a bureaucratic system that essentialises individual fishermen to relevant fragments of their complex selves, fisheries managers themselves are fragmented and fashioned as unambiguous agents of the state. By maintaining a separation between their professional and personal lives, and with the aid of anonymising management tools such as ITQs, fisheries managers are able to make decisions about shark licence holders with limited regard for the lives of actual fishermen. In the final section of this chapter, I will discuss this detached objectivity in relation to the position occupied by civil servants in the organisational structure of the nation-state.

Though leaders have always delegated many of their tasks to loyal subordinates in order to facilitate the control of distant territories and subjects, such a system is prone to administrative heterogeneity and economic inefficiency. The creation of administrative roles for centrally 325 coordinated officials, and the standardisation of their procedures, aims and incentives, limits the range within which administrators can interpret the rules (Matheson 2000). Those who administer the abstract rules of the nation-state – bureaucrats and public servants – must execute their duties, as Weber says, “in a spirit of formalistic impersonality” (in Blau 1956:30), lest their personal feelings compel them to attend to irrelevant factors in the execution of their duties. Such deviation would result in bureaucratic inefficiency. Administrative specialisation assists in depersonalising administrators and clients, hence increasing bureaucratic efficiency.

Weber’s public servants perform their duties both in return for a stable wage and due to a faith in the moral and legal value of the bureaucratic system (Weber 1965:4,6,16,33, Whyte and Dalton 1955:179). Blau (1956:30) explains that in an ‘ideal-type’ bureaucracy:

impersonal detachment engenders equitable treatment of all persons and thus fosters democracy in administration .… The very factors that make a government bureaucrat unpopular with his clients, an aloof attitude and a lack of genuine concern with their problems, actually benefits these clients.

Indeed, such depersonalisation is regarded as appropriate, ‘professional’, behaviour for a civil servant. Weber (1965:16) explains:

The honor of the civil servant is vested in his ability to execute conscientiously the order of the superior authorities, exactly as if the order agreed with his own conviction. This holds even if the order appears wrong to him and if, despite the civil servant's remonstrances, the authority insists on the order. Without this moral discipline and self-denial, in the highest sense, the whole apparatus would fall to pieces. 326

The ‘apparatus’ of the Australian nation-state relies on the ‘honour’ of its civil servants, and their conviction that, by playing their part in the bureaucracy, they are indeed contributing to the overall wellbeing of the nation. Several civil servants explained to me that it was their ability to remain detached, to represent the government whilst disregarding their own opinions, that ensured they did their job properly. As explained by the Honourable Michael Egan (2004:10070), treasurer for the Australian state of New South Wales:

it is dangerous for Ministers to express a personal opinion because we are not here in our personal capacity; we are here as members of Her Majesty's Government, and the maxim is the King or Queen's speech with one voice.

Like the theoretical shark licence holder in bureaucratic space, the role of civil servant can be filled by any number of administratively eligible people. Indeed, civil servants are somewhat like shark fishers who can be figuratively transferred out of the fishery while their ITQ units remain. In the case of civil servants, they can be transferred, more literally, from one fisheries department to another, or even to a government department responsible for the administration of an entirely different industry. In the interest of efficiency, labour and behaviour protocols clearly and rigidly dictate the uniform and professional performance of each individual occupant of the position. In any generic civil service role, complex individuals check their life history, opinions, and relationships at the office door. These facets of themselves are temporarily amputated. In the dramaturgical performance of John and Jane Civil-Servant, personal fragments of the lives of corresponding complex individuals are irrelevant.

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Shortcomings of the ideal-type bureaucrat

The criticisms directed at the ‘tragedy of the commons’ model can also be focussed on the model of an ‘ideal-type’ bureaucracy, including the corresponding generic, ‘ideal-type’ bureaucrats. Like John and Jane Citizen, John and Jane Civil-Servant are abstractions from complex individuals, from real people. Sometimes these real people do not conform to the rigid, fractured, amputated roles to which they are externally assigned. Rather, they display characteristics that are incongruent with the correct, ‘professional’ persona of the civil-servant. Such transgressions may signify, to others in-tune with the bureaucratic ‘ideal’, that a particular civil-servant is ‘unprofessional’. However, civil servants can no more easily confine themselves to the fabricated role of John and Jane Civil-Servant than fishermen can ‘be’ generic shark licence holders (eg. Rice 2001). Rather, such ‘unprofessionalism’ may be an expression of the rigid ambiguity implicit in the presentation of the civil-servant who is, at once, a complex, socially embedded individual and a simple, streamlined administrator for the nation-state.

Contrary to the popular representation of ‘faceless bureaucrats’, civil- servants are not cold, soulless machines, impervious to the emotional pleas of those whose lives they influence. ‘Detached objectivity’ is not a natural state for fisheries managers. While working in their offices, they discuss weekend outings, sports, the personal lives of other managers and the various relationships they themselves maintain outside of work hours. At meetings, port visits, and, more commonly via phone, fax or email, fisheries managers encounter those fishermen whose daily lives are affected by management decisions. Some fisheries managers develop long-term relationships with fishermen and their families. For those individuals who are compelled to carry out the day-to-day 328 management of the shark fishery, maintaining a distinction between abstract ‘shark licence holders’ and men like Mick, Fat and Daffy, is, at times, difficult to achieve, particularly if the managers are compelled to interact with the fishermen directly.

At a port visit in 2002, I was encouraged to see fishermen present an uncommonly united appeal to AFMA staff regarding a current issue of fishery-wide concern. Prior to the meeting, the fishermen had generated a document of succinct dot-point responses to AFMA’s agenda items, and had presented these points during the meeting. During recess, I approached one of the managers and commented on the presentation. I suggested that it must be great when fishermen communicate their ideas in a format amenable to the bureaucratic context. To my surprise, the manager dismissed the presentation as the mischief of a particular fisherman whom he had recently encountered in a disciplinary context. I persisted to suggest that it must make his job easier having all the points written down. No, the manager reiterated. The document was merely the work of a ‘troublemaker’. The manager could obviously justify his antipathy towards the ‘troublemaker’ in terms of a toxic personal dynamic, and past antagonistic encounters. However, his response was not consistent with the impartial model of the ideal-type bureaucrat. This is hardly surprising given the unrealistically high levels of impartiality represented in the model.

I asked Margaret and Tristan, both young AFMA managers with a self- professed passion for the marine environment, how they felt when berated by fishermen for performing their role. I asked if they felt a conflict between doing their job and having empathy for a fisherman who was going out of business. Tristan explained that it was very important to be professional, and to remember that the words of 329 fishermen were not directed at him, personally. He noted, however, that if he picked up the phone and someone was already yelling into the receiver, he was less inclined to assist than if they were calm. Margaret explained that if she were talking to a fisherman who was complaining about protected species, such as seals, eating all the fish, her response might be, “Nahh, you’ve got that totally wrong. But when you hear them talking about making enough money to survive and seeing their family cared for you think, ‘Yeah, man, doesn’t everybody want that?’” In Margaret’s explanation, she clearly identified two separate fragments of a commercial fisherman: the complex individual with a family to support, and the citizen subject to AFMA’s regulatory censure.

Phantom pain of an amputated personality

The following example illustrates the difficulty with which some people fulfil the role of civil-servant, and how they learn to suppress those characteristics that are incongruous with a ‘professional’ performance. Frederick joined AFMA around the time the 23 percent gummy shark TAC reduction was announced, and he attended a correlative information session between AFMA staff and fishermen in Lakes Entrance. Many fishermen had made financial decisions based on the assurances of AFMA staff that the TAC would not be reduced for the first three years of ITQ management. As the first cut had been decided less than one year after implementation, some fishermen felt they had been, at best, misguided, or, at worst, deceived. Consequently, the mood of the fishermen at the Lakes Entrance meeting (and, reportedly, others held around Bass Strait), was characterised by worry, frustration and anger, generally directed at the representatives of AFMA, including Frederick. As Frederick made a lengthy presentation, periodically interrupted by curly questions and cynical comments, he was visibly nervous. Though he was clearly trying to perform his role to the best of 330 his ability, the difficulty of maintaining a polite but detached persona, when confronted with impassioned pleas from fishermen, was evident in his jerky body movements and wavering voice.

Of course, Frederick was not responsible for the 23 percent gummy shark TAC cut. The pluralistic structure of bureaucratic decision- making is such that no single AFMA representative present was wholly responsible for the decision to reduce the TAC. Certainly, some AFMA staff had directed advice to their superiors on the AFMA Board, but so had some fishermen, via their contribution to the Shark Management Advisory Committee (Shark MAC). Even at the level of the Board, a select committee accessible to only the most senior AFMA staff, it was not known who had voted for the reduction and who – if anyone – had opposed it. However, as enactors of nation-state directives, those managers present were compelled to present themselves as unambiguous representatives of AFMA, devoid of personal opinion or affectation. In this context, the entirety of the person filling the role of ‘AFMA manager’ consisted of their official capabilities, responsibilities and obligations. In this context, Frederick’s personality was obfuscated by his position as ‘civil-servant’.

Though Frederick’s experience that day was not enviable, another of the managers present bore far more of the criticism directed by fishermen at AFMA. Quinton, however, was extremely good at modifying his presentation to accord with the context, maintaining a rigidly professional demeanour when required. When somewhat distanced from his role as civil-servant (in informal contexts outside of meetings), however, Quinton often expressed warm sentiment for many of those people he encountered in the shark fishing industry. During this particularly fraught meeting in Lakes Entrance, in his role as official representative of AFMA, Quinton seemed to present a rare show of 331 conflict between his role as simple civil-servant and complex social being.

Deliberately antagonistic, a fisherman asked him to “admit”, for the benefit of the video-camera that I was operating, that he had promised there would be no cuts to the shark TAC in the first three years of ITQ management. Quinton replied, simply, that he had promised as much. Though the fisherman in question seemed to feel that the civil-servant’s answer demonstrated a failing on Quinton’s behalf, the ‘admission’ did not indicate that he had performed his bureaucratic role inadequately: some AFMA staff had, indeed, expressed a desire to stabilise the fishery TAC between 2001-2004. However, this plan was officially and legitimately invalidated by data that emerged during 2001, which compelled AFMA to reduce the TAC as required by the precautionary principle (EPBC 1999). As Quinton offered his simple response, choosing not to defend himself by citing his lack of authority to overrule a Commonwealth Act, his carefully subdued subjective opinion seemed bursting to emerge. Whether the tension evident in his appearance reflected a sense of unfair persecution towards the fisherman who had questioned him or revealed his frustration that he had been forced to break his promise (or annoyance at the person intensifying an already difficult situation by filming it), Quinton appeared to be suffering from the absence of those characteristics he was compelled to suppress for the purpose of his role as AFMA manager. Longing for that which had necessarily been removed – his subjective personality – Quinton seemed to experience the ‘phantom pain’ of those who feel discomfort in parts of their body that have long been amputated.

In their attempts to remain ‘professional’, Frederick, Tristan, Quinton and Margaret all struggled to suppress their personal responses, to detach, to temporarily amputate, those elements of themselves that did 332 not conform to their role as civil servants. When confronted only with representations of fishers, in the form of documents pertaining to generic shark licence holders, this detachment is somewhat more easily maintained. However, when confronted with real people, fisheries managers often find it difficult to sustain a fragmented, abstracted persona, only exhibiting those qualities relevant to their role as a fisheries manager, to the exclusion of all other qualities. It is through continual recourse to bureaucratic rules and ideals, to the ‘abstracted individual’ – let us call it, ‘Civil-servant 42’ – that many fisheries managers are able to maintain the illusion of objectivity. The detachment that fishermen often refer to with outrage and incredulity is explicitly cultivated within a bureaucratic culture.

Eradicating the ‘bad habits’ of Civil servant 42

One of the ways in which civil servants are encouraged to present a ‘professional’ demeanour is through explicit instruction and the censure of ‘bad habits’. Managers are directed to dress ‘professionally’ (in suits) during particular meetings with fishers, in order to convey the distinction between ‘managers’ and ‘the managed’.8 During a short period of fieldwork at the AFMA offices in Canberra, I was somewhat surprised to see the managers I had come to expect in suits, ties and high-heeled shoes, dressed casually. The visual cues projected by their apparel and self-stylisation imparted more detail about their personality than did the bland suits worn to most meetings with fishermen, and allowed for greater differentiation among the individuals.

