I write with the aim of keeping subscribers and readers informed about forthcoming changes concerning Polar Record, the journal of the Scott Polar Research Institute, that is published by Cambridge University Press. Many will be aware that the journal dates from 1931 and that its name arises from the need to record activity in polar areas, and in those days this largely consisted in setting out the heroic deeds of the various pioneering expeditions. The very first issue (priced at 1 shilling or 5 pence in today's currency!) contained information about Mawson's British Australian New Zealand Antarctic Research Expedition, Byrd's first Antarctic Expedition and referred to the then recent deaths of Nansen, Sverdrup and Royds.

Fishing is a key livelihood for many people worldwide, and significantly contributes to global nutrition. However, there is an awareness of a widespread crisis in fisheries with profound ecological, social and cultural impacts (Urquhart and others 2013). The majority of people dependent on fishing are involved in small-scale fisheries, which stands in contrast to the narrow focus of most fishery science and policy on large-scale, capital intensive fishing (Berkes and others 2001). Small-scale fisheries require different approaches for research, policy and management, due to their specific technological, economic and sociocultural characteristics that differ from those of large-scale fisheries, as well as a large degree of internal diversity in terms of fish stocks, fishers’ backgrounds, vessel capacity, etc (see Afterword of this collection of papers).

This article attempts to reconcile the fact that fishing has been and continues to be a large part of the Gwich'in local economy with the fact that fishing has been neglected in both popular and scientific accounts of Gwich'in practice. The article puts forth an explanation for why fishing has been neglected while at the same time documenting the corpus of fishing activities included in the yearly round. It also situates fishing as an important, but largely underestimated, part of the Canadian fur trade and explains how fish came to be used by traders and Gwich'in in a system of advances that benefited both parties. As a so-called secondary activity, fishing is entangled in Gwich'in history and their current way of life, and this article challenges the idea that it can be easily separated from other land based activities.

This paper develops an argument on the empathetic relationship between hunter and prey, as applied to the relations between small-scale fishers and fish. Drawing on ethnographic material from the Kemi River, and recent work on fishing, it suggests that although fishers often do not see the fish, they know their whereabouts and movements through an empathetic engagement with the fish. People on the Kemi do not see fish as merely the animal itself, but include in their empathetic relationship the behaviour and environment of the fish. An analysis of popular fishing techniques used subsequently illustrates that they represent what can be called an inversion of the fish's life story.

Southern Bering Sea fishermen are vulnerable to losing access to key fisheries due largely to policy changes, permit loss, and the expense of fishing operations. Local residents generally do not have fishing rights in many of the high value commercial fisheries. They must continuously shape policy and explore alternative economies in order to stay fishermen. We were contracted by the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to study the role of subsistence and commercial fisheries, land use, socioeconomics, and sharing networks in Alutiiq and Aleut/Unangan villages. Through an exploration of these data using innovative social network analysis that presents relationships, social stratification, commercialisation, and other dependencies in the maintenance of fisheries, sharing, trading, and revenue streams, this paper shows that in two of the most socioeconomically valuable fisheries, king crab (Paralithodes sp. and Lithodes sp) and cod (Gadidae), local peoples have had to gain access to these foods by using means outside of what are academically perceived as their traditional subsistence and commercial allocation, resulting in adaptive networks of distribution. This work shows the range of networks surrounding these key foods and their associated vulnerabilities and resilience. Those sharing networks that demonstrate greater interconnectedness are much more stable and resilient.

During the post-Soviet period, fishery became one of the main sources of income for the inhabitants of Evenki villages in the northern Baikal region. When a number of villagers lost their official jobs, they managed to earn money by selling fish. Most people are required to fish during a particular season and to follow official quotas. Special indigenous Evenki quotas, however, are usually in excess of regular official guidelines and those who can use these quotas usually exceed them. This results in a tension between the way local Evenki people judge their own actions and the way their actions are judged by the official authorities. The law never covers all the areas of human activities, and in these gaps regular people manage to control certain institutions, knowledge and the use of landscapes themselves. In a discussion of the northern Baikal area, I employ the term ‘free spaces’, that describes the weakening of external control over the sphere of activities which are essential for local people's survival. This lessening of control has led people to regulate the fishing situation locally, resulting in many violations of fishing laws not being registered in official documents. The purpose of this paper is to to discuss a case of ‘free spaces’ in the post-Soviet Evenki village, with particular focus upon the village's non-compliance with official fishery regulations. This article investigates the reasons for, and the social mechanisms guiding, non-compliant behaviour in a northern Baikal Evenki village. It argues that non-compliance with fishery regulations should be interpreted within the context of local mechanisms of social control, market relations, reciprocity and cooperation.

This article investigates recent reforms of the Greenland coastal fisheries in order to contribute to the general lessons on reform and policy networks in the context of a changing Arctic stakeholdership. It analyses participation in fisheries governance decision-making by examining the emergence of discourses and policy networks that come to define the very need for reform. A policy network is identified across state ministries, powerful officials, banks and large scale industry that defined the need for fisheries reform within a ‘grand reform’ discourse. But inertia characterised the actual decision-making process as reform according to this ‘grand reform’ discourse was blocked by a combination of small-scale fishers’ informal networks and the power of the parliamentary majority. After a parliamentary shift in power the new government implemented the ‘grand reform’ gradually whilst new patterns of participation and exclusion emerged. In this process, the identities of the participating participants were reinterpreted to fit the new patterns of influence and participation. The article argues that fishery reform does not necessarily start with the collective recognition of a problem in marine resource use and a power-neutral process of institutional learning. Instead, it argues that fishery reform is likely to be the ‘reform of somebody’ and that this ‘somebody’ is itself a changing identity.

