This paper relies upon research conducted in 1997 and 1998 that included an analysis of fisheries scientific and management discourse and a series of interviews with fishers from New England, an important center of fisheries science, management, and industrial development. The discourse analysis examined a wide range of materials (e.g., fisheries science texts, government and management council documents, and newspaper articles). What emerged was a common set of ontological assumptions about the subjects and spaces of fisheries. The interviews revealed a “landscape” of fishing that is different than that assumed by the dominant discourse. This work begins to document this landscape, to re-map the domain of fisheries; it draws the basic contours of this unseen landscape and finds within it a potential for the community management of fisheries.