8 One fisherman described the effectiveness of this self-presentation game, when he told a story about going to an AFMA meeting in somewhat shabby attire. He had been sitting across from a senior manager who had been extremely well dressed, and the fisherman had felt relatively parochial. He had vowed never to let ‘them’ make him “feel like that again”. Indeed, in a bureaucratic context, I never encountered this fisherman when he has not been immaculately dressed. 333

While in Canberra I talked with a number of managers about the various strategies they used for negotiating encounters with fishers, and especially volatile situations. In order to facilitate the development of these skills, AFMA staff attended a workshop conducted by the Australian Protective Service (APS). I was permitted to photocopy several copies of a workbook that had complemented past workshops: Aggression Management and Personal Safety – Field Staff (APS 2001). The workbook itself, as well as the comments written throughout in response to workshop discussion, provide a sense of how fisheries managers are trained to simultaneously manage ‘shark licence holders’ as well as actual people like Billy, David and Roger.

The opening pages of the workbook provide basic information on the legal parameters within which Commonwealth bureaucrats operate (APS 2001:2).9

Many people forget about their laws when they are placed in a conflict situation, when in fact legal parameters can be used as a powerful tool. Most people the public sector deals with are ignorant of the law and are often unaware that they are actually committing an offence.

The details that follow in the workbook include possible jail sentences that may apply to those who are found guilty of, for example, ‘hindering’ someone known to be a public official acting in their professional capacity (two years imprisonment). The purpose of providing this information seemed to be less in order to facilitate actual arrests, than in order to present the ‘rules’ to a potential offender in order to deter the actual offence. By emphasising the potential impact of the state and its laws, those involved in the exchange are compelled to submit to their

9 The relevant legislation is the Commonwealth Criminal Code 1995 (Commonwealth of Australia. 1995), and in particular, the section named ‘Obstruction of Commonwealth public officials’ (149.1). 334 nation-state defined roles.

Most of the workbook, however, relates to subtle ways in which officials can identify and deescalate potentially abusive or violent situations. An emphasis on the skill of maintaining a distinction between one’s ‘personal’ and ‘professional’ demeanour is reflected in both the body of the document, as well as in the words hand written by AFMA staff in the margins. The following examples demonstrate the way in which civil servants are compelled to ‘amputate’ parts of themselves in order to fulfil their roles as consistent and efficient agents of the nation-state (printed material is referenced whereas handwritten comments are italicised and unreferenced).

“Many encounters are unpredictable. Officers must remain alert, have good judgement, exercise common sense and implement trained skills in all situations” (APS 2001:8). Next to these words are the handwritten words, in bold, capital letters: “SEPARATE PERSONAL & PROFESSIONAL LIVES”. Next to the section on how to respond to situations in which there is “high anxiety with regard to personal affairs and welfare” (APS 2001:13) is written:

They don’t need to be friends – maintain professional[ism]…. Don’t get caught up in their story – don’t show emotion this will cloud judgment. Show sympathy. Get someone to sit down, two, unbreakable, cups with cool waters, drink yours and they will start drinking theirs. Don’t drink and yell, wail, weep etc.

Another section advises how to respond to fisher “irritation arising from staff members’ manner and associated factors, policies etc.” (APS 2001:14), by taking a ‘don’t shoot the messenger’ approach. Rather, clarity should be sought regarding whether the fisher is angry at the manager (messenger) or the policy item they are discussing (message). 335

Hand written advice for responding to “verbal abuse and harassment” (APS 2001:18) suggests that managers:

Don’t play by their rules. ie don’t get drawn into the game. Don’t arc up, don’t cry. Don’t agree [with] them. deflect [to a] professional response and bring conversation back on track [to] achieve goal. “I’m sorry you feel that way, well I’m here to do…”

When evaluating the validity of a complaint, it is suggested that the relevant legislation, policy and procedures be explained to the fisher. Reiterated towards the end of each APS manual is the simple advice: “Don’t get personal, remain professionally detached” (APS 2001:23).10

Around a year after the Lakes Entrance meeting in which then new manager, Frederick, had responded nervously to the agitation of those fishermen in the room, I encountered a far more detached Frederick. He displayed an obvious dedication to, and pride in, his demeanour of professionalism. He suggested that, to become emotionally involved in a situation or to express a personal opinion of someone, would detract from his professionalism and was therefore not appropriate. In order to negotiate the bureaucratic world, managers like Frederick are compelled to regard, not only fishermen but also themselves, as fragmented, abstracted, essentialised amputees.

10 In relation to this distinction between the ‘messenger’ and the ‘message’, one manager commented to me that he held fishermen in high regard because, though they became angry at times, they did not make the issue personal. According to this manager, a reasonable fisherman would not hold individual managers accountable for decisions made within the bureaucratic structure of AFMA because the managers were ‘just doing their job’. (This manager seemed to underestimate the intensity of feeling directed by some fishermen towards those people working as agents of AFMA. Some fishermen consider themselves personally persecuted by particular managers. Some fishing community members loathe particular fisheries managers with a fury that is intensely personal, recognising no distinction between the complex individual and the obedient civil servant). 336

Of course, this division is fabricated for the purpose of negotiating the bureaucratic domain, and slippages often occur between the personal and professional fronts of managers. Real people often thwart the neat boundaries that are designed to fragment and encapsulate them in bureaucratic space. Ambiguities, anomalies, and exceptions to the rule, strain the boundaries of bureaucratic categorisation, and result in real people seeping through, sometimes tearing the edges and necessitating either the enforcement, or the reformulation of bureaucratic categories. Though fisheries managers refer back to the ‘official’ position, the legislation, policies and procedures, the complexity of interactions among people causes leakage through these boundaries. In their role as detached agents of a centralised body, fisheries managers themselves are forced to embody the very ambiguity they strive to erase in both themselves and others. The following story illustrates the complexity of the attitude of fisheries managers towards fishermen, and emphasises the difficulty with which fisheries managers sustain a separation between the professional and the personal.

Relieving phantom pain with a dose of detachment

In the inner-city Canberra suburb of Manuka is a pub with minimal lighting, beer soaked carpets, gambling machines and smoke damaged wallpaper. It was here that I found myself, around ten months into my fieldwork, talking with Neville, an ex-manager at AFMA. Neville was now a professional consultant to those seeking advice on how to negotiate the complicated web of fisheries management regulations. We had been introduced by fishermen, and the following day we were both to attend an important meeting between fishermen and fisheries managers, at the nearby AFMA offices. Indeed, as we chatted, William, a fisherman of our mutual acquaintance approached, and we all fell into conversation about the upcoming meeting. Casually, William 337 asked Neville, “What are you going to wear?” Neville replied that he would attend in “casual” clothes, and he suggested that William do the same. William had been planning to dress according to the ‘professional’ standard set by the AFMA staff he would encounter the next day, and was therefore surprised by Neville’s suggestion. Neville explained that wearing casual clothes conveyed a sense of confidence: “If you want to play the clothes game”. William looked sceptical, so Neville continued. “You’ve got to remember that when you walk in there, you’re a god! They [the managers] want to be you. It might sound silly”. The explanation that followed suggested that the managers did not want to be any particular fisherman, or even to be a ‘generic shark licence holder’. Rather, the attraction was to performing as the paradoxical stereotype – the rugged individual, ‘little Aussie battler’ – described in Chapter 5. As discussed, this Australian stereotype is aided considerably by the notion of ‘mateship’, through which self-professed autonomous individuals are validated in their claims through the relinquishment of their very individuality. Of course, stereotypes that emphasise an appearance of autonomy within a collective performance are necessarily incongruous with the rigid qualities of ‘individualism’ as prescribed by the nation-state. Without the flexibility to employ ambiguous characteristics strategically, those who aspire to a style modelled on the paradoxical stereotype are denied the agency to perform convincingly in the real world. Rather, they are limited to fabricating an image that cannot be maintained in genuine performance.

A little later the same evening, after presenting a perspective on fishermen which venerated the socially embedded and complex qualities of individual fishermen, Neville presented a quite different model. Neville and I were debating the principles upon which AFMA had introduced the ITQ system to the shark fishery. Since the 338 commencement of the new management arrangements, I had witnessed serious manifestations of anxiety among fishermen and their families, which they directly attributed to the pressures associated with ITQs. (The effect of the ITQ system on fishermen is a point to which I will return in the following chapter). While Neville understood the perspective of those who would rather maintain the livelihoods and happiness of ‘the many’, though they may not be as economically efficient as ‘the few’, Neville was an economic rationalist at heart. In an attempt to make me see reason, he posed the dilemma: if I were able to buy a litre of milk from the “Mum and Dad shop” on the corner for one dollar, but I could go to the large supermarket on the other corner and buy the milk for ninety cents, where would I shop? The situation he described was laden with sentimentality, compelling me to fulfil the role I was playing in our exchange: emotional, bleeding-heart, left-leaning student, to his economically rational realist. Neville was nonetheless frustrated when I announced that if ‘Mum and Dad’ relied on that 10 percent margin to survive financially, then I would buy my milk at the corner shop. While Neville was indeed a realist, I also knew him to be kind, engaging and generous. I liked Neville, and wanted him to acknowledge the social implications of policies that forced small businesses to collapse. He certainly seemed to wince when describing those fishing families who were slowly going bankrupt as they attempted to maintain a position in the fishery. Neville mused that if he could change anything, he would not have sugar-coated the new management arrangements but clearly stated the aims of an ITQ system – to eliminate some fishermen from the industry – rather than let them bankrupt themselves in an attempt to remain viable. Nonetheless, it was, he regretted, “the way of the world”. I persisted, “But what about the little guy?!” My bleeding-heart almost stopped entirely when he responded, “Stiff shit! I’ve got two words for you: Bannister Quest”.

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Neville’s reference to Bannister Quest became familiar to me over the next few years, as it was the legal precedent that was most often used to interpret AFMAs legislative objective as per ss 3(1)c of the Fisheries Management Act (1991): “maximising economic efficiency in the exploitation of fisheries resources”. While fishermen often complained that AFMA was not fulfilling their legislative objectives because ITQs compromised the economic viability of individual fishermen, the Bannister Quest decision decreed that AFMA must make decisions based upon the economic efficiency of the fishery as a whole. Following the 1992 introduction of ITQs to the South East Trawl (SET) fishery, fishing company Bannister Quest challenged AFMA to remove size restrictions on vessels. Counsel for Bannister Quest argued that the appropriate interpretation of AFMA’s legislative objective pertaining to ‘economic efficiency’ related to the fishery as a whole, and that AFMA must not restrict the few large vessels that captured fish more efficiently than many small operators. The South East Trawl Management Advisory Committee (SETMAC) advised AFMA that allowing large vessels to fish the region gave those operators an unfair economic advantage over smaller fishing operations, and that it did not promote economic efficiency among existing fishers. Throughout the early 1990s, AFMA upheld their original decision to maintain a restriction on vessel size. However, in 1997, the Federal Court of Australia handed down a ruling on Bannister Quest Pty. Ltd. versus AFMA (1997) in favour of the applicant. The presiding Judge Drummond explained:

It is understandable that AFMA would want to respect the views of SETMAC: it had a difficult task. It was charged with implementing a new management system under which the profitability of certain operators would be enhanced and pressure to leave the fishery would be put on others who had long been earning their livelihood from the SEF. The new management arrangements involved a very considerable degree of social upheaval and, in all probability, hardship at a human level and 340

SETMAC was the spokesman for those most likely to be adversely affected, the small operators concerned at the impact on their own positions of large vessels. It is understandable that SETMAC would oppose the introduction of long vessels. But s 3(1) no more permits the Board to be guided in making decisions like the one presently in issue by whether those decisions will advantage the financial position of individual small operators than to be guided by whether its decisions will improve the financial position of individual large vessel owners. Nor, for the reasons given, does it permit the Board to take into account the human costs of the restructure it is charged with implementing in the pursuit of its statutory duties.

