Easkey Britton

As momentum around surfing builds with over 35 million surfers globally and the sport rapidly growing in developing countries, how can we better understand the benefits of surfing and acknowledge its differential effect on minority participants, in particular for females, in diverse cultural and economic settings? Through the delivery of a surf initiative in Iran with young pioneering sportswomen, surfing has become a sport initiated by women and a medium that both challenges and connects across gender, class, ethnic and religious divides within the country. This chapter draws from the author’s experience developing and co-creating the ‘Be Like Water’ initiative with women in Iran, a programme that draws on the notion of blue space or water environments as a powerful medium for health and wellbeing. How the more sensuous qualities of surfing are used to create alternative and transformative ways of learning and doing surfing that challenge dominant surfing identities and practices are discussed. In conclusion, the impact of opening up to and creating accessibility to other possibilities through a lifestyle sport like surfing as a way to challenge social and gender barriers are outlined.

The concept of ‘wellbeing’ has received growing interest in policy domains in the UK, and internationally, as a multi-dimensional approach to understanding and measuring social progress and development. Policy makers and scientists alike are debating the potential of wellbeing to deliver a people-centred, and holistic, analysis of what matters to people in terms of the quality of life people pursue and are able to achieve. There is also growing interest in how the concept of wellbeing might be applied to fisheries, especially in terms of deepening assessment of the ways in which decline in the fisheries sector is affecting fishing-dependent families, and the wider community. This paper applies a three-dimensional wellbeing framework and methodology to gain insight into the wellbeing of fishing society in Northern Ireland, a region that has faced substantial decline in its fisheries over the past 100 years. A three-dimensional approach considers material, relational and cognitive dimensions; putting resources, relationships and subjective reflections on life satisfaction together as a whole assessment. All three dimensions are important for a full assessment of wellbeing. Following an overview of the methodology used and data collected, the paper then assesses the extent to which a three-dimensional well-being approach can provide useful insights for sustainable fisheries policy in Northern Ireland.

Assessing the Social Wellbeing of Northern Ireland’s Fishing Society using a three-dimensional approach (PDF Download Available).

Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/257163154_Assessing_the_Social_Wellbeing_of_Northern_Ireland%27s_Fishing_Society_using_a_three-dimensional_approach [accessed Jan 9, 2016].

Social adaptation is often touted as a desirable and necessary response to continued decline in the fisheries sector, however little is currently understood about the impacts of adaptive strategies on people's broader sense of ‘wellbeing’, or how the spread of impacts affect people in different ways. This article draws from research in Northern Ireland to explore the types of adaptation strategising that takes place within fishing households, and to specifically address how such strategies interplay with the wellbeing of people affected. We demonstrate some of the hard choices that arise through becoming adaptive, and discuss how the costs of adaptation are sometimes disproportionality born by particular individuals, especially women. We argue that greater consideration of the impacts of adaptation on wellbeing can give useful insights into why some people thrive, whilst others struggle, and can point to opportunities to strengthen both resilient and wellbeing outcomes.

In response to the alarming decline of wild Irish Atlantic salmon stocks (Salmo salar) and an EU-led ban on drift-netting, a recent moratorium on the commercial driftnet fishery for salmon in Ireland was introduced. Recognising a lack of investigation of the impacts of fisheries conservation policy from a user-perspective within EU fisheries management, prior to or after implementation, this chapter considers how the wellbeing of traditional salmon drift-net fishers or drifters and their community is affected by the loss of this fishery. The study is set in the cross-border area of Lough Foyle between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. A social wellbeing approach provides the analytical framework for assessing the impacts and unintended consequences of a pro-conservation policy instrument for human wellbeing and ecosystem health, such as the out-migration of youth or ‘human freight’ and abandoned ‘ghost’ boats. Using empirical evidence the chapter explores micro-scale drivers that can affect the macro-scale implementation of a policy in greater depth. The chapter concludes with a vision for the future from a resource-user perspective, highlighting areas of common ground that may help foster a sustainable way forward.

This paper focuses on the gender dimensions of wellbeing in fishing households in Northern Ireland. The impact of change in the fishing industry on women’s wellbeing is outlined and linkages are made between changing access to fish and changing roles of women in fishing households. The paper explores what this change means for how women perceive and pursue their wellbeing needs and aspirations and how they negotiate their needs with the needs of the household. In an occupation as gender biased as fishing it is argued that in order for fisheries management and policy to be successful, a profile of what really matters to people is important. In particular, the paper highlights how such priorities link to the complex and dynamic role of women in fishing households.