Individual interviews

Background on project

Funds for the  project were provided by San Francisco State University's Climate HQ program, whose mission is to create a global impact in addressing climate challenges and fostering just and sustainable solutions. A motive for the project is that nonprofit groups and public agencies increasingly recognize the historically inequitable public access in recreational water-based activities across socioeconomic groups (HVKBP, 2024; NRDC, 2023) and are developing programs to rectify these inequities as a matter of environmental justice and community-well-being.  Examples include the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Control Board, the City Surf Project, the Surfrider Foundation, the Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC, 2020), the California Coastal Commission, the San Francisco Estuary Institute, Golden Gate Audubon Society, and the Coalition of East Shore Parks. BCDC specifically describes social equity for their programs as assuring that “public access reflects the needs and desires of shoreline and adjacent communities and diverse users'' (BCDC, 2019). The efforts towards access for all and protection for climate-vulnerable coastal communities continue at the state (State of California, 2024; Roberts et al., 2019), national (White House, 2022; USACE, 2022), and international levels (UN, 2024, Christensen 2017; Borger et al., 2021).

Recreational and subsistence fishing is a case in point.  Quimby et al.(2020) attests that fishing the coastline is an underappreciated ``dimension of coastal resource use" [p. 1], with potential contributions to food security and community well-being. Low-income and nonwhite socioeconomic groups can dominate the fishing activity along public piers where no fishing license is required, and access is low-cost (Stevenson et al., 2012; Poe et al., 2015; Quimby et al., 2020).  However, Furman (2023) found that low-income and Blacks reported more problems with barriers to access to shore-based fishing than other groups [p.7].  Other studies have tracked access inequities across sociodemographic groups for fishing and other coastline activities (Garcia et al., 2005; Jurjonas et al., 2020; Reineman et al., 2016; Klein et al., 2015).    

The idea for this project arose from a survey study to understand demand for recreational and subsistence fishing at the Berkeley shoreline and waterfront (Antinori 2022, 2024).  Since 1939, fishers and tourists have frequented the Berkeley pier as one of the most popular in the Bay Area (Jones, 2018; Todd, 2010).  Although concerns over structural integrity closed the pier in 2015, anglers continue to visit its shoreline.  Through on-site, in-person survey data collection, the study revealed that persons of color were the largest fishing participants group in a city with a flipped sociodemographic profile.  During the interviews, open-ended responses and anecdotes suggested a profound intergenerational linkage between these current shoreline fishers who benefit from low-cost public access and prior generations who introduced this generation to the historical pier and shoreline to pass on the art of fishing as a pastime and source of extra food. Fishers frequently stated that they had fished at that location all their lives or had learned to fish there from previous generations.  One interviewee recounted how his mother babysat the former Vice President Kamala Harris and brought her for walks on the pier.  Others pointed to the importance of fishing there as a source of food, while another simply stated “it is a nice place for a broke man.”  While gentrification studies exist (Chapple, 2015; Mujahid et al., 2019; Owens 2021a, 2021b; Qiang et al., 2021), there is no systematic research to understand its relationship to equitable access to current coastal nature-based recreation.  This perspective is especially important when cities seek to redevelop coastlines, as is Berkeley (COB, 2024).  It is easy to overlook the community of shore-based fishers not only because fishing is highly individualistic with a low infrastructure footprint but also because fishers come from a broader regional area and from populations underrepresented in Berkeley (e.g., Horvath et al., 2019).

This project presents a collection of oral histories of intergenerational fishing in Berkeley and the East Bay Park shoreline as a way to substantiate and testimonialize the broader implications of local displacement from environmental amenities. The study serves the goals of environmental and climate justice, defined here as equitable access to the shoreline and coast for recreation, well-being and subsistence needs. Such testimonials make visible and give historical context to all persons accessing the area and explore any impacts of housing displacement on intergenerational linkages to the outdoors as a place of regeneration and relaxation.  The interview prompts are chosen to to elicit fishers’ perspectives on generational influences in their choice to fish, how they came to fish in the area, motivation for travel for fishing at that particular spot, and viewpoints on shoreline development and access. It is hoped that this resulting collection of stories informs researchers of the implications of family culture, housing and gentrification trends for equitable public access to environmental resources within our Bay Area community, with potential applications to other geographic areas. 

Research authors: Camille Antinori, Venoo Kakar, Pavlina Latkova

References

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Antinori, C., Banal, M., King, P. and Peterson, M. (2024). Estimating the value of shoreline fishing in an urban setting. Working paper. Available upon request. 

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