Justice Drummond’s comments clearly identify generic, theoretical, fragmented and abstracted fishers as the objects of fisheries management policy, while the complex, ‘human’ element of the fishery was explicitly pronounced to be irrelevant to the bureaucratic process. By alluding to the Bannister Quest case Neville was highlighting the distinction between fishermen as they exist in the informal networks of fishing communities, and as they are defined in the legally binding categories of the nation-state. My conversations with Neville, both that night and on several other occasions, alerted me to the fragmentation that fisheries managers embody as they negotiate their roles as ‘fisheries managers’, and as ‘human beings’. In order to ignore the human costs of fisheries restructure, in order to participate actively in a system specifically designed to drive people to the point of financial crisis, fisheries managers have to remain professionally detached from the lives of the fishermen they encounter.

The key to understanding how fisheries managers can reconcile seemingly incongruous attitudes toward fishermen – as admirable and expendable – and towards themselves – as engaged individuals and as detached agents of the nation-state – is to consider the way in which 341 people are constructed in a bureaucratic context. As demonstrated in the previous four chapters, seemingly nonsensical, perhaps ambiguous statements and actions can make more sense when situated in the social, physical and economic context of the performance. Only by considering the world in which Neville and Frederick are most familiar, the world of fisheries management, can their comments be understood. While clearly aware of the romantic charm of commercial fishermen, of the rugged hero described in Chapter 5, Neville nonetheless was able to detach himself from this perspective and operate according to principles originating beyond himself, in the centralised domain of the nation- state. In this construction, the ‘role’, the ‘occupation’ in the bureaucratic system, can be divorced from the performance itself, and enacted by any number of interchangeable individuals. In a bureaucratic system, both fisheries managers and fishermen are collectively indispensable, while being individually interchangeable within the bureaucracy (Boddy 1989:121). Descartes’s spectre of a Cartesian dualism – of a mind separate from matter, as an act distinct from an actor, of the nation-state as distinct from its agents – persists. The effect on fishermen of being disembedded from their physical and social domain, disembodied, rendered rigidly ambiguous, is discussed further in Chapter 8.

Conclusion

The public stereotype of the individualist hero has value among commercial shark fishermen as well as among fisheries managers and the general public. Indeed, Kapferer (1995:82) describes ‘individualism’ in Australia as “virtually fetishised”. As was discussed in the previous chapters, however, the way in which this idealisation of the individual is manifested depends heavily on the context in which it occurs. Among shark fishermen, individualism is somewhat ambiguous. While 342 individuality is venerated, true autonomy from others is not an ideal social or productive situation. Rather, identities are generated through continuous personal engagement with a strategically delineated physical and social environment, in which individuality is used as a trope for negotiating these boundaries. Ambiguity leaves space for agency, which is why fishermen work so hard to maintain that ambiguity: they realise agency in the ambiguousness of their individuality.

This chapter has shown that ‘individualism’ is also ambiguous among fisheries managers. While civil servants ideally work as part of a team, as one interchangeable cog in a larger wheel, the suppression of their subjective personalities requires continuous self-control. Further, this process is sanctioned and officially aided by the nation-state. Individuality in bureaucratic space – in bureaucratic documents and in the activities of state agents – is often ambiguous, potentially representing a single, complex person in a variety of abstractions that are themselves engaged as though they were the entirety of that person. However, it is an ambiguity that is rigid. Neither fishermen nor fisheries mangers have control over their individuality in bureaucratic space, but rather, both are fractured and essentialised into those qualities deemed relevant to their particular role within the overall bureaucratic structure of the nation-state. While all people encounter the world directly, the state constitutes its subjects – John and Jane Citizen and John and Jane Civil-Servant – as empty vessels, devoid of complexity, depth and contradiction.

As illustrated using examples of actual fisheries managers, real people, like Neville, Tristan, Frederick, Margaret and Quinton, consistently challenge the essentialised models depicted in Weber’s ideal-type bureaucracy. While, clearly, incongruities between real people and 343 imagined citizens do not prevent the operation of the nation-state, the continuing cosmological recourse to a Cartesian-like split between the central and the peripheral, the ghost and the machine, the centre of the nation-state and its peripheral domains and citizens, results in a rigid ambiguity for all citizens. In the following, and final, chapter, I will consider the ontological properties of the centrifugal model of the nation-state.

Many people, and certainly many fishermen, regard bureaucracy as something less tangible than the waters of Bass Strait. However, the nation-state encroaches on the lives of citizens every day, manifestly directing activities and influencing opinions. In modern fisheries management, commercial fishermen encounter AFMA as tangibly, as physically, as they encounter shark in Bass Strait, and fisheries managers are compelled to attend to administrative boundaries as if they were solid stone. However, complications can arise when the reality encountered in bureaucratic space and the reality encountered in physical space do not accord.

Crisis of meanings: Divergent experiences and perceptions of the marine environment1

Good sense is the most fairly distributed thing in the world; for everyone thinks himself so well supplied with it …. The power of judging well and distinguishing truth from falsehood … is naturally equal in all men …. The diversity of our opinions does not arise because some men are more rational than others, but only because we direct our thoughts along different ways, and do not consider the same things.

– Descartes 1637 – Discourse on the method of rightly directing one’s reason and of seeking truth in the sciences (1970:7).

At the beginning of the thesis I introduced a creature called a ganka. This mysterious sea-beast was described as representing the ambiguity evident in the lives of Bass Strait commercial fishermen who animated the ganka with their stories. Gankas are a cross between several actual sea creatures. Like other sea animals frequently anthropomorphised in the folklore of seafarers, such as seals, whales and walruses (Pálsson 1991a:98-100), gankas are one of the few animals that can move freely

1 Much of the material in this chapter has been published as Crisis of Meanings (King 2005). 345 between the ocean and the land, breathing in either water or air. They are renowned for their mischievousness, which is consistently manifest during the first solitary watch of the uninitiated, novice, ‘green’ deckhand. Like gankas, fishermen traverse boundaries that are ordinarily imperforate, corrupting their integrity. In doing so, both gankas and fishermen act to connect that which is typically divided. While most people spend the majority of their productive lives on land, commercial shark fishermen are regularly at sea for long periods. Thus, they are often separated from social institutions, such as football clubs, churches and friendship cliques that help to locate a person within a particular community. Due to a lack of experience interacting with women, some have difficulty developing and maintaining relationships with women, both as partners and as friends. However, fishermen have access to, and knowledge of, a social and physical domain of which few terrestrially based people are even aware (Chapter 4).

Fishermen also breach other boundaries, emphasising their ambiguity in the social environment. Between skippers and deckies there is a blurring of the corporeal boundaries that separate men, such that I described these relationships as ‘prosthetic’ (Chapter 4). Among skippers themselves – most of whom staunchly declare their ‘individuality’ – coordinated activity is typically employed in the act of hunting shark (Chapters 5 and 6).

In all of these relationships – among fishermen and between fishermen and their environments – the variously linking and dividing boundaries that order their social and physical world qualify as somewhat ambiguous. The ambiguity stems from the multiple functions of boundaries, variously connecting and dividing – defining – domains. It is this very ambiguity that fishermen draw upon, the propensity to define particular domains in accordance with shifting circumstances, 346 that enables the agency they require in order to be, at once, individuals and group members: self-reliant and interdependent, competitive and cooperative. It is ambiguity regarding who is a collaborator and who is a competitor, or, where the boundaries of one’s body ends, that provides fishermen with choices regarding future behaviour, and offers alternatives for interpreting what has happened in the past. It is ambiguity that facilitates the ability of fishermen to strategically emphasise or understate the delineators, markers, signs and boundaries that generate meaning in the world and, in so doing, enables them some control over their experiences. A fisherman may, for example, emphasise his ‘connection’ with a particular acquaintance in order to elicit information while later insisting on the exclusivity of his own knowledge. As a deckhand, a man must accept directives from his skipper and act, ideally without direction, as an extension of his skipper, while, as a skipper, the same man must act as the source of coordinated activity among the crew, and negotiate his ‘individuality’ with other skippers. In all of these relationships, ambiguity facilitates the ability of fishermen to negotiate their world strategically, and so I described this phenomenon as ‘strategic ambiguity’.

In the previous chapter, I explored a very different type of ambiguity: ‘rigid ambiguity’. The focus of that discussion was the centralised, administrative institution of the nation-state, and how fishermen, ‘fishers’ and fisheries managers are constituted within that system. As complex individuals, embedded in fluid social and environmental networks, people have agency in their self-presentation, but as subjects of the nation-state they are generic ‘citizens’ and must conform to various essentialised, streamlined, roles that are designed to assist in the efficient administration of the Commonwealth. In the context of a particular bureaucratic process, those essentialised qualities are presented as the entirety of the individual, while other, irrelevant or 347 conflicting attributes or data are dismissed as irrelevant (Kapferer 1995). This process acts to fracture otherwise complex individuals, dictating attributes to be emphasised, prioritised or approximated, according to a generic mould. Compelled to conform to a variety of incomplete, and sometimes incongruous, templates, and with limited scope to manipulate these templates to suit their particular circumstances, otherwise integral, albeit complex, individuals can present as contradictory or conflicted. This experience can be described as a state of ‘rigid ambiguity’.

The distinction between rigid and strategic ambiguity has been a dominant theme within the more recent chapters, a distinction demonstrated through a comparison of two ways in which people experience ‘individuality’. On the one hand, each person experiences their life as a continuum of inter-personal interactions, memories, and shifting contexts. On the other, they experience a representation of a generic version of themselves in bureaucratic space. Of course, to refer to ‘strategic ambiguity’ is something of a semantic inadequacy as it implies a reification of a concept that signifies the equivocal. Perhaps it is somewhat ironic that the ambiguity I describe as being the more useful for negotiating the world – ‘strategic ambiguity’ – is more difficult to describe than a practically unworkable variety – ‘rigid ambiguity’ – which is more easily represented through reference to Cartesian dualisms and Weberian notions of nation-states and bureaucrats.

Nonetheless, the distinction is useful in considering some of the pressing challenges facing the Australian people in regards to natural resource management and use. In this concluding chapter, I expand upon the notion of rigidly or bureaucratically defined phenomena. First, I introduce another generic template employed by the nation-state in order to facilitate the economic administration of the Commonwealth: 348 the generic representation of ‘the ocean’ in bureaucratic space. I then go on to show that, just as there is an ambiguous relationship between complex and generic individuals, the interaction of real and imagined people with real and imagined environments can generate considerable ambiguity regarding who – and what – is ‘real’.

People view the world in a way that reflects their particular political, spiritual, economic, circumstantial or social experiences and understandings. Ambiguity can arise when multiple representations – arising from different experiences and understandings – are incompatible with each other, or with the environment that they claim to represent. More than a phenomenological disaccord, the ambiguity that comes from multiple, competing perspectives on the ocean can lead to tangible environmental consequences, particularly when certain of those perspectives strongly influence nation-state policy. ‘Ambiguous environmental realities’ will be explored in this chapter through a consideration of the ways in which the nation-state, including the media, propound an essentialised representation of the ocean environment, and how generic citizens, and socially complex individuals – fishermen, fisheries managers and members of the general public – fit within that environment. In particular I demonstrate how these ambiguous meaning and relationships manifest in a public sense of environmental crisis.

Fish populations and marine ecosystems are increasingly presented as under threat from human exploitation with the problem portrayed as one of ‘global’ concern (Crean and Symes 1996, McGoodwin 1990, Palmer and Sinclair 1996, Rees 2003, Suzuki 1993, Suzuki and Dressel. 1999, Van Weigel 1995). Images of massive factory ships, defensive fishers and enormous hauls of dead fish typically feature in 349 depictions of a “global fisheries crisis that looms as a critical threat to world food security” (Cowan and Schienberg 2002). However, there seems to be another crisis, noted by Dickens (1996:i): “one of the main features of contemporary environmental crisis is that no-one has a clear picture of what is taking place”. More than simply an absence of ‘hard data’, the problem arises because people understand the world in ways that correspond to their particular experiences. Experiences, and hence understandings, necessarily differ. The purpose of this chapter is to consider, not an ‘actual’ environmental phenomenon, but the sense of crisis that arises when multiple, conflicting experiences and understandings are encountered simultaneously, and how this ‘crisis’ manifests in debates in Australia about the appropriate use of the ocean.

