335
10 The Role of Local Ecological Knowledge in the Conservation and Management...
Important considerations in developing a scientifi cally meaningful interview
methodology are sample size (how many interviews), how to standardize catch data
to allow for comparisons over time and space, and how to capture the historic perspective in a meaningful way or such that it could be represented quantitatively.
Care is needed in the design phase of the work to address such questions and use
appropriate data collection techniques and analytical methods.
10.2.2 Documentation of LEK Requires Both Anthropological
and Biological Skills
The seemingly simple process of asking a few questions about fi sh spawning aggregations must be carefully conducted and interviewers must be suitably trained and
knowledgeable. If workers are poorly prepared and are unclear of their goals, they
will not understand the social, cultural, economic or biological context of the fi shery
they are interested in. The result of poor preparation is that much time, energy,
money and patience can be wasted. The frustration felt by interviewees who can
recognize an interviewer who knows little of the topic at hand, could reduce their
willingness to participate in the future, lead to misleading responses, cause them to
disrespect the interviewer (Sect. 10.3 ), or lead to management inaction where action
might be needed. It is also our experience that LEK surveys will only be done effectively if time and funding are set aside to do this type of ethnographic research and
if interviewers are carefully selected and trained. The apparent simplicity of this
(interview) approach is deceptive but interviewing well requires considerable preparation. As one of many examples, workers who did not know local species and
understood very little about aggregations quickly ran into diffi culty when they
could not distinguish fi sh schools from spawning aggregations in the Philippines
(YSM personal o bservation 2005).
10.2.3 Selection of Experts
Identifying who to interview in LEK surveys is critical (Davis and Wagner 2003 ) .
The gender, degree of involvement in a fi shery and the type of fi shing gear may
substantially infl uence the distribution of LEK in a community (Sect. 10.3.1 ). At times
the target group to interview may be obvious to researchers already familiar with an
area. In the Solomon Islands for example, Hamilton ( 2003a ) knew that night spear
fi shers were the only group that targeted bumphead parrotfi sh and were the obvious
source of information. Similarly, in southern Manus, Papua New Guinea, preliminary interviews revealed that fi shing at grouper spawning sites was traditionally
restricted to one specifi c clan within a community, and that this clan has retained
highly detailed LEK on these aggregations (Hamilton et al. 2005a ) .
Identifi cation of expert fi shers in a new area can be informal and opportunistic,
or conducted in a structured manner (Fig. 10.1 ). Referrals from local associations,
10 The Role of Local Ecological Knowledge in the Conservation and Management...
Important considerations in developing a scientifi cally meaningful interview
methodology are sample size (how many interviews), how to standardize catch data
to allow for comparisons over time and space, and how to capture the historic perspective in a meaningful way or such that it could be represented quantitatively.
Care is needed in the design phase of the work to address such questions and use
appropriate data collection techniques and analytical methods.
10.2.2 Documentation of LEK Requires Both Anthropological
and Biological Skills
The seemingly simple process of asking a few questions about fi sh spawning aggregations must be carefully conducted and interviewers must be suitably trained and
knowledgeable. If workers are poorly prepared and are unclear of their goals, they
will not understand the social, cultural, economic or biological context of the fi shery
they are interested in. The result of poor preparation is that much time, energy,
money and patience can be wasted. The frustration felt by interviewees who can
recognize an interviewer who knows little of the topic at hand, could reduce their
willingness to participate in the future, lead to misleading responses, cause them to
disrespect the interviewer (Sect. 10.3 ), or lead to management inaction where action
might be needed. It is also our experience that LEK surveys will only be done effectively if time and funding are set aside to do this type of ethnographic research and
if interviewers are carefully selected and trained. The apparent simplicity of this
(interview) approach is deceptive but interviewing well requires considerable preparation. As one of many examples, workers who did not know local species and
understood very little about aggregations quickly ran into diffi culty when they
could not distinguish fi sh schools from spawning aggregations in the Philippines
(YSM personal o bservation 2005).
10.2.3 Selection of Experts
Identifying who to interview in LEK surveys is critical (Davis and Wagner 2003 ) .
The gender, degree of involvement in a fi shery and the type of fi shing gear may
substantially infl uence the distribution of LEK in a community (Sect. 10.3.1 ). At times
the target group to interview may be obvious to researchers already familiar with an
area. In the Solomon Islands for example, Hamilton ( 2003a ) knew that night spear
fi shers were the only group that targeted bumphead parrotfi sh and were the obvious
source of information. Similarly, in southern Manus, Papua New Guinea, preliminary interviews revealed that fi shing at grouper spawning sites was traditionally
restricted to one specifi c clan within a community, and that this clan has retained
highly detailed LEK on these aggregations (Hamilton et al. 2005a ) .
Identifi cation of expert fi shers in a new area can be informal and opportunistic,
or conducted in a structured manner (Fig. 10.1 ). Referrals from local associations,