Patterns, process and participation. Accounting for different perceptions in North Sea fisheries management

According to European Fisheries Policy 2003-2012 fisheries management from now on should be firmly based on the new EU-principles for good governance: accountability, effectiveness, transparency, but above all stakeholder participation. This implies informed participation of fishermens organisations and of environmentalists, but such participation warrants a far better information management than the one maintained at the present by national and EU-administrations. The information should not only be physically available and adequate, but it should be readable and thus accessible as well. After half a century of science-based management the public information is incomplete and hardly accessible. This leads to divergent perceptions amongst stakeholders on simple issues even, like spatial distribution patterns of the fish, stock dynamics and the impact of the fishery relative to that of the natural environment. The three objectives of this study therefore are: 1. Assessing patterns in resource availability in space and time as they are perceived by fishermen, administrators and scientists, and explaining the different perceptions from the type, content, availability and accessibility of the information and from the capacity of the stakeholders to handle such information. 2. Assessing the cognitive maps of the various stakeholders by which they understand the dynamics in resource availability as a process with environmental and fishery impacts, and explaining the differences between the various maps from educational and scientific traditions and from the information environment, and 3. Drafting an information management plan in support of a more equitable participation of all stakeholders