The rest of this chapter begins by considering how globalisation and the division of labour have contributed to the diversification of human relationships with the ocean.2 Then, three ways of knowing and utilising the ocean are described, beginning with the most abstracted, but also the most common. First, I will describe publicly accessible, media images of the ocean that focus on the aesthetic qualities of marine ecosystems and depict ‘healthy’ oceans as human-free, or mare nullius (Jackson 1995). Secondly, I consider the understandings of fisheries ‘experts’ – particularly fisheries managers – whose own experiences and understandings of the ocean, while influenced by popular images, are largely mediated by state-sanctioned representations, or ‘management tools’, that are themselves grounded in political, legal, economic and scientific considerations. Finally, I return to the perceptions of Victorian commercial fishermen who engage

2 See Milton (1996:154-9) for a critique of opposing depictions of globalisation as a force promoting cultural homogeneity, on the one hand, and heterogeneity, on the other. In this chapter the latter position is more relevant simply because most of the fish-eating public do not share the experiences of commercial fishermen. 350 with ‘management tools’, in which popular representations of the ocean are implicit, and who have experiences generated through their extractive use of the ocean that are not shared by either the public or the ‘experts’.

The discussion revolves around two government initiatives that affected fishermen of Corner Inlet, Victoria, in recent years. One is the introduction of Individual Transferable Quotas (ITQs) by the Australian Fisheries Management Authority (AFMA), described throughout this thesis (Lockhart and Purcell 2003). Around the same time – just prior to the 2002 Victorian State election – there was renewed political enthusiasm for implementing Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) in Victorian waters, including parts of Corner Inlet.3 Both initiatives sought to reorganise human interaction with the ocean and supporters who claimed that the measures were necessary in order to avert environmental catastrophe promoted both. In the context of these events, multiple, competing narratives crystallised, variously valorising and demonising particular ways of engaging with the marine environment. Often, however, these narratives were oxymoronic, simultaneously representing the ocean as a place for engaging and a space for contemplation. The ambiguity of these messages served to fuel the sense of social and environmental ‘crisis’. In concluding this chapter, and thesis, I argue that this sense of crisis is strongly informed by the coming together of incongruous experiences and representations of the ocean, either among groups with competing interests, or within individuals who are compelled to simultaneously negotiate the ocean as an inhabited environment, and as a merely contemplated world. As the contemplated world, the ‘globe’, takes on increasing importance in the

3 Part of the function of MPAs is to restrict the regions that can be commercially fished. When the parks were eventually implemented in Corner Inlet, some fishermen were displaced from their traditional fishing grounds. 351

West, not just socially but also at the level of state institutions, this ‘crisis’ becomes inevitable.

Divided experiences

Nature, as we perceive, understand and engage with it, is produced through iterative discourses between human action and the world (eg. Bourdieu 1998, Button 2002, Eder 1996, Harré et al. 1999, Heidegger 1962, Hoffman 2002, Ingold 2000a, Merleau-Ponty 1962, Merlin 1998, Ortner 1974, Satterfield 2002). As ways of relating to the world and systems of production change, so too do cultural understandings of nature (Pálsson and Durrenberger 1990). Significant changes to production systems occurred during the Industrial Revolution, when efforts to increase labour efficiency compelled people to focus on specific, differentiated tasks (Clark 1997). Those who produced items from the natural environment became separated from those who consumed the products, the different experiences becoming associated with various ideals of environmental utility, and linked to a moral value. Eder (1996:148- 9) describes how:

the culturally universal classification of pure and impure was projected onto the relationship of city and country [to the extent that] at the end of the eighteenth century, instrumental interaction with nature was felt to be repulsive, a violation of moral and aesthetic sentiments.

From as early as 1880, Australian capital cities established public transport links to nature preserves on the urban fringes for use by people seeking a weekend retreat from the perceived relative impurity of the city (Hutton and Connors 1999:64).

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Australian environmental advocates who express their views through art and poetry, have tended to prioritise the aesthetic value of the environment, championing protectionist roles and discouraging ‘instrumental interaction’ (Eder 1996:149, Theodossoupoulos 2002:3). Such attitudes, explains Ingold (2000a:214-5), are perpetuated by an ‘interventionist’ discourse that ironically suggests a mode of interaction that opposes actual intervention. I prefer to use the term ‘anti- instrumentalist’ to convey the same sentiment without the ambiguity. The words of early underwater photographer, Noel Monkman, a principle advocate for the creation of marine parks in the Great Barrier Reef, illustrate this perspective:

It doesn’t belong to you, it … doesn’t belong to any living person. It doesn’t belong to our unborn children. None of us own it. We’re only privileged to see it. Not to take it away, not to sell it. We’re caretakers, and that’s all (in Hutton and Connors 1999:99 original emphasis).

This anti-instrumentalist discourse has been reflected in political trends. Despite the increasing tendency for Australian governments to favour international economic concerns over environmental issues, Australia has a long history of environmental protectionism compared to other Western nations (for an overview see Hutton and Connors 1999, Walker 2002:256). For example, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA), formally instituted in the late 1970s, was one of the first Western institutions created to protect the marine environment from commercial interests (Hutton and Connors 1999:99- 106). Popular representations of the ocean, too, tend to reflect this anti-instrumentalist discourse. While many Victorians are familiar with the coast, most encounter the underwater environment through documentaries, press releases or films (such as those described below) that focus on the recreational values of the domain, and convey an anti- instrumentalist message. Few experience the submarine environment 353 as a domain of human activity. Aesthetic valuations of the environment are able to exist separately from consumptive modes of engagement.

Dickens (1996:i) charges that “the division of labour is a key but neglected factor underlying people’s inability to adequately understand and relate to the natural world”. Those who extract produce from the environment as part of their specialised tasks have become behaviourally, conceptually, geographically – even morally – divided from those who do not. Fishermen encounter the ocean as they catch fish to sell to anonymous others. Metropolitan fish-eaters pay for their fish at restaurants and markets and encounter the ocean in the form of aestheticised representations. Fisheries ‘experts’ mediate producers, consumers and the environment by engaging with representations of each, technology enabling them to work from any number of locations. Though there is some overlap, the division of labour has rendered these people, these environments, largely anonymous to each other. The ocean is experienced as ‘real’ for all of these people, but the experiential contexts in which these realities are formulated differ.

Spheres and Globes

The image of ‘the globe’ – ‘the blue planet’ or ‘the Earth’ — as a universally shared object of contemplation and as under threat from those who fail to act on their responsibilities as custodians, is of interest to anthropologists and others (Ingold 2000b, Milton 1996:53, 2002, Harré et al.1999, Hutton and Connors 1999). Ingold (2000b) contrasts this notion of a contemplated ‘globe’ against that of a ‘sphere’. While the former exists as an ‘artificial’ cognitive reconstruction, a world upon which life can be contemplated and romanticised, perhaps as human-free, the latter is a life-world that individuals encounter directly. My position differs somewhat from that of Ingold, in considering 354 tangible representations of the ‘globe’ to be as genuine as any other item encountered in a life-world, while allowing that understandings will vary according to the items encountered. ‘Global’ perspectives are sustained by “transcultural discourses” (Milton 1996:225), of which ‘environmentalism’ – which depicts the world as an object to be protected – is one. The language of environmentalism, once considered radical, is now a moral standard, a guide with religious connotations – a labarum4 – that is commonplace in public discourse (Eder 1996:180, Luhrmann 1993). In the media, human interaction with nature has become problematised, a problem that is tangible, symbolised by ‘the globe’, and familiar to almost everyone who has access to television, internet, magazines or newspapers. The ‘globe’, in the Ingoldian sense, may represent a world that is an object of contemplation, but the symbols themselves are encountered daily by the Australian public as tangible phenomena.

For different people, ‘transcultural’ items, such as ‘the environment’, take on various meanings that reflect diverse, and changing, relationships to the world (Milton 1996:156-7). The representation of the ocean as human-free, as mare nullius (Jackson 1995), is only sustainable if one does not engage with the ocean itself, but rather, engages with a representation of the ocean. For many, their knowledge of the ocean is limited to this abstracted experience. Others negotiate this ‘represented ocean’ when engaging with the ocean itself. For example, those who extract from the marine environment, such as oil companies and recreational fishers, are often compelled to publicly defend their actions against those who charge that they are

4 The term labarum, while conveying any common moral standard, was originally a military standard of the Roman army, represented by a Christian monogram (Davidson 1901:506). The religious connotations are fitting for use in regard to prevailing moral discourses on environmentalism, which have been depicted as substituting for religious guidance in disenchanted societies (Bourdieu 1977, Douglas and Wildavsky 1982, Eder 1996). 355 compromising the mare nullius ideal. For others who experience the ocean as a space for recreation, by yachting, surfing or diving, the domain is championed for its ‘aesthetic utility’, and what they personally ‘take’ from the ocean are primarily intangible or ephemeral qualities such as ‘beauty’, ‘relaxation’ or ‘peace and quiet’.5 In combination with various economic and political factors, this detached representation, this ‘map’, is often confused with a dynamic marine ecosystem. It is when the world is simultaneously encountered as an object of consumptive utility and aesthetic utility that the role of humans in the environment becomes ambiguous, and a sense of crisis arises (Eder 1996:148-9, Milton 1996). In the context of a labarum of global environmentalist discourse, I argue that this ambiguity is irreconcilable, because models of the world in which humans can choose not to engage with ‘nature’ will always be disrupted by the reality of living in a world that incorporates ‘nature’. Perspectives that idealise the contemplation of the ocean limit the role of humans in the environment to that of destructive agents (Ingold 2000b:215).6 The increasingly tangible role played by the notion of the ‘globe’ in Western discourses, with its representations now part of the life-world of most people, informs the pervasive sense of environmental ‘crisis’.

The Public – media(ted) representations

The global trend towards task differentiation perpetuates the distinction between those who produce and those who consume, and as some people catch fish for many others, most people experience the ocean in absentia. Unchallenged by conflicting experiences, the public is

5 In the United States, the aesthetic utility, or ‘non-use value’, of the ocean is legally recognised (Wetterstein 1997:4). 6 Ingold (2000a:20) distinguishes between ‘environments’, being the dynamically formulated worlds in which people live, and ‘nature’, being an objectified world that people imagine exists in isolation from human activity and history. 356 potentially able to imagine an ocean ecosystem without humans. If, as Merleau-Ponty (1962:353) noted, “any internal experience is possible only against the background of external experience”, more Victorians experience fish as anthropomorphised images on a television screen than as creatures made of flesh and teeth.

This section presents two examples of how the marine environment was represented in the media during the period of my research. The first is the animated film Finding Nemo (2003). The second, the media campaign that promoted implementation of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) in Victorian waters. Both examples mediate the experiences and understandings of the public, giving people the impression that they can come to ‘know’ the ocean from their lounge rooms. Both depict the underwater environment as sacred, exotic and for aesthetic consumption only. Both anthropomorphise marine life, and yet imply that humans do not belong in the ocean they depict.

Finding Nemo

Finding Nemo is a story set primarily around marine animals of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR). While this domain is only marginally more accessible – due to tourism infrastructure – than other underwater environments, it is a highly salient national symbol (Smith and Free 1996:11). So prolific are depictions of the GBR that even those who have never dived on the reef may feel that they have an intimate knowledge of the environment. Indeed, in Finding Nemo the GBR seems to have imagined itself into reality. Though the following comments are from North American reviewers, accessed via the official Finding Nemo web site, reviews such as these compelled Australians to attend the movie in record-breaking numbers (Bolt 2003:23, Pixar 2003). In many of these reviews, Pixar Animation Studios have been applauded for their 357

‘realistic’ depiction of the ocean. For example, one reviewer writes, “I have never been to Australia, but I just can't imagine scenery more beautiful” (Minton 2003). Another commented, “the animation team gives weight and depth to the sea itself, filling it with specks of life and creating a sense of movement with currents and bubbles” (Commanducci 2003). Yet another concedes, “sure, (the film) derives most of its splendour from what actually exists on our ocean floors, but that doesn’t make it any less wondrous” (Souter 2003). For some, the viewing experience was described as corporeal: “the underwater backdrops take your breath away. No, really. They're so lifelike, you almost feel like holding your breath while watching” (Seymour 2003). The following review suggests that the animated depiction of the GBR is almost ‘perfect’: “Pixar heads under the sea and finds subject matter that couldn't be more perfectly suited to its vivid style of computer animation” (Cohn 2003). For this final reviewer, the distinction between the children’s cartoon and the waters off the North East coast of Australia is no longer ambiguous: “The computer graphics create a visual world that you would actually see if you dived down 50 feet on a coral reef” (Clifford 2003).

