State and local resistance to the expansion of two environmentally harmful marine fishing techniques in Kenya

Disputes over use of the marine environment in coastal East Africa have been on the vise for several decades. Recent discord among fishers and between fishers and the state stems from (1) declining catches and fish stocks, part of a global crisis in nearshore fisheries; (2) increasing use of fishing techniques harmful to the marine environment; and (3) fishers' loss to marine parks of access to waters they once fished. Increasingly, fishing technique more than place of birth, residence, or marriage ties has been used by customary and state authorities to determine fishing rights. This article examines the twentieth-century expansion of two environmentally harmful fishing techniques, pull seining and speargunning. It is argued that although focal fishers and pull seiners generally share religion, language, and coastal origins, and speargunners largely do not, the greater negative environmental change enacted by seiners makes them the prime target of local resistance. Conflicts among fishers using different techniques and conflicts between fishers and the state have transformed both formal and informal marine management systems such that they offer less protection to marine environments than intended.