To Fish or Not to Fish: Challenges of Managing Culturally and Ecologically Important Species

The harvest, management, and cultural use of abalone have spanned millennia and geographies along the eastern Pacific. In Haida Gwaii, abalone hold special ecological, cultural, spiritual, economic, and historical significance. This case study will explore how this significance is communicated and interpreted within management decisionmaking. Students will read and interpret multiple sources of knowledge and synthesize these disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives into a common understanding of the abalone socio-environmental challenge. Students will grapple with how to make a management decision about abalone harvest within the context of complex cultural, legal, and scientific understandings of the issue.