For these reviewers, Pixar has both reflected and informed their imagined notion of underwater life, giving it ‘weight and depth’. With no alternative experiences to challenge the images presented on the movie screen, some have melded the symbol with the symbolised, and imagined themselves ‘diving down 50 feet on a coral reef’. But, of course, watching a film of diving cannot be equated with actually diving. The former is a representation created by humans with a particular, anti-instrumentalist message in mind. While this understanding is one in which humans are not part of the marine environment, it is generated in a thoroughly social – and terrestrial – context.

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Finding Nemo features a range of anthropomorphised marine species, and reflects the anxieties of the public at which it is directed (Bolt 2003). As another of the Finding Nemo reviewers commented, “You connect to these sea creatures as you rarely do with humans in big- screen adventures” (Caro 2003). Nemo is a young clownfish, living happily with his widowed father, Marlin, in a suburban coral reef, when he is taken from his underwater home by a human diver and placed in the artificial environment of a fish-tank. One of the other captives articulates the impropriety of their predicament: “Fish aren’t meant to be kept in a box, kid. It does things to you”. In his search for Nemo, Marlin explores the ocean and meets a host of other sea-creatures with human personalities. Though some are more helpful than others, they all have a ‘place’ in the ocean. There is even a group of sharks who, having seen the error of their ways, have converted to vegetarianism. Though typically depicted by film-makers and animators as ‘mindless killing-machines’, the sharks in Finding Nemo strive to reinvent themselves in a manner consistent with human civility, in which the ingestion of like species – cannibalism – is deplored. The sharks meet in a regular support group (as do many people who are recovering from alcohol or narcotics addictions) and chant their pledge: “I am a nice shark, not a mindless eating machine. If I am to change this image, I must first change myself. Fish are friends, not food”. But even the sharks recognise the differential human aesthetic value attached to various fish species, and a number of sharks add with bitter sarcasm: “Except stinkin' dolphins. Dolphins! Yeah, they think they're sooo cute! 'Hey, look at me. I'm a flippin' little dolphin! Let me flip for 'ya! Ain't I somethin?!’”

The only time Marlin encounters an actual person on his journey is when his party is threatened with capture by a commercial fishing boat. Despite humanising every other creature in the film, the crew of the 359 boat are depersonalised, expressionless, grey, ghost-like men in matching wet-weather gear. Their strangeness is highlighted because they fail to recognise what even ‘mindless eating machines’ have come to realise: ‘Fish are friends, not food’. In a moment of triumph over the encroaching human threat, the fish thwart their potential captors and return home.

Though heavily anthropomorphised, the film leaves no doubt about the place of humans in the marine environment: there is none. Fish belong in the sea, and humans do not, and to transgress this fundamental boundary by extracting fish upsets the natural order.

The unsustainability of this perspective was noted by Australian Andrew Bolt (2003:23), a newspaper columnist with a reputation for expressing controversial opinions. Criticising the simplicity of the ‘messages’ that the film’s creative director says are “at the heart of the movie”, Bolt cynically paraphrases: “humans are vile but nature noble… killing is always wrong… eating meat is mean”. Bolt’s concern is that the film’s “too-easy, no-pain, nature-worshipping New Age-ism” inculcates children with an understanding of nature that is not sustainable in practice:

What Finding Nemo doesn’t explain… is what the sharks will eat now they they’ve given up meat… children [are being] taught a morality that is so impractical… that it soon becomes a game of pretend.… Despite spruiking vegetarianism, Finding Nemo has a commercial tie-in with McDonald’s, which now includes a Nemo toy fish with every Happy Meal of dead cow or gassed chicken.

The disruptive effect of the ambiguity Bolt highlights – eating meat while ‘spruiking vegetarianism’ – is greatly diminished because the context of each experience is kept separate. Fish can be contemplated and 360 consumed simultaneously because people rarely experience the entire process whereby fish are taken from the ocean, killed, gutted, cooked, coated in tartar sauce and eaten. In industrialised societies, the narrative of vegetarianism has arisen in tandem with the tendency to acknowledge a distant, contemplated, romanticised nature (Eder 1996:155-60).

As most Victorians – both children and adults – only ever encounter the ocean on holidays to the coast, and because relatively few ever experience the underwater environment, their knowledge of the marine environment is something of a blank slate (Aslin and Byron 2003, Smith and Free 1996:8). It is upon this blank slate that imaginations can create seascapes, creatures, whole ecosystems that reflect other physical, environmental and social dynamics, such as those represented in Finding Nemo. Though there is a sense that the ocean is not strictly as Finding Nemo suggests, the familiar categories used to depict the environment inspire a certain confidence that the film approximates reality.7

The pedagogic – and andragogic – function of fictional depictions such as Finding Nemo is demonstrated through a comparison with the 2004 documentary, Deep Blue (2004), a feature length film of highlights from the BBC documentary series, The Blue Planet (Leyland 2004). The format in which Deep Blue was presented – photography rather than animation – demands of viewers a greater acceptance of what appears on the screen. However, the underwater environment highlighted in Deep Blue was remarkably similar to that depicted in Finding Nemo.

7 The ocean in Finding Nemo was certainly not a complete fabrication. Indeed, the film was praised by some scientists for the accuracy with which particular aspects of the environment – such as the East Australia Current that Marlin rides south on his journey – were depicted. “There's a remarkable degree of scientific truth to the Nemo storyline” (Smith 2004). 361

One review heralded Deep Blue as “the real Finding Nemo” (News of the World 2004). Like Finding Nemo, Deep Blue offered filmgoers an illusion of experiencing the underwater environment. “Until now, we’ve only touched the surface…. Come on a journey into liquid space”, the advertisements enticed, as though we were to actually slip beneath the waters and see an unedited reality, albeit one with somewhat alien qualities. Promoters promised to fill the void in our knowledge with “never-before-seen footage of the spectacular beauty and mysteries of the world’s oceans” (Deep Blue promotional postcard 2004). A reviewer from Geographical Magazine incorporated this ‘never-before-seen footage’ into their understanding of the environment, when they praised Deep Blue as “a stunning reminder of just how fragile and beautiful our planet can be” (Geographical Magazine 2004 emphasis added). According to another reviewer, the film “begs to be experienced on the big screen” (Film Review 2004). Another notes that “viewers immerse themselves in the stunning imagery” (Leyland 2004). These comments suggest that the ocean environment can be accessed, ‘experienced’, without literal intrusion, that it can – and should – be engaged as an ‘object of contemplation’.

The propensity for the media to shape the understandings of the public is not lost on those who advocate a particular style of engagement with the environment (Allen 2002, Aslin and Byron 2003). Such strategic anti-instrumentalist advocacy was evident in the Victorian Environment Conservation Council’s8 (ECCs) decade-long promotion of Marine Protected Areas, a campaign that varied in intensity, complexity, salience and importance depending on the prevailing political climate.

8 Formerly the Land Conservation Council (LCC). 362

Background to MPA issue

The introduction of Marine Protected Areas to Corner Inlet was heavily politicised, in part due to the looming Victorian State election of 2002. In 2000, the ECC, a body designed to conduct investigations and advise the Victorian government on the use of public lands, submitted a final report entitled Marine, Coastal and Estuarine Investigation (Environment Conservation Council 2000). The report advised the government to implement a system of marine national parks and sanctuaries, covering 6.2 percent of the Victorian marine waters. A 4,150 hectare marine national park was proposed for Corner Inlet.

The Corner Inlet Fishermen’s Habitat Association (CIFHA) was formed in the late 1990s, partly in order to organise the opposition of local net fishermen (who numbered approximately 18) to the design, and the design process, of the parks. In 2000, CIFHA presented a counter proposal, nominating alternative sites for protection, highlighting the need to address threats to the environment overlooked in the ECC proposal, and requesting a more effective process of community consultation (Tilbury 2001).9 The proposal was later rejected by the ECC.

CIFHA, and other Victorian bay and inlet fishermen, continued to agitate for recognition of their concerns regarding the environmental, social and economic impact of the proposed parks. The fishermen maintained that they strongly supported marine protection in principle,

9 Residents of the coastal towns surrounding Corner Inlet mounted an impressive campaign that challenged the design of the ECC MPAs. They claimed, with good reason, that the parks were a political tool in the State election of that year, that the project had ill-defined aims (Baelde 2002), had not considered the threats to the region realistically, had not selected areas that reflected the long-term biological needs of the region, and that the consultation process had been “completely inadequate” (Tilbury 2001:9). 363 but that the particular design proposed by the ECC was unacceptable. ECC supporters suggested that the commercial sector was opposing the parks solely in order to maintain their economic position. There was considerable debate in both the regional and metropolitan media, fuelled by existing antagonisms between the commercial and recreational sector (McCleod and Borelli 2001). Many of the latter were registered to vote in metropolitan councils, hence the issue drew political interest from candidates representing urban constituents, and focussed attention on what might otherwise have only been of concern in regional electorates.

The election was a two-party preferential system comprised of the Australian Labour Party and the coalition of the Liberal and National Parties. The previous years had seen a massive swing away from the ruling Coalition, and the political urgency of the 2002 election campaign contributed to a focus on the ‘marine parks’ issue. To make matters more difficult for the Coalition, the party was divided on the issue, with some National members supporting the reforms proposed by the fishing industry and Liberal members tending to advocate the recommendations of the ECC.

In May 2001 Victorian fishermen and sympathisers protested on the steps of Parliament House in Melbourne, employing the slogan, ‘Marine Protection Not Political Parks’. The legislation was scrapped soon afterwards, on a technicality pertaining to the issuing of compensation. Because the success of the fishing industry supporters was based on a monetary issue, pro-ECC campaigners charged that the fishermen were primarily concerned with profit and disregarded environmental sustainability. New legislation was proposed, taking into account the compensation clause. The issue continued to receive a great deal of media attention and debate, but was finally resolved in the State 364 parliament. The new legislation, featuring 1,550 hectares of parks in Corner Inlet, was implemented by the Coalition government on 16th November, 2002, 14 days before they were trounced in the State election.

The campaign

In the years before the MPA campaign developed the momentum that it reached before the 2002 elections, marine scientists had lamented the difficulty of sparking interest in species commonly thought to be unattractive: “typical marine habitats, including those aesthetically challenging like seagrass and mangrove areas, must be protected in no- take areas (Allen and O'Hara 1995:3). In preparation for the promotion of MPAs in Victorian waters, a series of focus groups was commissioned by the Victorian National Parks Association (VNPA) in order to gauge the response of Victorians to proposed ‘no take’ zones, and to suggest a campaign to promote their implementation (Smith and Free 1996).10 The survey found that:

Perceptions of the marine environment were extremely vague and ambivalent. This is perhaps not surprising given that most people’s experience of this environment is limited to coastal areas, particularly in the case of Victorian waters. However, it is important to note that this limited experience has a very strong impact on how people feel about the marine environment (ibid:8).

Extremely low awareness… of Victoria’s marine environment… necessitates that the campaign start by building awareness. We cannot place value on and support protection of an environment we do not know about. Currently the marine environment in Victoria is

10 Three focus groups comprised a ‘cross section’ of Victorians, while a fourth consisted of recreational fishers. 365

undervalued at least partly because it is not known. The campaign should have as its objective that the community become at least as familiar with the marine flora and fauna in Victorian waters as they are with tropical waters (ibid:6).

The study indicates that visual images of the sea bed including seagrasses, coral, and a variety of creatures and fish were most effective in terms of introducing people to the existence and diversity of marine life…. Single creatures / fish of vivid colourings were visually impactful [sic] (ibid:9-10 original emphasis).

[Numerical information should act as a] rational base on which to build emotional arguments (ibid:6 original emphasis).

