An Entrepreneur of the Social Sciences
Marine Lab Director Brings an Anthropologist's View and
a Connection to the Sea to the Facilitation Table p.2
They found that “over the years the lobster harvests had
stayed about constant,” he recalls. “But the number of traps
had gone from 200,000 to more than a million, and that caused
a lot of problems. Commercial fishermen were in conflict with
each other over their territories. Commercial fishermen were
against the recreational fishermen. Environmentalists were
against everybody.”
He then began an extended series of “consensus building workshops”
through Florida’s southern sections from Key West north. At
each first workshop session he began by presenting the data
his group had collected. “We first discussed their perceptions
of problems in the lobster industry,” he recalls. “Then we
said, ‘from our work with other fisheries around the world,
here are some ways people have tried to solve problems like
this.’”
After being walked through this process, the lobster fishermen
ultimately agreed among themselves to reduce the numbers of
traps they set under a transferable trap certificate system.
With Orbach’s assistance, they then went to Florida’s Marine
Fisheries commission and Florida’s legislature to adopt those
rules.
“Once Florida had it in place, the federal government adopted
the same system,” Orbach says. “Since then, we worked with
the state of Georgia to design a new crab system in this same
way. And I was the facilitator for a red snapper plan that
has now gone into effect for the entire Gulf of Mexico.”
In a room full of so-called “hard” scientists, Orbach always
stands out. “I would describe myself as an entrepreneur of
the social sciences,” he declares. “Here at the Marine Lab,
the natural science students go out and study the water, the
marsh and the fish. And my social science students go out
and talk to the fishermen and developers and coastal town
managers.
“I’m a professor of the practice of marine affairs and policy,
and for me there couldn’t be a better title.”
Orbach enjoys doing research, and until he became Marine
Lab director, he still had an active research program in fisheries,
oil and gas, coastal sediment issues and regional planning.
“But I also enjoy taking the research and answering what I
call the ‘so what?’ questions.” (“So what?” as in how his
research impacts the person on the street, or on the boat,
so to speak.)
A key to Orbach’s approach is “what I call ‘the curse of
the cultural anthropologist,’” he says. “I really do see a
little bit of almost everybody’s point of view. I don’t think
anybody has the corner on good ideas.”
Orbach has served on National Academy of Science and National
Research Council committees and panels. In 2002 he delivered
the National Academy’s Roger Revelle Commemorative Lecture
in Washington, D.C., on “Freedom of the Seas—Ocean Policy
for the Third Millennium,” the first social scientist to be
given that honor.
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