Fish is food.
Fish is a commodity. 
Fish is part of the ecosystem. 
​My research examines the intersections.

Who benefits from the export of high-value seafood?

Seafood is the world’s most traded food commodity, and the international trade in seafood is promoted as a development strategy in low-income coastal communities across the globe. However, the seafood trade can drive negative social and environmental impacts in fishing communities, and whether the benefits of trade actually reach fishers is a subject of ongoing scholarship. Furthermore, scholars and policymakers have tended to treat fishing communities as homogeneous, assuming that trade policies will impact all members equally. Yet individual community members have different roles, statuses, and entitlements according to their intersecting identities, meaning that different fishers will be differently impacted by the seafood trade. In particular, women occupy different positions than men in seafood value chains and in fishing communities. There are also important within-group differences among men and among women depending on their nationality, marital status, and other identity markers. Through 205 surveys, 54 interviews, and ethnographic field methods conducted in fifteen rural Palauan fishing communities between November 2019 and March 2020, this case study of the sea cucumber trade in Palau brings together theories of gender, intersectionality, and access to answer the question, “How are the harms and benefits of the seafood trade distributed in fishing communities?” In this case, men benefited more than women from the export of sea cucumbers by leveraging access to technology; knowledge; and authority, and the trade depleted resources relied on primarily by women for their food security and livelihoods. An intersectional analysis revealed that marital status and nationality determined access among women, with married women having greater access than unmarried women and immigrant women having greater access than immigrant men, demonstrating the importance of intersectionality as an analytical tool.

This research was published in Frontiers in Marine Science​ on April 12, 2021!

Collecting erumrum (Actinopyga miliaris, Acinopyga mauritiana, Actinopyga lecanora).

Sea cucumber gleaner Surech (L) and sea cucumber aquaculturist Alex (R) learn from one another.

Ann explains her traditional knowledge of sea cucumber spawning.

How have rural Pacific food systems responded to COVID-19?

Shocks create opportunities to strengthen, transform, reimagine, and reconfigure. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the strengths and weaknesses of food systems across the globe and offers an opportunity to build more sustainable, equitable, and resilient food systems for the future. Based on 609 interviews in 181 villages in 7 Pacific Island countries with varying levels of connectivity to global food systems, our study suggests that recognizing and bolstering local practices around food production and food sharing has a key role and potential for sustaining rural Pacific communities in the face of unprecedented change. ​

Is the 'tragedy of the commodity' inevitable?

The extraction and export of high-value seafood products leads to a predictable pattern of social disruption and serial depletion in coastal communities across the globe. The sea cucumber trade epitomizes many of the social and environmental challenges encountered by local resource users and managers at the commodity frontier. These encounters often lead to resource degradation or collapse, after which exporting companies move on to the next frontier, in a pattern described as ‘the tragedy of the commodity’. Yet local resistance presents an alternative pathway forward. We examine three exploratory case studies in which, despite the overwhelming short-term financial incentives to allow these companies to export high-value seafood products, communities resisted. In doing so, they asserted Indigenous self-determination and averted resource collapse. We examine cases of resistance to the high-value sea cucumber trade from Palau, Pohnpei, and Yap. These cases provide insights into why and how communities resist and challenge the narrative of poor fishers as vulnerable and disempowered. These cases demonstrate that the tragedy of the commodity is not inevitable, that motivations for resisting are non-economic, and that traditional and elected leaders, civil society organizations, youth, and scientists all have roles to play in preserving marine resources for future generations.