THE VINE AUGUST 19, 2008
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The BBC had a fascinating story a few
days back about small-scale fishermen in Cumbria and the new regulations
that are threatening to do them in. The fishermen, known as haaf netters, stand
in the Solway Firth in water up to their
armpits, scooping up fish with a net that hangs from a pole across their
shoulders. They then kill the fish by whacking them over the head with a wooden
mallet. They've been doing this since the Vikings were around, but lately
they've been catching more fish than the recreational fishermen upstream would like.
So, over the past years, they've been subject to increasingly strict regulations
about when they can fish—regulations they say are putting them out of business.
These regulations are a good example of the most common—and most inefficient—strategy
for preventing commercial overfishing: making it harder to fish. Sometimes
this takes the form of equipment restrictions—say, a requirement to use smaller
nets. Sometimes it takes the form of a shortened fishing season. Either way,
it doesn't work. Commercial fishing boats that are forced to use smaller nets will generally
just stay out longer, burning more fuel and taking up more crew time but coming
back with the same amount of fish. A shortened fishing season just motivates fishermen
to fish more intensely while they can—buying bigger, more powerful boats
so they can get to the fishing grounds more quickly and catch more fish once
they get there. This arms race—which often results in further reductions to the
fishing season that, in turn, leave the powerful new boats sitting in port—benefits
nobody.
The better strategy is to limit each fisherman to a certain amount of fish per
year and not worry about how or when he goes about catching it. This is usually
done by giving out tradable permits that represent a fraction of the total
catch allowed each year in the fishery. New
Zealand and Iceland
regulate most of their fisheries with quota systems, but for some reason they
haven't caught on in the United States.
In the main place quotas have been adopted—in Alaska, to regulate the halibut fishery—the
fishermen seem to consider
them a success. Perhaps the 50-odd remaining haaf netters should take their cues and start campaigning for a quota system that would allow each of them
to bop x number of fish over the head each year.
--Rob Inglis, High Country News
7 comments
Cap and trade for fishing, I like it. Or maybe we need a fish tax?
- dbhuff
August 19, 2008 at 1:07pm
Nice catch.
I mean, finding Mr Inglis and getting his well-informed perspective into these boards. More like this, pls.
- teplukhin2you
August 19, 2008 at 1:36pm
I worked a halibut opener in the Gulf of Alaska back before they switched from a limited fishing season to quota. Inglis makes a good point about the ineffectiveness of season limits, though I rather suspect that when the season is as drastically limited as Alaska's pre-quota halibut season--just two 24 hour openers per year--the arms race, as he describes it doesn't make much difference. I was on a pretty half-assed long-liner. My skipper was really there after a tender contract with one of the salmon canneries and only had enough long-line gear to tied him over through the spring. And yet we delivered more halibut for our 24 hours of work than any of the other boats in Valdez. When your season's down to just 24 hours, bigger, faster boats and more gear don't make much difference. It's all a crap shoot. Either you get onto the fish, or you don't.
- aeromonas
August 20, 2008 at 12:08am
But I do think the fishermen like quota system. The other way was just plain dangerous. Operators felt under pressure to fish the opener regardless of how shitty the weather--my boat grossed $84,000 for the one day--and no one slept for about 40 hours straight. These are the kinds of conditions that make commercial fishing the most lethal industry in America.
- aeromonas
August 20, 2008 at 12:13am
Rob Inglis has his heart in the right place with this article, however he is mistaken to extrapolate from the haaf netters to fishing in general. The idea of regulating only the number of fish caught but not when they are caught would lead to a devistating loss of fish species that spawn at certain times of the year, not to mention all the other non-fish creatures in the oceans that people like to eat but reproduce durring select times. Harvesting these animals just before or durring their spawning seasons could reduce their numbers by orders of magnitude over only a few years time. Furthermore, unregulated fishing methods have, in the past, led to terribly negative effects on non-targeted species. Consider long-line fishermen who catch endagered turtles and sharks when their target fish are tuna and bill fish. A well regulated fishery takes into account not just the number of fish brought ashore, but also when the fish were caught and how they were caught. Most people who live near the ocean know this, and so should Rob Inglis!
- mdichner
August 21, 2008 at 7:54pm
Individual fishing quotas have got to be one of the niftiest ideas in environmental economics—an attempt
- Anonymous
September 29, 2008 at 12:27pm
For a long time, individual fishing quotas were sort of like urine-separating toilets : a great idea
- Anonymous
November 12, 2008 at 4:24pm