In Alaska, fishing provides important economic and socio-cultural benefits for rural communities. This paper presents some of the findings from a research project that investigated the role of commercial and subsistence fishing in the maintenance of economic and social viability, and the ways in which residents of rural communities in Alaska value fishing. Three rural fishing communities in Alaska served as case studies for this project: Chenega Bay in Prince William Sound, Kokhanok in Bristol Bay, and Tyonek in Cook Inlet. In all three communities, both old and young residents note that younger people are not participating in fishing as much as they did in the past, and there is concern that fishing traditions will not continue. However, research findings show how important fishing is as a social, cultural, and community activity for families. Residents noted fishing provided for a quality of life that included values associated with family, community, culture, and freedom.

This paper examines the ethnography of nocturnal fishery and relationships with water, relevant for Evenkis occupying the northern coastal area of Lake Baikal, Siberia. The material arises from Evenkis of Kumora village who live near Lake Irkana and from archival sources. Although the nocturnal fishery is declared illegal in official legislation, local residents invoke memories to mark that practice as traditional and important for the local community since it is not merely a subsistence activity but also an emotional experience and long-term relationships with the landscape. This paper argues that local social memory devoted to this practice serves as a kind of fishing tool and a tool for supporting local ideas of how fishing should be governed. The collision between memory and water law is not discussed in terms of antagonism between local groups and authorities but as ignorance between memory-gifted people and the landscape, and memory-disabled official approaches to nocturnal fishing and its histories. Finally, memory-gifted human landscape relationships termed as ‘alliance’ are approached as a powerful conglomerate that ‘consumes’ authorised visions of fishing patterns in their own way.

This article analyses the historical conditions and technical, social, commercial and political factors that have contributed to the revival of longline fishing in Iceland. Longline fishing practices have had important consequences at both the local and the national levels. This article deals, firstly, with the juridical and historical conditions of the development of small boat fishing practices since the beginning of the 1990s and the process through which small boats became progressively larger. Secondly, the paper describes the evolution of longline fishing practices and focuses more specifically on the technical, commercial, social and professional aspects of a new version of longline fishing that was developed in response to new marine management rules. It then deals with a specific kind of competitiveness that those living in coastal villages established to re-boost the local economy and discusses what has happened to small boat owners since 2000. The conclusion highlights the way longline fishing, by reconnecting social ties, takes part in the construction of contemporary Icelandic culture.

In Qeqertarsuaq (Disco Island), northwest Greenland, local disputes about the allocation of annual whaling quotas for beluga and narwhals feature as a source of conflict between state-imposed categories of occupational and non-occupational hunters. The national authorities’ co-management regime for the regulation of whale quotas has triggered the creation of new socio-economic groupings and compartmentalised respective groups of hunters in the process. Although the rigid legal categories have impacted upon the social unity and conduct of whaling in Qeqertarsuaq, and remain difficult to navigate, local whalers and their families nevertheless improvise and mould their interests around the legal frameworks in everyday interpretations of national and municipal quota allocations. The article argues that, in the process of receiving and interpreting annual quota allocations, hunters and their families draw on locally varying environmental and ecological circumstances and that their negotiation of current regulations, in turn, suggests a further consideration of the social aspects as these inform local knowledge about whales and wider socio-economic circumstances governing whaling in Qeqertarsuaq. In reviewing local receptions of annual quota allocations, the article assesses how whaling regulations are not just about the management of whale stocks but also about the management of whalers and their families and how this then calls for increased recognition of the fact that issues of social sustainability are intricately tied to contemporary concerns for environmental sustainability in Arctic whaling.

In this collection we learn about varied livelihoods that are roughly grouped as northern small-scale fisheries. Two messages are particularly salient, and hence they connect nearly all the papers:

First, that small-scale fishing is paramount for social and cultural livelihoods, and an indispensable resource for reproduction of coastal communities. And second, that certain fish related practices are changing, or currently under threat, and thus threatening the core subsistence of coastal communities.

Sir Ian Gourlay had a distinguished career in the Royal Marines. He was born on 13 November 1920 and died on 17 July 2013, aged 92. During World War II, he took part in the landings in North Africa and fought in the Adriatic, in Italy and in Yugoslavia. He was appointed Commandant-General from 1971 to 1975, during which years he organised the change in training from jungle and desert warfare to the Arctic, in order to defend NATO's northern flank against possible Soviet aggression. He retired in 1975 from the Royal Marines, when he became Director General of the United World Colleges, at the request of Lord Mountbatten. During his fifteen years in office, this educational foundation for the world-wide development of international understanding expanded considerably. On its website on 30 September 2013, UWC's Executive Director recorded that the movement was transformed by Sir Ian, who proved to be an inspiration to very many people.

On 27 May 2014 the polar community was saddened to learn that the eminent glaciologist Dr Charles Swithinbank had died after a brief illness, at Hilton Park Nursing Home in Bottisham, Cambridgeshire. He was 87.