Throwback Thursday: From the Archives
Photo courtesy of OZinOH
November 21 is World Fisheries Day, a day to celebrate fishing communities and focus on managing global fisheries to ensure sustainable stocks and healthy ocean ecosystems.
Twenty three years ago, when we began to realize collapsed fisheries were a huge problem, Donald Leal described how property rights could save fisheries in the December 1992 edition of PERC Reports
Overfishing has plagued the oceans for centuries. In areas where no limits are set on harvest, fish populations dwindle because fishermen have no incentive to preserve fish for the future. Indeed, off the coast of New England, groundfish populations – that is, cod, haddock, and flounder – have been falling fast, costing the region $350 million and 14,000 jobs, according to a 1990 report by the Massachusetts Offshore Groundfish Task Force.
Governments, national and local, often deal with the problem by setting a limit on the overall catch of certain fish in their jurisdictions. Theoretically, such a limit will protect future catches by leaving enough fish to propagate.
But such a limit can cause havoc among fishermen. Knowing that the season can end as soon as the annual harvest level is reached, fishermen race to the fishing grounds and try and catch as many fish as possible. To stay competitive, fishermen are forced to invest in expensive equipment and bigger and faster boats and to take dangerous risks. With such a short season, they can suffer financial disaster if an equipment breakdown occurs on opening day.
The Race to Fish
Governments can also try other techniques such as gear restrictions and split seasons. But fishermen typically find ways around these restrictions and the race to fish continues. In the end, both fishermen and consumers suffer. With seasons lasting a few hours or a few days, the markets are flooded with fish, lowering the price fishermen receive. Instead of fresh fish, consumers have to eat frozen fish for most of the year.In recent years, however, a new technique-a new system of ownership-has emerged to manage fisheries. These are called individual transferable quotas or ITQs. Each fisherman has a property right in a fixed proportion of the total allowable catch each year. This right can be traded.
ITQs eliminate the race-to-fish atmosphere plaguing fisheries. With a secure right to a specific amount of fish each year, each fisherman can focus on harvesting that amount of fish as inexpensively as possible and at a time when it should bring the highest value.
Buying and Selling
The fisherman’s right, his ITQ, can be sold, all or in part, to another fisherman who wants to enter a fishery or expand his current share. Freedom to buy and sell these rights allows fishermen to operate at the scale they are comfortable with. Some may purchase additional rights and buy bigger boats. Others may sell part of their share and run a smaller operation, or sell out completely.ITQs are being used in New Zealand, Australia, Iceland, Canada, and here in the United States. Increased profits have been documented in ITQ fisheries in Iceland and New Zealand and in the Australian southern bluefin tuna and Wisconsin’s yellow perch fisheries. Profits rise because fish quality is higher and market gluts are avoided. Some fishermen claim that ITQs are the best thing to happen in fishery management.
A staff member of the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council says, “Before the program went into effect, fishermen were calling the council to complain about something every working day. Now fishermen never call.”
Today, 85 percent of the world’s fisheries have been fished to unhealthy levels. Governments and managing agencies remain reluctant to grant fishermen property rights to fishing quotas, despite the success experienced by fisheries in New Zealand, Australia, Iceland, and even parts of North America that have issued ITQs.
Throughout its history, PERC has been involved in the issues facing fisheries. Leal and other PERC scholars have traced the development of ITQs and their successes around the world. Their research continues to show that property rights matter – when fishermen have ownership of a share of the fishery, they manage the resource in a sustainable manner. This work has been instrumental in evolving property rights in marine fisheries.
To learn more about how property rights can prevent overfishing, check out PERC’s work on fisheries.
Read the original article in full here.
