(Re)Assembling Marine Space: Lobster Fishing Areas under Conditions of Technological and Legal Change in Atlantic Canada

Abstract

Federal lobster fishing area (LFA) boundaries are part of the infrastructure controlling the temporal and spatial scale of lobster fishing in Atlantic Canada. Changes in the materiality of fishing and accompanying challenges to normative orders affecting access rules have together destabilized the spatial boundaries of LFAs. Changes in lobster distribution, gear innovations to fish in deeper waters, legal maneuverings over licensing, and competition with aquaculture for marine space all challenge LFA boundaries, which changes the distribution of fishing industry benefits and disrupts long-standing local values. Federal managers of the fishery struggle to deal with new assemblages of technology and law and how they interact with marine space. Examining the technology/legal pluralism nexus and their relationship with administrative lines in the water exposes how both affect more-than-human-spatial assemblages.