Interviewing the Interviewer: A Chat with Ellen Hines

This morning, I had a chance to sit down with Ellen Hines, an associate professor in the department of geography and human environmental studies at San Francisco State University. She’s also the director of the Marine Conservation Spatial Planning Centre at the University.

Ellen Hines

I was actually a bit nervous to interview her- after all, the plenary session talk she gave today was titled "Using Interviews to Document Changing Values of Small-scale Fishers" and part of her work focuses on using interviewing to assess the values of small-scale fishers.

The project includes three prongs: population monitoring, habitat assessment of marine mammals, and assessment of the values and perceptions of small-scale fishers who share their regions with species under pressure.

While the project, which covers various fishing regions in countries like Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, includes many of the traditional, technology-based approaches to data-gathering (marine surveys, GIS remote sensing, modeling), there is also a significant social-science interviewing element to the work.

I asked her to talk a bit about her research, and to elaborate on some of the issues she raised in her plenary talk.

Q: Did the fishers react differently to the more quantitative questions you asked (questions about population numbers, for example) than they did to the highly subjective values-based inquiries?

A: The scientific questions that were asked were more quantitative for the most part. Those were the questions we could confirm through our own surveys and research methods. In terms of asking people questions about their opinions and their thoughts about conservation, it’s just as valuable. It gives us information we can corraborate within a specific field of trends that we can compare to different values and circumstances to get a more complete picture of a place-based situation.

Q: In your presentation, you mentioned that one of the responses you heard quite regularly was that the fishers wanted their children to be able to experience the dugongs, the dolphins, etc. Do you see any opportunities for capitalizing on that valuation to help support conservation in the future?

A: Totally. That is something I heard all over. For me, it really ties to the point that Thailand (of all the regions in the study) has been the place where there’s been more education. You have kids coming home and saying, “Wow. Look what I learned in school today.” I think it gives us a great opportunity to emphasize education. Also, it shows us that people place value upon their way of life. Sometimes people perceive small-scale fisheries as sort of a last gasp, but I believe that in many cases, people are very proud of their way of life. That they want their children to experience that way of life as an intact tradition is very powerful.

Q: You made a connection in your talk between political stability and self-determination, and openness to conservation. Do you believe that conservation is a lost cause in struggling areas?

A: It depends on your goals. The people who live in these areas cannot afford long-term goals. We as scientists, policy-makers and managers have to have those goals for them. They need governments that can take both short-term measures, like creating infrastructure, as well as long-term goals so that these people can have sustainable lifestyles.

I'd like to thank Ellen for answering my questions, and I'd very much like to hear what you think about what she had to say.

Thanks!