The media campaign that ran throughout 2002 ‘introduced’ the Victorian public to a dazzling array of marine flora and fauna. Images of sea creatures produced by the National Oceans Office (2002), the Commonwealth agency promoting regional MPAs nationally, were digitally enhanced and so brightly coloured that they were barely distinguishable from the cartoon characters in Finding Nemo (Figures 20-23). ‘Fact Sheets’ (Department of Natural Resources and Environment 2002) provided maps of proposed MPAs, and information on the value of the areas in question. Corner Inlet was described as follows:

Tucked in behind Wilsons Promontory, Corner Inlet is the forgotten gem of the Victorian coast .… On a calm day the water develops a glassy sheen, disturbed only by the occasional penguin, a diving cormorant, or a pod of dolphins. Attractive seagrass meadows on shallow mud banks beckon beneath the surface waters.

In this description, Corner Inlet is valued, at least in part, because it is undisturbed by humans. It is an object of contemplation. Indeed, 366

20 National Oceans Office promotional postcard.

21 Deep Blue promotional postcard.

22 Marlin and Dory in Finding Nemo. 23 National Oceans Office promotional sticker.

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Corner Inlet could only be described as ‘tucked in behind Wilsons Promontory’ when observed from an aerial photograph, or a map, and particularly if the viewer looks from the State capital, Melbourne.

Further down the ‘Fact Sheet’, under the title, ‘What you might see’, are descriptions of two Corner Inlet creatures. The spotted pipefish is described as a “master of disguise”, while the second creature is introduced as follows: “if a squid could be called cute, it would be the shy, tiny, southern dumpling squid. Rotund, big eyed, and brightly coloured, they are night feeders, burying themselves in the sand during the day”. Though it seems that only the most dedicated diver would ever actually see either the spotted pipefish or the southern dumpling squid, the media campaign to introduce their existence nonetheless sought to incorporate them in the ‘imagination’ and ‘conscience’ of the Victorian public.

The reliability, the ‘factualness’, of the picture created during the pro- MPA campaign was reinforced by the strategic use of biological science. The notion that scientists are able to appraise the real world and report objective facts to the public is a persistent myth (Finlayson and McMahon1994, Harré et al. 1999, Howitt 2001:166, Latour 1999, Milton 1993, O’Malley 1998, Pitcher et al. 2001, Walker 2002, cf. Rice 2001:6-7). Many scientists (and non-scientists) consider ‘scientific’ information to be privileged, objective fact (though part of the scientific endeavour is to discover new ‘facts’ that supplant the old ones). Many believe that scientists respond only to ‘the facts’, and are unmoved by subjective categories that order the social world. However, the rigour of internationally reputable fisheries science has been questioned by fishermen (Frangoudes and Bailly 2001:9, Wiber 2002:9), as well as by other fisheries 'experts’ (Hale nd., Kaiser 2001, Ocean Studies Board 1998, Townsend and Wilson 1987, Wilson et al. 1994:291). The 368 following example provides an example of how the line between biological science and public opinion can become blurred, and even strategically bolstered and transgressed in order to achieve some particular ends.

In February 2002, Museum Victoria, in Melbourne, hosted a well- attended public seminar to promote the MPA process – Protecting life in our seas: the science behind marine national parks in Victoria (O'Hara 2002). The seminar was hosted by the museum’s Senior Curator of Marine Invertebrates, Tim O’Hara. Part of the seminar comprised an underwater video of Corner Inlet, in which even those creatures as ‘aesthetically challenged’ as scallops were anthropomorphised. After commenting on the “gorgeous” and “magnificent” scenery, O’Hara paused as a seal swam into view. The audience (myself included) collectively responded with sighs and coos. O’Hara explained that there was a funny story about this seal. The creature had been particularly curious and repeatedly nudged him as he was trying to film, “as though to say ‘why are you looking at all these little fish when you could be looking at me?’” His smile of reminiscence fell away, however, as an eleven armed sea star was seen devouring a scallop. Affecting subdued anguish, O’Hara lamented, “This is really sad actually: all little kids should look away”. The audience – receptive, enthralled, on the edge of their chairs – followed his mood with a sympathetic, “oooh…”

After the seminar, the audience were able to put questions to Dr O’Hara. An audience member identifying as a commercial fisherman asked about the specific location of the parks, suggesting that their placement was flawed. O’Hara deflected, explaining, “I’m the scientist that provides the input of data, not the economist and you should probably direct your question to someone else. Again, I wasn’t the decision maker, I just present the facts”. One of the facts O’Hara 369 presented, almost apologetically, was that the extraction of anything from the marine environment upsets the natural order. “[That is] the way it is!” he proclaimed. Some fish stocks, he argued, were a mere twenty five percent of the size they were 200 years ago. He was not anti-fishing, he explained, he ate fish himself, but any form of fishing was fundamentally at odds with a healthy marine ecosystem. “You’re taking fish out of the marine environment, which don’t eat the [other marine species] which don’t eat the kelp and… this unbalances the ecosystem”. The appropriate response, that which would re-establish environmental order, was to remove humans from the marine environment. “I think that’s really regrettable, but it’s just like situating a hospital. Some people are going to be inconvenienced, but hopefully the benefit will outweigh the inconvenience”.

Of course, even scientific ‘facts’ are pervaded by social categories that order the natural world. Stating that fish stocks are ‘twenty five percent’ of their 1788 biomass implies that, first, the 1788 biomass was knowable and, second, that the pre-European inhabitants of Australia had a negligible impact on the numbers of fish in the ocean. Assertions that indigenous populations had a minimal effect on their environments have been convincingly challenged (Budiansky 1995, Kresch 1999, Ridley 1996). Apart from being somewhat patronising, this assumption has shades of the recently overturned (1992) official Commonwealth policy of terra nullius, which decreed that Australia was ‘uninhabited’ upon colonisation (Connor 2005). O’Hara’s comments were made a mere stroll from a conspicuous Museum Victoria exhibition showcasing the pre-European nautical prowess and technical sophistication of Australian Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander and Maori (among other) communities. Less conspicuous, but perhaps therefore more troubling, is the implication that production and consumption can be genuinely distinct experiences. Eating fish, while arguing for the cessation of 370 fishing, is only possible in a context where someone else catches the fish that are eaten.

Public discourse and nation-state management: an emerging reality

The populace inform, and react to, the public discourse presented in the media as ‘political animals’ (Eder 1996:182), adjusting their behaviour, consumer patterns and voting preferences accordingly. In setting political agendas on the environment, “it is the media who take over the role [that] personal experience once had in political issue-making” (ibid). In industrialised states such as Australia, political expedience demands that marine stewards attend to the ocean as it is understood by the majority of the voting public. Hence, management bodies must respond to scientific findings, the demands of various lobby groups, abide by rules of law, economics and international (trade) relations, as well as acknowledge the anthropomorphised ocean that is represented in the media.

AFMA manages commercial fishing on behalf of a public who simultaneously prioritise the aesthetic utility of the ocean and who eat more fish than ever before. These perspectives can coexist for a centralised bureaucracy, symbolised on paper, because they are detached from the experiences upon which they are based. AFMA does not control actual fish, but rather, manipulates representations of the interaction between humans and the ocean, institutionalising the conceptual divide. When models, or ‘management tools’ such as the Individual Transferable Quotas (ITQs) discussed in the previous chapter, are ascribed monetary value, legal status or public importance, they acquire a significance beyond that of mere symbols, and must be negotiated in their own right. ITQs, for example, are the 371 commodification of the idea of fish, and can be traded without producing or protecting a single marine creature.

In the previous chapter I described the experiences of fisheries ‘experts’, who are compelled to negotiate both actual people – fishermen and themselves – and representations of those people – generic shark fishing licence holders and civil-servants. At this point, I will expand upon the distinction between the symbol and the symbolised, by describing the experiences of fisheries ‘experts’ as they negotiate the ocean, fish and fishermen, as well as their paper (or digital) representations. I do not ask, ‘which experience is more genuine, or real’ but, rather, examine the nature of these experiences, the similarities and differences of content, context, meaning and order. Rather than solving an ontological dilemma, I consider how ‘paper fish’, and other representations that depict humans as separable from the ocean, have emerged dialogically with public discourse to create a budding new world that stands alone from the physical environment it represents.

Located in Australia’s capital, Canberra, in a land-locked territory, the distance between the ocean and the AFMA offices is symbolic of the abstraction of AFMA’s ‘management tools’ from the environment it supervises (Lund 2001). Information about that environment is limited, and influenced by political and economic contexts. The Commonwealth Government is described as having a ‘stranglehold’ on research funding for natural resource management (Finlayson and McMahon 1994:93), and the ability of scientific processes to adequately inform government decisions are depicted as, at best, wanting (Heazle 2004, Hutton and Connors 1999:97, Seager 1994:113-15, Walker 2002:278, Webber 1994:117). Management strategies are further influenced by a variety of factors: as noted above, the government has progressively shifted focus from local environmental issues to global economic concerns 372

(Hutton and Connors 1999:259, Walker 2002); legal disputes such as the Fischer case repeatedly stall, and redirect, industry structures; and the monopolistic media continues its dialogic relationship with political issues, policy directions and industry (Hutton and Connors 1999:99- 108, Walker 2002:278). In acknowledgement of the latter point, AFMA commit a small staff to monitoring the media and administering public responses and presentations. Primary sources of information on the ocean are mediated through various representations, including those of scientists, the media, and ‘management tools’ such as ITQs.

The anthropomorphised media representations described above are reflected in Australian fisheries management discourse and policies. The labarum of environmentalism is reflected in rules that have authority, legality, and are ‘real’ in the sense that they are widely disseminated and there are accepted consequences for breaking them (eg. Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999). For example, marine creatures of public value, such as seals, whales and dolphins are officially known as ‘charismatic mega-fauna’ (Anon. 1994, Satterfield 2002, cf. Kalland 2002) and are legally protected. Both fisheries managers and commercial fishers are compelled by the political power of public perception to acknowledge this valuation, though most recognise that public affection for a creature does not necessarily reflect an economic worth or biological scarcity. Both often cynically refer to these species as ‘cute and cuddly’ or ‘cute and fluffy’. Fisheries manager, Elise, illustrated the public pressure to protect Pseudorca crassidens, a species variously referred to as ‘killer whales’ or ‘Orcas’, with reference to a film about a boy who befriends and liberates a captive killer whale: “Everyone loves Orcas – Free Willy and all that!” Elise could never publicly dismiss the value of ‘charismatic mega- fauna’, however, because failing to recognise ‘natural symbols’ such as whales, dolphins and seals, could place her beyond socially defined 373 limits of propriety, or even ‘sanity’ (Douglas 1973, Eder 1996:31, Foucault 1973).11 For example, both commercial fisherman Wayne Cripps and fisheries policy analysis specialist Milton Freeman recently recommended that Victoria’s burgeoning seal population be culled, and their carcasses marketed. Patty Mark, of Animal Liberation Victoria, responded: “It’s horrible, it’s disgusting, it’s absolutely barbaric and it’s insane” (in Buttler 2004:3). Environmentalist valuations, like fisheries management institutions, have been acted into reality (Bourdieu 1998:40).

In the world of fisheries management, an environment subject to the influence of anti-instrumentalist environmentalist valuations, fish can be represented by a mark on paper. As such, fisheries managers are often compelled to manage, not fish themselves, but representations of those fish. Talking with a shark stock modeller one evening he explained to me that he never actually took to the ocean in the course of his work. “No! My shark are on the computer screen”, he explained. Indeed, in the context of fisheries management, when the distinction between actual fish and representations of fish is unclear, the latter are regularly referred to as ‘paper fish’. ‘Paper fish’ emerge in the context of a world in which items such as public and political pressures, trade agreements, legal constraints and legislative objectives have salience, are relevant and are ‘real’. These items are ‘real’ in that they impinge on those who occupy this world. For example, Australia must demonstrate efforts to regulate the capture of wild fish in order to participate in international fish markets. The use of ITQs and TACs facilitates this demonstration. The transferable nature of ITQs means that the right to

11 International conservation groups protested after discovering that Keiko, the star of Free Willy, had spent ninety two percent of his life in captivity (Brooks 2002:2). Though Keiko could not hunt, or communicate with other whales, over $A36 million, and seven years, has been spent unsuccessfully trying to reintroduce Keiko to his ‘proper abode’. 374 fish – the idea of fish – can be bought and sold without anyone stepping foot on a boat. ‘Quota brokers’ facilitate these transfers, deriving income by engaging with representations of fish. Units of quota, or ‘paper fish’, can be abstracted from the ocean, monitored by AFMA, traded among individuals like any other commodity, created and destroyed, literally, with the stroke of a pen or the push of a button.

