I Data Imbalance Problem 



There are two reasons for the great imbalance in the 

 data available. First, fisheries management has traditionally 

 been the domain of the fisheries biologist. The administrators 

 of Federal and State Agencies concerned with fisheries manage- 

 ment have channeled funding towards biological research, and 

 away from the social sciences. Second, among social scientists 

 only the economists have built up a body of data and theory con- 

 cerning the application of theory in their field to fisheries 

 management problems. Even though economists have only been 

 working with fisheries for some twenty-five years, their influ- 

 ence on PL. 94-265 has been enormous. If anything, they have 

 had as much influence, if not more, than the biologists. Hov7- 

 ever, they are not prepared to deal with the social and cultural 

 aspects of management. 



Other kinds of social scientists on the whole have not 

 been interested in fisheries problems in the U.S. Political 

 scientists tend to work with political institutions on a national 

 and international level. Sociologists have concentrated most of 

 their attention on problems in urban areas. Social psychologists 

 have stuck to their laboratories where conditions can be care- 

 fully controlled and reactions observed. And anthropologists 

 have tended to work in foreign cultures outside the Western 

 world. Only recently have a few social scientists become inter- 

 ested in the modern fishing industry of the United States. Most 

 are anthropologists, who I think have been attracted to fishing 



