Seafood market intermediaries, often termed middlemen, play a crucial yet contested role in connecting small-scale fisheries (SSF) to global seafood markets. While their influence has long been recognized, scholarly accounts have tended to frame these intermediaries as either exploitative actors who constrain fishers’ livelihoods or as essential actors who provide access to markets, finance, and social protection. This scoping review examines how recent literature (2019–2021) normatively frames seafood market intermediaries, and what these framings reveal about scholarly and policy discourses on SSF. Using a qualitative synthesis of peer-reviewed and grey literature, we identify predominant framings that cast these intermediaries as both leeches and linchpins, thereby reinforcing power asymmetries while also buffering fishers against economic and social risks. We discuss how these normative framings shape broader narratives that influence fisheries governance and policy, with implications for equitable outcomes. The paper also demonstrates the value of systematic scoping methods for synthesizing qualitative marine social science research and provides methodological reflections for small research teams. Recognizing the diverse, gendered, and socially embedded roles of intermediaries can inform more just and context-sensitive interventions in SSF seafood supply chains.
Cities are increasingly important actors in food governance, yet their role in blue food systems remains poorly understood, particularly because they generally lack authority over fisheries management. This study examines how municipal policies shaped Barcelona’s blue food system between 1940 and 2023 and asks how local governments influence seafood provisioning through powers exercised beyond production. We combine long-term official statistics, archival and legal analysis, and semi-structured interviews within a historical PESTEL framework. The findings reveal a transition from direct market intervention to infrastructural governance. During the mid-twentieth century, municipal price controls, centralized distribution rules, and investments in wholesale and public retail markets structured seafood flows and reinforced the position of local fishmongers. Subsequent economic liberalization, European integration, technological change, and the relocation of the central wholesale market reduced direct municipal control while facilitating Barcelona’s integration into global seafood networks. At the same time, ecological decline in local fisheries weakened the connection between urban consumption and surrounding marine ecosystems and contributed to the marginalization of the city’s fishing community. Nevertheless, Barcelona’s continuing network of municipal food markets has helped preserve a comparatively strong role for fishmongers and access to fresh seafood. The case demonstrates that cities shape blue food systems not primarily by managing fisheries or regulating prices, but through long-term decisions about markets, logistics, spatial planning, and retail infrastructure. Such decisions can preserve urban food access while simultaneously reinforcing dependence on distant ecosystems and redistributing benefits and vulnerabilities across seafood supply chains.
The need for understanding social resilience within fishery systems facing environmental and climatic change is increasingly recognized. The southern New England American lobster fishery has experienced abundance declines since the late 1990s, leading to significant social and cultural impacts, but limited research has examined these impacts and changes from a social resilience lens. Through interviews with past and present participants in the fishery across the region, we utilized a resilience arenas framework to understand the multi- and cross-scale influences on social resilience at individual and collective levels during a time of resource abundance declines. Our analysis highlights that individual resilience is not static but is an evolving process, negotiated over time at individual and collective levels, and influenced by changes in other arenas. We identified the working waterfront as a critical arena shaping resilience options for individuals and the industry. In addition, we identified an interplay between individual and collective agency and resilience, with interactions between arenas whereby individuals’ resilience decisions impacted industry associations and their collective capacity. These results indicate the value of adopting a cross-arena perspective to explore interactions and position resilience as a process, as opposed to only an outcome assessed through single-scale attribute-based approaches. Our results also encourage resilience planning and implementation efforts to extend beyond a focus on individual livelihood adjustments to consider multi- and cross-arena influences and contexts. This includes supporting individual and collective agency and experimentation, securing access to waterfront and fishing infrastructure, and improving decision making processes that foster meaningful stakeholder engagement.
This study analyzes the dynamics of vulnerability in coastal small-scale fisheries under high level of pressure from port-industrial complex in Baixada Santista, Brazil. We employed a socioeconomic survey (n = 401), transdisciplinary focus-group workshops (n = 6) with fishers (n = 40), and stakeholder semi-structured interviews (n = 5). Our results reveal that vulnerability is multifaceted and shaped by: (i) increased exposure and sensitivity driven by cumulative environmental impacts, particularly those associated with port activities; (ii) underlying socioeconomic conditions, including gender inequality, lack of professional documentation, and irregular housing; (iii) weak governance, characterized by the absence of a formal arenas for conflict resolution and fragmented environmental licensing processes with limited participation; and (iv) adaptive capacity, present in all communities but insufficient to transform the prevailing vulnerability scenario. In addition, local environmental knowledge reveals that socioenvironmental impacts accumulated over time have intensified vulnerability by eroding the foundations of fishing livelihoods through the loss of fishing grounds and the decline of fishery resources, thereby undermining fishing territories. We conclude that transforming vulnerability in coastal small-scale fisheries requires inclusive and multi-scalar maritime governance, strengthened environmental licensing practices, and the meaningful incorporation of local ecological knowledge into decision-making processes.
That actors - whether individuals, corporations, organisations, or states - are claiming property rights over the oceans and coasts is by no means a new phenomenon. However, it appears that the phenomenon is currently achieving new shapes and intensities. It is therefore receiving special attention from marine social scientists, as evidenced by the rising number of publications on topics such as blue-grabbing, ocean justice, individual tradable quotas, and NGO-managed marine protected areas. We observed that contributions to the topic are frequently polarised, where one side views privatisation - such as individually tradable quotas - as a saviour, and the other sees it as a massive risk. This collection aims to bring together and organise a conversation between diverse perspectives on the topic and to allow them to engage in discussion. All papers in this collection employ a different theoretical lens and apply it to empirical examples from around the world. This editorial discusses, explains, and synthesises the findings of these contributions. To accomplish this, we utilise artificial intelligence-assisted qualitative data analysis tools. The main outcomes are that processes of ocean privatisation are ‘processes of property’, whereby bargaining and discourses of different parties involved create new institutions. Distributive consequences are at the centre of interest of all approaches, and attention to power is also an important issue for all approaches.