The cost to AFMA, in time and money, of allowing fisheries managers to accompany commercial fishing voyages as observers, largely restricts managers from experiencing the ocean as a productive domain. Though many experience an ongoing relationship with the coast, and while their living is indirectly made through ocean produce, few extract fish directly from the sea. Rather, fisheries managers engage with a larger-scale representation of the ocean, pieced together from a variety of sources that includes media, fishermen, scientists and politicians. This information offers fisheries managers a broader perspective than that available to individual fishermen. However, the information is largely founded upon engagement with symbols. Though fisheries managers garner information from commercial fishermen, the latter are typically encountered in the context of fisheries management structures, usually at meetings or on the telephone from Canberra. The salient ‘things’ in the world of fisheries managers include deadlines, budgets, contracts, meetings, office hierarchies, behavioural guidelines, 9am, 5pm and weekends, court cases, other government bureaucracies, licences and a host of acronyms such as ITQ, TAC, MAC, FAG, BAP and GHAT.12 Christina described a particular deadline as “solid” conveying the tangibility of such items in her life-world. As Lund (2001:20) suggests of identity papers in Peru, “documents become more than a simple

12 The acronyms, in order, refer to Individual Transferable Quota (ITQ), Total Allowable Catch (TAC), Management Advisory Committee (MAC), Fisheries Assessment Group (FAG), By-catch Action Plan (BAP) and Gillnet, Hook and Trap Fishery (GHAT). 375 representation of reality but rather become the reality itself”. The following example illustrates the persuasiveness with which symbols can represent the ocean.

In certain situations, boat skippers are required to telephone AFMA each time the fishing net is hauled. As nets are sometimes hauled in the middle of the night, some AFMA staff work from home, staying awake to receive telephone calls. AFMA employee, Justin, described the excitement of these communications as stemming from being part of the action on the boat, of being, in his words, “right there with them”. Though Justin has, in fact, spent long periods of time at sea, and can no doubt visualise the on-board conditions, he is not actually on the boat. Rather, he is at home, engaging with his telephone.

Most Victorians do not come even as close as a phone call to catching the fish that they eat, but instead rely on people like Justin to manage Commonwealth fisheries in a way that results in access to fresh seafood without threatening the non-consumptive ideal. AFMA are charged with the difficult task of facilitating fishing while protecting fish from humans. Of course, as with the scientist who both sought the cessation of fishing and enjoyed eating fish, this scenario is only possible as an abstraction. However, by depicting its role as regulating interaction between humans and the ocean, the state institutionalises the boundary, rendering it rigid. Those who extract from the ocean are subsequently positioned as always potentially blameworthy for environmental problems, and hence in need of regulation. The divide between instrumental human activity and the environment is established in the public consciousness, as a labarum, and institutionalised by the state (Button 2002:156). In the context of this anti-instrumentalist discourse, those who regularly engage with the ocean as extractive users are readily depicted, both morally and legally, 376 as transgressing a ‘natural’ boundary. Fishermen personify this transgression by extracting produce from the ocean. Commercial fishermen do not typically experience the underwater environment in the course of their occupation, and are therefore potentially able to ‘imagine’ an underwater environment according to the various representations described above. They do, however, engage with the ocean directly, and as extractive users, contradict the representation of the ocean as mare nullius. It is to the somewhat ambiguous experiences of commercial fishermen that I now return.

Commercial fishermen – ambiguous experiences

A conceptual boundary between humans and the ocean does not match the experiences of commercial fishermen who work at sea. Indeed, fishermen have been transgressing that boundary for around 10,000 years (McGoodwin 1990:49). In encounters with AFMA, fishermen often express incomprehension at perspectives gleaned through a mediated – and centralised – experience: “Canberra and reality are not closely related, (and) the more centralised the management, the worse it’s getting”. Another frustrated fisherman noted the difference in his experience of ‘fishing’ and its outcome, after receiving a large package of paperwork from an AFMA manager: “I’d like to see him try and eat what he produces!” While those who work the waters of Bass Strait encounter media representations, such as Finding Nemo, and ‘management tools’, such as ITQs, they also have alternative experiences in which different categories of understanding are salient. Though commercial fishermen experience a distinction between categories such as land and sea (see Chapter 3), a holistic view of the world incorporates engagement with both terrestrial and marine environments, and is negotiated through the strategic manipulation of these boundaries. The next section builds upon the detailed 377 descriptions offered in Chapters 3-6, with a greater focus on the contrasting experiences of commercial fishermen as they negotiate a range of ‘realities’ in a variety of contexts.

Despite internal frictions, there is a strong sense of a commonality among those who go to sea in search of fish (Minnegal et al. 2003). Jak, a Victorian commercial fisherman articulated the common experience: “Talking about similarities between fishers from here and other parts, no matter where one goes in the world a fisher can always talk easily to another and the issues are generally the same”.13 There is a sense in which those relationships made on land are supposed to be the most meaningful, but for the men who spend a great deal of their time at sea, or in the company of other fishermen on land, marine sociality is the more relevant reality. As was noted in Chapter 3, some men regularly refer to embarking on a fishing trip as “going home”, to a place more “real” than that on land. Another fisherman, Bob, recoiled at the thought of going ‘inland’, joking that he would need to take a vial of seawater to keep around his neck at all times. I tried to explain my own partiality to farmland, the environment in which I grew up, by suggesting that there was something appealing, comforting perhaps, about coming home dusty and sweaty, smelling of livestock and hay. Bob looked repulsed, sceptical at best, and muttered “give me fish guts any day…”

Eating Nemo

Part of the common experience of commercial fishermen is the very ambiguity implicit in their negotiation of commonly acknowledged

13 The use of the term ‘fisher’ in this quote is an anomaly. The words are taken from a written communication with a politically savvy fisherman. It is possible that the fisherman’s reflexivity in the context of, what was in total, a politically charged comment influenced him to use ‘politically correct’ language. 378 boundaries, such as between land and sea, between extraction and contemplation. As noted above, many urbanites leave their usual environment and seek a ‘wholesome’ respite in coastal regions, often taking to the water, thus emphasising the distinction between domains (Eder 1996:148). However, fishing families tend to holiday at other fishing ports or in coastal regions, places that are both classifiable as ‘wholesome’ and experientially familiar.

As I sat on the Maasbanker, casually chatting with the Michelsons one day, the family’s small children clamouring around the deck, I was struck by the overlap of consumptive and anti-instrumentalist categories of understanding available to these pint-sized fishermen. The day’s work had been completed, and the older men had produced a fishing-rod and were hooking mullet for the entertainment and education of three-year-old Connor, whilst teasing each other about the unpalatable prospect of eating the fish for dinner. As the fish came over the side, Connor’s uncle Steven gently instructed Connor to watch how he removed the hook. Connor watched, observantly, eager to take over with his chubby little fingers. He dropped several mullet into a bucket of water, identifying them as “mullet”, and proceeded to add a number of dead “pilchards” for the mullet to “eat”. As the little boy moved up and down the stairs – monitoring the burley-bag,14 hooking mullet, watching them being unhooked and plopping them into the bucket – his mother chastised him: “Be careful going down those steps Connor, hold on to the bulwarks”. Through his mother’s instruction, Connor’s attention was being directed to the salient features of the boat. Enthralled in the game, Connor began to refer to both the mullet and the dead pilchards as “Nemo”, before he fed one to the other. Connor’s father, Twiggy, chatted casually to his son, asking which fish was Nemo, which was Dory (Nemo’s animated friend), and suggesting that

14 A bag of fish remains dangled in the water in order to attract live fish. 379 they catch Marlin (Nemo’s Dad) and Bruce (a charismatic shark in Finding Nemo). “Big teeth!” cried Connor with glee. At no point did Connor seem worried at the prospect of poking a hook through Nemo, Dory, Marlin or Bruce. Twiggy continued to chat to Connor whilst teasing the other adults: “You’ve got one for Mum, and one for Uncle Steve, what about one for Dad? A big one? Mum can have it for tea. Are we going to eat Nemo?” While Connor didn’t respond, his mother gently berated Twiggy, giggling, “You’ll scar him for life!” Her comment suggests an awareness of the potential contradiction implicit in eating an anthropomorphised fish.

What struck me about this exchange was the way that both a discourse that placed fish within a food-chain (mullet eats pilchards, Mum eats mullet), and a discourse that was premised on the idea that ‘fish are friends, not food’ co-existed effortlessly. The talk occurred fluidly, not pandering to Connor, but in the context of lounging around the boat, chatting, smoking, fishing and talking about the tasks of the days to come. All of the information washed over Connor in a blanket, without distinction or contradiction. Of course, in practice, the livelihood of the family was dependent upon the capture and processing of millions of fish, and the notion that Connor should be sheltered from the death and consumption of fish contradicted their productive reality.

Connor, a fisherman-in-the-making and, more generally, an Australian child who loves cartoons, experiences those anti-instrumentalist maritime representations available to the majority of Australians. However, should he realise his potential as a fisherman, his experiences will also include extracting produce from the ocean. Until such time as Connor begins to be a fisherman, his range of experience, which inculcates him with both extractive and anti-instrumentalist notions of the ocean, will not necessarily compromise the integrity of his world. As 380 the example, above, illustrates, experience and meaning are not presented in discrete categories but, rather, the ontology of Connor’s world will emerge through a continuous stream of action and understanding. However, as a commercial fisherman, Connor will be subject to government regulation and, as a member of the public, he will continue to experience a ‘represented world’ in which a non- extractive relationship between humans and the ocean is normalised. It is at this juncture – acting as an extractive user while partially inculcated with an anti-instrumentalist ideal – that Connor may experience some of the conflict between these two ways of knowing the ocean (Tambiah 1990). Anthropomorphising fish, while living on the profits generated through the death of millions of fish, is only possible in a context where one can variously prioritise or downplay one or the other perspective. For fishermen, both extractive and anti- instrumentalist experiences are salient, relevant, ‘real’. As anti- instrumentalist sentiments take an increasingly prominent position in the worlds of fishermen and those who administrate their businesses, fishermen are increasingly compelled to negotiate the ambiguity of conflicting experiences.

First-hand experiences of reality

As Milton reminds us, all representations are encountered in the same way, although the knowledge constructed is necessarily different (2002:51-3). People regard representations as variously literal, metaphoric, or false, depending on their existing framework of understanding. Corner Inlet fisherman, Joe Pinzone, has referred to his fishing expeditions as a search for the ‘money fish’ (McCleod and Borelli 2001). Like ‘paper fish’, the ontology of the ‘money fish’ emerges in the context of action in a particular physical and social reality. The former is paper that symbolises fish, while the latter is fish that represents 381 money. When fishermen simultaneously encounter conflicting discourses they occasionally – depending on the context – respond by stylizing themselves as either noble custodians who are ‘at one’ with the ocean or villainous ‘rapers and pillagers’. Shark fisherman, Fat, delighted in pronouncing in front of those he perceived to be ‘greenies’ (environmental anti-instrumentalists), that he skippered a “nuclear powered whaling vessel that uses baby seals and dolphins as burley!” More often, however, fishermen simply refer to the exclusivity of their experiences, which transgress the false paradigms in which their roles are consigned to caricatures (Rice 2001:8). I was often told that those who had no experience of fishing – those who, as was the mantra among some fishermen, had ‘never been, never seen, never done’ – simply could not understand the industry.15

As the global perspective on environmental problems becomes increasingly institutionalised in public discourse, media and state representations, fishermen are increasingly compelled to acknowledge that the wider community has begun to imagine the ocean in a way that erases fishermen from the sea. The ocean can be imagined as mare nullius, and its products as consumable, only when these perspectives exist separately from the marine environment itself, and from each other. It is when these narratives converge that the inevitable ambiguity, and a sense of crisis, emerges.

