Riddles of Herring and Rhetorics of Success

Abstract

We test the speculations of Barth (1966) and Heath (1976) about the success of Norwegian herring skippers against ethnographic and statistical data and conclude that their analyses are incorrect on virtually every point. We then show that the individual differences among skippers are not significant. Although we can account for virtually all of the variance in catches of cod, we cannot account for some 60 percent of the variance in herring catches. Having ruled out the skipper effect as an explanation, we explain the high residuals, or unexplained variance, of the statistical model as a consequence of the randomness of herring behavior. Finally, we suggest that our analysis of the rhetorics of success in fishing may be relevant for the wider discussion of leadership and entrepreneurs.

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