Oregon Sea Grant

Oregon's coastal fishing communities: More than meets the eye

Contacts: Flaxen Conway, Kaety Hildenbrand

With a federal mandate to include human impacts in its fisheries management decisions, NOAA Fisheries relies on community profiles intended to inform managers about the economic and social effects of their decisions. However, fishing communities have long felt that the agency's profiles were too short, and too limited, to give a true picture of the impact commercial fishing has on entire communities.

The idea for this collaborative project originated in Port Orford, on the southern Oregon coast, whose offshore waters include Redfish Rocks, a rich marine habitat which has been chosen as one of Oregon's two pilot marine reserve sites. While many in the area support the goals of protecting fish breeding grounds, some also felt threatened by the designation, and believed it was made without a clear picture of the potential effect fishing restrictions could have on the small community. Led by the Port Orford Ocean Resource Team (POORT), the community set out to supplement their official "short-form" community profiles with more details, gathered by those who know the communities best.

Training community members to conduct social science research

Building on decades of with coastal Oregon communities, Oregon Sea Grant Extension faculty were brought in to plan, coordinate and publish the project. They enlarged the project to cover three coastal communities - south, central and north coast - and took an innovative approach, enlisting community members  and training them in valid sociological research techniques so they could interview their own peers. The resulting profiles contain a depth of information not often available, allowing fisheries managers, decision makers, fishing community members, and the public to better understand the potential impacts of ocean-related policies on these three communities. 

These richly detailed profiles are now serving as models for similar efforts in other coastal communities, in Oregon and elsewhere. 

Funding: OSU Sustainable Rural Communities Initiative, NOAA Fisheries, Oregon Sea Grant and the Port Liaison Project

Learn more:

• Long-form Community Profiles:
  • Port Orford
  • Newport
  • Garibaldi