Different seafood supply chain pathways contribute to or conversely detract from the resilience and adaptive capacity of the fishing sector. Direct seafood marketing strategies shorten the link between seafood harvesters and consumers. These strategies appear to be relatively resistant to systemic food system disruptions, making them a potentially important segment of a resilient food system providing benefits to consumers and harvesters. However, little is known about the scale and diversity of the direct seafood marketing sector in the United States. This paper outlines the advantages of collecting data on direct seafood marketing in the US. Additionally, we describe our methodology for creating a sampling frame of direct seafood marketers. We provide initial results from the first national assessment of direct seafood marketing practices, including results from a questionnaire distributed to 39,511 commercial seafood harvesters engaging in wild capture fisheries. Direct seafood marketing was a common strategy among respondents, and the most popular strategy involved selling to a source-identified distributor, i.e. intermediaries who identify the harvester at the point of sale. When combined with data on direct seafood marketing permits, it is estimated that 12% of US seafood harvesters engage in direct seafood sales. These findings suggest that direct marketing is a ubiquitous practice in the commercial fishing sector in the US. Understanding scale and diversity of direct seafood marketing in the US can provide information needed for targeted investments in policies, funding, and technical assistance programs that build diverse, resilient seafood supply chains, and benefit the fishing sector and food security of the nation.

The uncertainty of future ocean conditions caused by climate change challenges the conventional fisheries management model that assumes resource extraction occurs in a steady-state environment. As managers respond to climate impacts and focus on long-term preparedness, an overarching goal is to minimize the vulnerability of fishing businesses and communities. However, during the adaptation process, challenges can arise when perceptions of climate change vulnerability differ among scientists, managers, and harvesters. A harvester’s perception of their risk to climate change influences their willingness to plan for and respond to change, yet these views are often overlooked in adaptation planning. To better understand this dynamic, we conducted a regional survey to evaluate the perceptions harvesters hold regarding the impacts of climate change on commercially fished species in the Northeastern United States and the resulting risks from those changes. The waters in this region of the Northwest Atlantic shelf are warming faster than the global average resulting in shifting distributions of species, altered seasonal migrations, and changes in productivity. Respondents’ perceptions aligned with an analysis conducted by scientists on the directionality of climate impacts for 12 out of 27 (44%) of the most commercially important species in the region. Additionally, an understanding of the variability in perceptions of climate change vulnerability emerged: 72% of respondents believe climate change is occurring, 53% believe climate change will harm them personally, and 28% have already seen a negative impact on their ability to catch fish. Respondents who believe that climate change is occurring had higher perceptions of vulnerability on average than those who do not believe it is occurring. Despite a sense of vulnerability to climate change, respondents did not rank it among the top three concerns (fisheries regulations, market access, and access to working waterfronts) for their fishing businesses. Investigating harvester’s perceptions is an opportunity to share their experiences and understand the diversity of perspectives regarding the impacts of climate change. Increasing the inclusion of social science indicators and diverse perspectives will increase climate resilience of fisheries management.

Amendment 23 (A23) to the Northeast Multispecies Fisheries Management Plan will remake monitoring systems for the Northeast US commercial groundfish fishery. In addition to substantially increasing monitoring coverage, A23 will provide fishers with the option to utilize electronic monitoring (EM) technologies in place of human at-sea observers. Based on twenty-six interviews with representatives of the fishing industry, nongovernmental organizations, regulatory agencies, EM service providers, and other stakeholder groups, this paper examines how the fishery is planning for the adoption of EM. We focus on the differing perspectives on the value of EM as an appropriate tool for protecting the fishery, and as a tool of surveillance that may transform the lives of fishers. We find that while most stakeholders support the use of EM in the future, mistrust within the industry-based on historical regulatory failures, perceived lack of information on technical feasibility, privacy and data ownership issues, and the unknown long-term costs to vessel owners-poses significant barriers to successful adoption of these technologies. We conclude that these barriers can be overcome by investing in co-management driven EM implementations that draw on the expertise of fishers and increase their autonomy over their vessels and their use of data. This study offers critical insights into the conflicting sociotechnical imaginaries that co-produce spaces of surveillance for natural resource management, as well as provides important findings for the fishery as A23 moves into implementation phases.

Commercial fisheries are important to the social, cultural, and economic well-being of coastal communities throughout the New England and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. Fishing vessel crew and hired captains comprise a significant portion of fishing industry employment, yet very few studies have inquired about the social and demographic characteristics of the individuals who make up this segment of the industry. Moreover, virtually no data exists that tracks the characteristics of crew and hired captains over time in order to capture trends in socio-demographics, employment, and fishing practices, among other factors. This study is a follow-up to a baseline survey conducted in 2012 by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC). During late 2018 and early 2019, NEFSC staff conducted interviews with commercial fishing vessel crew and hired captains at ports from Maine to North Carolina. Interviewers asked respondents questions regarding their demographic background, the availability of work, and fishing trip characteristics, among other topics of interest related to employment in commercial fishing. Results indicate an increasing fragility of fishing communities in the region related to the aging of fishing crews and low levels of new individuals entering into the occupation, in addition to other social and economic vulnerabilities of commercial crews and hired captains.