The repercussions of experiencing incongruous perspectives simultaneously are yet to be addressed in detail. Perhaps the crisis occurring within individual fishermen as they strive to negotiate incongruous perspectives contributes to the high levels of stress and

15 Many of the responses of fishermen to perspectives and practices perceived to be mainstream, could be characterised using Sider’s (1980) term, “counter- hegemony”, described as “opposition to the prevailing hegemony – by mockery, by distancing and evasion, by denial or by oppositional claims, demands, or values”. 382 anxiety currently under investigation in Australia (FRDC 2005, Lewis 2005, Shoebridge 2005, Professional Fisherman 2005. Also see Palmer 2003, Smith et al. 2003). An article in Professional Fisherman (2005:14) praises Cathy Keppie,16 a teacher who’s husband fishes from a New South Wales port, for spearheading a program aimed at quantifying the emotional stress suffered by commercial fishermen due to management restrictions:

Wild caught harvest commercial fishing families have faithfully sowed money, time, trust, urgency and co-operation into their dealings with [management authorities], only to reap humiliation, neglect, poverty, despair, frustration, grief and loss of a grand scale from a nazi (sic) like regime.... [Group counselling sessions have] provided closure for some friends, to the recent death of a local commercial fishing person, whose life was lost in foul weather, whilst he was trying to meet the unreasonable commitment placed upon him by authorities.

Throughout my own fieldwork I observed markers of stress manifest in fishermen, which they attributed to the uncertainty inherent in Commonwealth commercial fisheries management. Indeed, some jokingly referred to this experience as a physical malady, coughing loudly and then explaining, “I’ve got a severe case of AFMA”. I observed others who experienced sleeplessness, nightmares, physical shaking, hair loss and discolouration, weight loss, and public weeping. A sense of lugubriousness bordering on abject hopelessness certainly contributed to strained friendships and marriages and, as has been shown for other commercial fishermen, probably contributed to incidences of excessive drinking and smoking (Johnsone et al. 1998, Kline et al. 1989).

16 After funding her own pilot study, Keppie received $10,000 via the FRCD Peter Dundas-Smith Scholarship to continue her work (FRDC 2005). 383

In the period following the implementation of ITQs to the Southern Shark Fishery, a system designed to economically pressure some people from the industry, and complicated by restrictions on open transfers, there was considerable antagonism between some shark fishermen and some AFMA managers. Many fishermen expressed anger that managers, several of whom they had known for years, acted with apparent disregard for the personal turmoil that the new management system was causing them and their families. Colourful adjectives were sometimes employed by fishermen to describe managers and scientists. More often, however, fishermen expressed frustration and incredulity that the person standing before them could make decisions about their lives with apparent impunity, as if they were ‘just a number’.

The words of Susan, the wife of a smaller-scale shark fisherman, are typical. Her comments were in the context of a discussion about investors buying large portions of the available quota, effectively profiting from the expulsion of smaller operators and limiting the opportunity for small-scale investment in the industry:

I just can’t believe that with the stroke of a pen, AFMA can just restructure. And if they get it wrong, they just restructure! It doesn’t make one bit of difference to their pay-packets. They just go home! And everything is just multi, multi, multi! And they just don’t care! They just don’t care!

Perhaps more than at any other time, in the weeks following the 2001 announcement of the 23 percent gummy shark TAC cut, many of those fishermen with whom I spoke were under extreme stress and spoke of AFMA staff with a searing hatred. Shark fisherman Dick, became somewhat agitated during a discussion with a fisheries ‘expert’ regarding the reduction. In a clearly practiced attempt to placate Dick, the other proffered his palms and softly repeated the line, “I know how 384 you feel, Dick, I know how you feel”. Dick’s levels of frustration peaked at this point and his vociferous interruption was intense and wry: “No you don’t! No you don’t! I’ve just lost $400,000. Just like that. [Dick indicates a ‘stroke of a pen’]. You haven’t! So don’t tell me you know how I feel!” The other man was silent.

Another fisherman expressed his frustration at the seeming incongruity between the world he understood through years of experience at sea and the world of bureaucracy he was being forced to contend with:

We are not students of words. They batter us with words, that’s what we’re fighting, that’s what their world is like – it runs on aggressive words. Forty years ago I fought them with my fists: and I won! But now they’re bashing us with words!

Others appealed to the ‘human side’ of the civil servants they encountered. During an official visit by AFMA officials to the fishing port of Lakes Entrance, in late 2001, an exhausted and frustrated shark boat skipper presented the panel of AFMA managers with a problem arising from the TAC reduction. Mick explained that he had two deckhands, Danny and Tony, both of whom had young families, both of whom were in a potentially precarious financial position, and neither of whom had locally based options for alternative employment. The reduction in his quota allocation meant that he could not afford to pay them both. “Who do I sack?” Mick implored, rhetorically. Mick, Chris and Dick’s words convey the frustration often expressed by fishers, globally, towards those who make decisions about fisheries with apparent detached objectivity, with disregard for the correlative impact on the ‘lives’ of fishers and their families (McGoodwin 1990:77).

One particular example of manifest anxiety bears relaying. Shortly 385 after the announcement of the 23 percent cut to the gummy shark TAC for 2002, Daffy relayed a nightmare he remembered from the night before. The dream was unusual, he mused, as he rarely remembered his dreams and this one had been on his mind all day. In the dream were two houses, built side by side, occupied by his immediate family, most notably his mother, sister and brother. Burrowing beneath the houses, destroying the foundations of both, was a giant and elusive black and white rat. The rat was extremely dangerous, and had begun to breed, though they could not discover the nest. In his dream, Daffy and his brother were trying to figure out how to get rid of the rat before it completely destroyed their homes. The problem was that the rat could not be killed, because “they” would not allow it. When I asked who ‘they’ were, Daffy alluded to an intangible authority that had legislated to protect the rat because it was a scientifically valuable specimen. Scientists would want to dissect the rat, he explained, and their homes were inconsequential in relation to the scientific importance of the rodent. Enthralled by the story, and unable to suppress my urge to perform a quack-dream-analysis, I suggested to Daffy that his dream may represent his anxiety over the potential destruction that fisheries management decisions were currently having on his life, livelihood, family and sense of identity. Daffy chuckled, perhaps humouring me just a little, that he had not thought of it that way – he had simply thought it an unusual and poignant dream – but that I might just be right. Years later, however, I think of how aptly that story reflected the waking anxieties – nightmarish for some – that so dominated my discussions with commercial fishermen. Even in a dream-state, incongruity between valuations of natural phenomena threatened the literal and figurative integrity of the fisherman. 386

Conclusion

Australians imagine the ocean in ways that are influenced by the contexts in which their experiences arise and the items they encounter. The marine environment is fertile ground for imagination. Inhospitable, uninhabitable, with large tracts neither regulated nor explored, the space for speculation on the underwater environment is almost infinite. While every aspect of the world humans occupy is, to some extent, imagined, the inaccessibility of the ocean renders it more subject to speculative fabrication than terrestrial environments. The authors of these ‘imagined oceans’ construct ‘the marine environment’, not from scratch, but in accordance with their existing cosmologies, their past experiences (Bourdieu 1977, Merleau-Ponty 1962). As most Victorians only ever encounter the ocean on holidays to the coast and relatively few dive, their picture of the marine environment is something of a blank slate (Smith and Free 1996:8). It is upon this blank slate that imaginations can create seascapes, creatures, whole ecosystems, that reflect other physical, environmental and social dynamics. The accessibility and power of the media gives it considerable ability to ‘inscribe’ this space with ‘reality’. Most Australians, including commercial fishermen and fisheries ‘experts’, experience the underwater environment as documentaries and press releases that highlight ‘threats’ to the marine environment, or that illustrate the aesthetic qualities that are in need of protection. In this understanding the boundary between the human and marine world is almost impermeable. Most humans can only appreciate the ocean as spectators and never as extractive users. The maintenance of this division between nature and society, the message of preservation, as opposed to conservation, strongly pervades the media representations of the ocean.

387

South-east Australian commercial fishermen, including those who hunt shark, and fisheries ‘experts’ have additional experiences that shape their understandings. Gankas climb out of the blackness, across the interface of the living and the dead, and onto shark boats, partly because of a set of social dynamics between shark boat skippers and their deckhands (see Chapter 3). Fishermen encounter the ocean directly, extracting fish and selling them to a largely anonymous public, via a chain of processors and retailers. Able to access seafood without going to sea, the non-fishing public may encounter the marine ecosystem as a domain for recreation or as a fragile object of contemplation, in which humans do not belong. Fisheries managers encounter ‘management tools’ that model the ocean and human users, making their living by manipulating these representations. Their goal is to satisfy both those who catch fish, and those who would like to eat fish without disturbing the ocean. The publicly accessible labarum of anti-instrumentalist sentiment evident in representations of the ocean such as the films Finding Nemo and Deep Blue and the campaign promoting the implementation of MPAs in Victorian waters, present the ocean in a way that contradicts the experiences and understandings of those who directly extract from the marine environment. Of course, the dilemma is irreconcilable, as is, I argue, the ‘crisis of meanings’ that confounds discourses on the use of ocean resources. By way of conclusion, I return to the discussion initiated by Ingold to advance an understanding of this crisis.

When Ingold (2000b) described the distinction between ‘spheres’ and ‘globes’ he envisaged two completely different ways of knowing the world, the former gleaned through direct experience, the latter cognitively reconstructed through a detached appreciation of an ‘artificial’ representation (Ingold 2000b:215). Eder (1996:45) similarly depicted this decontextualised perspective as somehow unreal: “From 388 this viewpoint… the observer understands himself by deduction and calculation, that is, by an operative construction”. If the global perspective is considered ‘artificial’ then one might conclude, as Ingold does, that environmental ‘crises’ occur because people have become alienated from the reality of their environment (Ingold 2000b:215).

If reality is that which impinges on the lives of those who experience it, however, then not only is the ocean ‘real’, but so are those items, ideas and maps that represent the ocean. While engagement with a physical location promotes a particular understanding of that environment, an encounter with a representation of the area, perhaps a documentary, cartoon, or an actual map, similarly engages all of the senses in experiencing the context of the encounter. To suggest, however, that the map is the same as the place, or vice versa, is to be in error. Those who experience only an ‘operative construction’ (Eder 1996:45), such as a mare nullius environment, may develop the false impression that humans have a choice as to whether or not to engage with the ocean (Ingold 2000b:215). However, this false paradigm, and its associated ‘sense of crisis’, grounded in the ambiguity of competing experiences and understandings of the ocean, is institutionalised in modern representations of the ocean such as those described above. As Hoffman points out, “because the paradigmatic systems by which many people organise their reality involve false divisions, the systems incorporate perpetual disequilibrium” (Hoffman 2002:114 original emphasis). While fishermen actively maintain the ambiguity of various boundaries within their world so that their agency is not denied by such false paradigms, the system of nation-state fisheries management privileges particular ‘paradigmatic systems’ in order to facilitate uniform, anonymous and efficient administration. When the abstraction is legitimised in bureaucratic space, is fixed, made rigid and tangible – when the representation, or the map, is regarded as the 389 reality, or the terrain (Bateson 1972, Ingold 1993b, 2000e) – ambiguity can no longer be negotiated strategically. Just as the ocean as mare nullius is incompatible with fishing, and the ‘ideal bureaucrat’ is incompatible with the complex, socially embedded individual who works as a fisheries ‘expert’, the generic, anonymous, interchangeable ‘fishing licence holder’ is incompatible with the complex, socially constructed fisherman and the interdependent productive performance he must embody in order to fish. It is because engaging with modern environmentalist institutions that reflect anti-instrumentalist ideals has become as real as any encounter at sea, because boundaries that facilitate agency through their ambiguity are being fixed, and because the majority of Australians who advocate the ‘protection’ of the marine environment have experiences that are limited to representations that are incongruous with the productive reality of commercial fishing, that ‘crises’ in our oceans are destined to continue.

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Minerva Access is the Institutional Repository of The University of Melbourne

Author/s: King, Tanya J.

Title: Between the devil and the deep blue sea: negotiating ambiguous physical and social boundaries within the shark fishing industry of Bass Strait, Australia

Date: 2006-07

Citation: King, Tanya J. (2006) Between the devil and the deep blue sea: negotiating ambiguous physical and social boundaries within the shark fishing industry of Bass Strait, Australia, PhD thesis, School of Anthropology, Geography and Environmental Studies, The University of Melbourne.

Publication Status: Unpublished

Persistent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11343/39285

File Description: Between the devil and the deep blue sea: negotiating ambiguous physical and social boundaries within the shark fishing industry of Bass Strait, Australia

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