Coastal and Fishing Communities

Jennifer Sweeney Tookes, Ph.D., is an applied cultural anthropologist that studies fishing communities, people who live in coastal regions, and those that work with seafood and seafood processing. In other words, she gathers information about coastal and fishing communities to examine how to assist with problems they are experiencing. It’s a pretty cool job. Sweeney Tookes completed her dissertation work in the Caribbean, working with women in Barbados to understand how health and food practices changed when they migrated to the U.S. Her first research project while at Georgia Southern examined the ways for people to mitigate the overpopulation of the invasive lionfish (interesting-looking fish with venomous spines--ouch). Her research (which includes a lot of conversations with people from all angles of the issue) led Sweeney Tookes to realize that tourists and local people were educated in a way that led them to believe that lionfish are poisonous. Which isn’t true. Sure… it hurts if you pick one up and get stung by one of their spines, but that doesn’t mean you can’t eat a lionfish. In fact, if you cut the spines off, and cook lionfish, they are a very mild tender white fish (mmhhmmm… cooked with butter). With this information, Sweeney Tookes and a team of researchers were able to help find solutions to a human problem which impacted economics, ecosystems, and culture of the Caribbean. Today, Sweeney Tookes is focusing her research on Georgia and South Carolina’s shrimpers and the famous Wild Caught Georgia Shrimp. Although we get a little sidetracked talking about an interesting export of cannonball jellyfish to Asia (it was too interesting to pass up a side conversation about), tune in to hear more about the current concerns for the seafood industry in the Georgia Coast and more on this episode of “Who Cares?”.

Sweeney Tookes is an associate professor of sociology and anthropology at Georgia Southern University.