Fisheries regulators have increasingly incorporated video monitoring systems, also known as electronic monitoring, into programs for fisheries data collection and documentation of bycatch. Electronic monitoring has recently emerged as one potential solution for fisheries monitoring and catch accounting in the Northeast United States, where fisheries regulators will soon require all commercial groundfish trips to be monitored either by electronic monitoring or human observers. Fisheries managers, scientists, and industry stakeholders have cooperated to some extent to solve some of the logistical and technical hurdles of electronic monitoring through recent pilot projects and coordination meetings. Whereas prior research has assessed the outcomes of stakeholder interactions in traditional venues (e.g., fisheries council meetings, workshops), we interrogated the dynamic connections between stakeholders in discussions about electronic monitoring policies and initiatives in the social media environment. Using social network and content analysis, we examined electronic monitoring-related discourse among Northeast U.S. fisheries stakeholders on Twitter over a period of 2 years. This research represents the initial phase of a multi-year study on co-management aspects of decision-making in Northeast U.S. federally managed fisheries. Our initial findings revealed that environmental NGOs and federal science agency organizations drive the discourse on electronic monitoring, but information-sharing between environmental NGOs, government, and industry as a form of cooperation appears to take shape with some fishing industry and community organizations joining the conversation. These preliminary results suggest that cross-stakeholder communications are prevalent, but expanding discursive networks will be necessary in realizing diverse participation in cooperative fisheries projects, particularly those aimed at implementing new approaches to fisheries science and management, as in the case of electronic monitoring for the Northeast groundfish fishery.

Global warming will disproportionately affect people of color (e.g., Latinos). Previous research has found that Latinos in the USA are more engaged with global warming than are non-Latino Whites, in part, because they are more likely to perceive it as a serious risk. It was unclear, however, what factors most strongly explain Latinos' elevated perceptions of risk. This study uses two parallel, nationally representative surveys of Latino and non-Latino White Americans to investigate these different levels of risk perception. Mediation analyses indicate that Latinos' greater risk perceptions may be explained by (in order of magnitude) their stronger pro-climate injunctive social norms and egalitarian worldviews, stronger identification with the Democratic party, more frequent communication with family outside the USA, greater harm from environmental hazards, stronger descriptive norms, and a weaker individualist worldview. These findings help inform strategies for communicating with different subgroups of Americans that have different global warming risk perceptions.

Increasingly, researchers studying public beliefs about global warming have turned to the question of whether individuals have begun to perceive changes to their local climate conditions and to what extent they attribute these changes to the phenomenon of global warming. Perceptions of particular types of extreme events, i.e. extreme heat and droughts, have attracted the most attention, whereas the possible effects of place (such as proximity to coastal areas vulnerable to sea-level rise) on public beliefs about the link between changes to weather patterns and global warming have been largely neglected. This study matches geo-located responses to a nationally representative survey of US residents with climate extremes data in order to investigate the social and physical factors shaping public views about the links between global warming and extreme weather. Specifically, regional-level Climate Extremes Indices (CEI) are modelled together with individual-level socio-demographic characteristics and an indicator of coastal residence to test whether the incidence of extreme events and proximity to the coasts, net of social and economic factors, correspond to increased perceptions that global warming has affected the weather. Results indicate that coastal shoreline county residence significantly predicts individuals' beliefs about the extent to which global warming is affecting the weather.

Sharing personal stories of how climate change is already harming people is a promising communication strategy to engage diverse and even skeptical audiences. Using two experiments, we test the effects of a radio story on the climate change beliefs and risk perceptions of political moderates and conservatives. The radio story, which aired on hundreds of stations across the U.S., is a North Carolina sportsman's personal account of how climate change has already affected the places he loves. Both experiments found positive effects on global warming beliefs and risk perceptions. Additionally, Study 2 found these effects were mediated by emotional reactions of worry and compassion. These studies suggest personal stories can be a persuasive communication strategy.

Research indicates that Latinos have particularly strong pro-environmental attitudes and support for policies to reduce climate change. This study explores differences in climate change activism (i.e., contacting government officials) between Latino and non-Latino White citizens in the United States, and the individual and social factors that predict engagement. Two parallel, nationally representative surveys find that Latinos (n = 1,433) are more likely than Whites (n = 861) to report having contacted a government official in the past and are more willing to contact officials in the future. Key predictors of Latinos' significantly higher levels of political engagement include greater risk perceptions, egalitarian worldviews, pro-environment injunctive norms, collective political efficacy, and greater social network effects. Competitive mediation analyses find that stronger risk perceptions best predict differences in climate change activism between Latinos and Whites. Climate change communicators might particularly seek to amplify Latinos' pro-climate tendencies (e.g., heightened risk perceptions) and social norms to encourage greater climate action by this vital and growing segment of the U.S. population.

