Assessing Community

Recent projects include two social impact analyses produced for the Mid-Atlantic Fisheries Management Council, an extensive inventory of Mid-Atlantic fishing communities, an on-going examination of the cumulative impacts of resource regulations on fishing communities, and the development of a protocol for assessing fishing communities. These projects utilize ethnographic, oral history, and spatial analytic (GIS) methodologies to define and assess fishing communities. The methods developed provide a means by which fishing communities might be made visible both on-shore and at-sea contra the dominant discourse of fisheries that reifies only competing individuals. The "mixed" methods deployed go beyond documenting communities; they create the ontological ground for both participatory fisheries science and community-based fisheries management.

St. Martin, K. 2004. "GIS in Marine Fisheries Science and Decision Making" in Geographic Information Systems in Fisheries, W. L. Fisher and F. J. Rahel eds. Bethesda, MD: American Fisheries Society, pp. 237-258.

St. Martin, K. 2001. "Making Space for Community Resource Management in Fisheries," The Annals of the Association of American Geographers 91(1): 122-142.

St. Martin, K. 2006. "The Impact of "Community" on Fisheries Management in the U.S. Northeast," Geoforum 37(2) 169-184.

St. Martin, K., B. McCay, T. Johnson, and T. Rohrbach. 2005. Assessing Recreational Fishing Communities: A Report to the National Marine Fisheries Service. The Fisheries Project, Rutgers The State University, New Brunswick, New Jersey.

St. Martin, K., T. Johnson, and T. Rohrbach. 2005. A Profile of Recreational Fishing in Point Pleasant New Jersey. The Fisheries Project, Rutgers The State University, New Brunswick, New Jersey.

New Community Spaces, New Community Potentials

In addition to research that informs policy making directly, I have also worked to engage fishers in the task of imagining alternative futures for fishing communities and fishing environments. The "Atlas Project" utilizes a participatory action research methodology and GIS generated maps to examine the territories and spatial practices of several fishing communities in the Gulf of Maine . The project was designed such that fishers interviewed other fishers concerning their communal inhabitation and utilization of marine environments. In addition, the project attempted to facilitate a community-based subjectivity in fishers that is in line with environmental stewardship. The results of this project are being disseminated through both academic and non-academic (e.g. a booth at the Working Waterfront Festival in New Bedford , MA ) channels.


St. Martin, K. 2005. "Mapping Economic Diversity in the First World: The Case of Fisheries," Environment and Planning A 37: 959-979.

St. Martin, K. and M. Hall-Arber. Forthcoming. "Environment and Development: (Re)Connecting Community and Commons in New England Fisheries" in Connecting People, Participation and Place: Participatory Action Research Approaches and Methods. S. Kindon, R. Pain and M. Kesby eds. Routledge.

St. Martin, K. and M. Hall-Arber. Under Review. "Mapping Resilience in the Fishing Communities of New England" submitted to Human Ecology Review.

St. Martin , K. and M. Hall-Arber. Under Review. "The Missing Layer: Geo-technologies, Communities, and Implications for Marine Spatial Planning" submitted to Marine Policy.


The combination of ethnographic and GIS methods as well as the novel documentation of a community presence in the sea has garnered the attention of institutions involved in the emerging international field of Marine Spatial Planning. As claims to rights and resources expand along with geomatic technologies that enable greater documentation of ocean space, there is a growing need for theories and methods that can incorporate human dimensions into marine spatial planning as well as ecosystems-based approaches to the management of marine resources. Atlas Project results were presented at the Spatial Planning for the Sustainable Management of the Seas workshop hosted by the Maritime Institute at the University of Ghent, Belgium and the recent UNESCO workshop on Sea Use Management and Marine Spatial Planning. This work that documents the “social landscape” of the marine environment nicely complements and challenges the chiefly biophysical analyses of ocean environments that are currently used to inform marine spatial planning.

Knowledge Systems

While my research continues to progress along the themes iterated above, it is also moving in new directions inspired by science and technology studies but grounded in the problematic of resource users' participation in environmental science and resource management. Both experienced laypersons (e.g. fishers) and scientists produce detailed and sophisticated (and curiously cartographic) knowledge about the environment. How do these knowledges differ, interact, influence environmental management, and what is their role in the production of local economies? These questions are being addressed through two linked grants from the National Science Foundation to pursue in detail the interaction of experience-based knowledge with research-based knowledge within the context of fisheries management. This long-term project involves extensive interviewing of fisheries scientists, managers, and fishers themselves; it is linked to a similar project in the European Union; and it is, in part, coordinated through the Working Group on Fisheries Systems (International Council for the Exploration of the Sea). While the case study is again fisheries, the results of this project will clearly be of interest to science studies scholars and it will contribute, amongst other things, a geographic sensibility currently lacking in science studies.

St. Martin, K., B. McCay, G. Murry, T. Johnson, and B. Oles. 2007. "Communities, Knowledge, and Fisheries of the Future," International Journal of Global Environmental Issues 7(2/3): 221-239.

McCay, B., T. Johnson, K. St. Martin, and D. Wilson. 2006. "Gearing Up for Improved Collaboration: The Potentials and Limits of Cooperative Research for Incorporating Fishermen's Knowledge" in Partnerships for a Common Purpose: Cooperative Fisheries Research and Management, A. N. Read and T. W. Hartley eds. Bethesda, MD: American Fisheries Society, pp. 111-115.