Oyster communities, Gulf of Mexico, Alabama, USA

The Alabama oyster fishing communities are located on the Gulf of Mexico with approximately 100 kilometers of coastline. The case study states that this is an open-access fishery but includes a limited amount of historic data on the development of community based norms and institutions for managing the fishery over time and compares them to those used in the Louisiana oyster fishing community (see related cases below). No information is provided on the number of users involved in the fishery at any given time period and there are no particular details about the self-management system provided in the case study. Comparative assessment of outcomes over time in several Gulf Coast oyster fisheries is based on 30 years of longitudinal data on annual oyster production and production per fisherman which was included in a prior study by Dyer and Leard (1994), as cited in the original case study.

This case is compared with other oyster fisheries in the U.S. in Chapter 8 (p.160-176) of the original case study by Pinkerton and Weinstein (1995). The original case study authors focus on user participation and community based management of the fisheries. The case study has also subsequently been used in comparative analyses regarding Ostrom's Design Principles (see bibliography).