Resetting Our Goals?

             In the coastal fishing community of Harker’s Island, a place near to where I have been studying, I meet a man named Jim.  He was an older man who had seen a lot of change over the years. Jim spoke of the expansion and development he has witnessed, with the introduction of electricity and sewage treatment heading the list of positive consequences.  As we walked down the docks, he pointed to the modern nets and pots today’s fishermen use as further evidence of the benefits these changes have brought.  Listening to Jim, I couldn’t help wondering what else had come with the change.

A public access waterfront area on Harker’s Island Jim showed, as he talked about what development brought to the area. 

            On this cool and sunny spring day, I observed long pauses in Jim’s narration.  It appeared the pauses were him taking a break in his thought process, as the more he talked to us the more he began to reflect on the effect of development in the area.  He spoke of the tight-knit fishing community that could be both exceedingly friendly and stubbornly exclusive to any outsiders, and how he entered it keeping his head down and taking advice from those that befriended him so he could learn the tricks of the trade.  When he went on to describe the current situation, which is dominated by corporations and where fishermen work to fill quotas for over-the-phone orders, Jim paused as the realization of a loss in community dawned on both him and us.  No longer were fishermen working with and for one another.  Instead, many had been forced out of the business, and the remaining ones were becoming increasingly isolated and hardened by corporate principles of efficiency and profits. 

            Jim spoke of the benefits of development to the infrastructure and how it had made fishing easier, yet not all was as good as it should have been.  While development is meant to increase jobs, wages, standard of living, and generally makes things better, these were not the outcomes experienced by most.  Even though fishing is easier and safer today, fish prices have decreased and more fish must be caught to make the business sustainable.  Now only large boats that can stay out for long periods of time to catch increased quantities of fish are financially viable.  This is why fishermen have been driven out of their livelihood or forced into working longer hours. 

Jim’s crab tanks where he spends sleep deprived weeks watching the crabs overnight, waiting them to shed their shell so he can add value to his product. 

            

One of the shortcomings of basing decisions on expansion and development is that environmental protection and general worker happiness are not primary goals.  Instead upscaling boats and fishing technology has led to overfishing of a limited natural resource and a community that has witnessed significant, but not necessarily beneficial, change.  Development has certainly increased the standard of living with the introduction of electricity and septic systems. However, an argument can be made that development has brought harsher conditions as well as simple pleasures with it. One might even ask whether the endless stressful competition that the fishing community now faces is too high a price to pay for its growth and development.