Vulnerability and resilience to extreme weather hazards are a function of diverse physical, social, and psychological factors. Previous research has focused on individual factors that influence public perceptions of hazards, such as politics, ideology, and cultural worldviews, as well as on socioeconomic and demographic factors that affect geographically based vulnerability, environmental justice, and community resilience. Few studies have investigated individual socioeconomic and racial/ethnic differences in public risk perceptions of the health hazards associated with extreme heat events, which are now increasing due to climate change. This study uses multilevel statistical modeling to investigate individual- and geographic-level (e.g., census tract level and regional) social, economic, and biophysical influences on public perceptions of the adverse health impacts associated with heat waves. Political orientation and climate change beliefs are the strongest predictors of heat wave health risk perceptions; household income also has a relatively strong and consistent effect. Contextual socioeconomic vulnerability, measured with a social vulnerability index at the census tract level, also significantly affects heat wave risk perceptions. The strong influence of political orientation and climate beliefs on perceptions of adverse health impacts from heat waves suggests that ideological predispositions can increase vulnerability to climate change.

In recent years, researchers in the field of environmental sociology have broadened their methodological scope to include indicators of physical phenomena in order to more fully understand societal–environmental interactions, especially in the investigation of public views about climate change. While efforts to integrate social and physical data have been fruitful, there have been relatively few studies which examine the multiplicative effects of social and physical variables on views about climate change. Here, I combine survey data of coastal US residents from the Communities and Environment in Rural America (CERA) project with severe weather events data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Storm Events Database in order to investigate whether and how individual-level factors interact with county-level biophysical factors to influence public perceptions of the threat of climate change. I find that household income, political party affiliation, beliefs about climate change, and property damage from severe weather events interact in a variety of ways to influence individuals’ views about the threat climate change poses in their lifetimes. This study expands upon the extant literature on public views about climate change by demonstrating complex interactions between sociodemographic characteristics of individuals and biophysical phenomena impacting their regions of residence.

Using data from the Communities and Environment in Rural America (CERA) surveys, I employ a mixed-effect modeling technique to investigate the influence of individual- and county-level characteristics on public perceptions of unusual or extreme weather. In addition to the survey data, I also utilize county-level weather events’ data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA’s) Storm Events Database (SED) in order to test whether the incidence and impact of severe weather influences public perceptions of unusual or extreme weather. The results suggest that individuals’ perceptions of extreme weather events are influenced by their political values and social position, but objectively measured impacts of weather events also exert some direct influence and moderate the relationship between values, social positions, and perceptions. Additionally, I find random county-level variation in the perceptions’ net of all individual- and county-level independent predictors. This study adds to a growing body of literature on public perceptions of environmental issues by illuminating the socio-demographic and -contextual nature of individual-level perception formation through the use of integrated social and biophysical data.

• Too few jobs and the loss of wildlife habitat were the two community issues most likely to be ranked as important problems among residents of Puget Sound. • Environmental concern is higher among urban than rural residents, while those in rural areas are more likely than urbanites to believe the lack of jobs is a threat to their community. Urban-Rural Differences in Concern about the Environment and Jobs in the Puget Sound Region

Using data from a phone survey of 1,980 Puget Sound residents conducted in 2012, this fact sheet describes public perceptions of different environmental interventions. Puget Sound residents widely support a range of proposed interventions designed to protect and restore the marine environment. These proposals include restricting boating and shipping activities to protect marine mammals such as killer whales and sea lions; more strongly enforcing existing environmental rules and regulations; spending government money to restore the environment for fish and wildlife; and providing tax credits to businesses that voluntarily reduce their environmental impact. Residents are divided about whether existing environmental regulations have benefited their community.

Using data from a phone survey of 1,980 Puget Sound residents conducted in 2012, this fact sheet outlines residents’ views about the importance of environmental protection as well as their opinions about energy development, protection of wild salmon, and land use regulation. Seventy-four percent of Puget Sound residents believe that protecting the environment should be a priority even if it means limiting economic growth. The majority of residents favor both increased use of renewable energy (82 percent) and protecting wild salmon (75 percent). Residents are more divided about curbing development, with those from rural areas being more apt to prioritize protecting private property rights over regulating land use.

In 2006 and 2010, before and after the International Polar Year, the General Social Survey asked cross- sections of the US public for their knowledge and opinions about polar regions. The opinion items sought respondents' levels of concern about global warming in polar regions, and whether they favored opening Antarctica for development or reserving it for science. Polar knowledge scores show significant improvement from 2006 to 2010, while general science literacy scores and opinions remain largely unchanged. Regression of concern and Antarctic items on background characteristics, ideology, education and the two knowledge tests finds that ideology and knowledge have the most consistent effects. Conservative ideology negatively predicts all six concern items and supports for reserving the Antarctic. Polar knowledge exhibits a positive effect on most of the concern items and on support for reserving the Antarctic. General science knowledge has mainly positive effects on concern and Antarctic opinions as well, but its effects are moderated by ideology. These findings support two contrasting but not mutually exclusive views about the role of information: that more science information generally leads to greater concern about environmental changes, or greater support for science; but also that some informed but strongly ideological respondents acquire information selectively in ways that reinforce their existing beliefs.