WHEN LESS IS MORE: Allowing fish stocks to recover actually means more profits for fishers, like the trawler pictured here.
Image: ©ISTOCKPHOTO.COM/ANDREAS REMIORZ
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Without fish, there can be no fishing—and such an outcome could be the future: A recent study indicates that the world's oceans appear headed toward a global collapse as overall fishing yields continue to decline dramatically, having dropped by some 10.6 million metric tons since 1994. The problem appears to be a classic "tragedy of the commons" wherein a common asset is exploited to death because no one individual has an incentive to preserve the shared resource. But, researchers report in Science that, in this case, the profit motive can be enlisted to solve this tragedy of the fisheries.
In short, economist R. Quentin Grafton at The Australian National University in Canberra and his colleagues found that, even for species that take decades to recover, reducing fishing yields in the short term boosts fishing profits in the long run. A review of four different fisheries—from fast-growing Australian northern prawn to slower growing Australian orange roughy (along with bigeye and yellowfin tuna)—showed that the highest fishing profits come from allowing these species to recover. "It's not economic to exploit fisheries to extinction," Grafton says.
Rather, the more exploited the fishery, the more economic gains to be derived from allowing it to make a comeback. Simply put: as fish become more plentiful, it costs less to catch them. "The debate is no longer whether it is economically advantageous to reduce current harvests but how fast stocks should be rebuilt," the researchers wrote.
There is a catch: "The people who reduce catch to rebuild stocks need to be the same ones that benefit by the reduced costs of fishing and higher catch per day," says fisheries scientist Ray Hillborn of the University of Washington, who participated in the analysis. "This means there must be some form of exclusive access: people who are not fishing now because it is not profitable cannot have the ability to join in the fishery when it is more profitable. If that happens then the people who pay the 'pain' don't get the 'long-term gain.'"
The researchers, therefore, argue for some form of "individual transferable quotas" (ITQs) that would give fisherfolk shares in a total allowable catch from a given fishery. Whereas a given quota could be sold to someone else, the overall total catch could not change. Such a system has been tried in Alaska and New Zealand and has led to fishery recoveries.
Although harvests would have to decline in the short term, the long term can require several decades or be as short as a few years (as in the case of Australian northern prawn). "Many of the cod stocks in Europe are overfished but still highly productive," Hillborn notes. "They would grow at 50 percent per year if fishing were completely stopped and, with a significant reduction in fishing but not total, could rebuild rather rapidly."
The researchers plan to analyze other fisheries to see if the same rule applies, but profit and property rights may prove the best tool to preserve fish worldwide. "A shift to the right target—discounted economic profits to fishers—and instruments, such as ITQs and the like, would have a huge positive impact on world fisheries," Grafton argues. It is "truly a win–win: more fish in the sea, more resilient ecosystems and much, much more profitable fisheries."
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18 Comments
Add Comment"Simply put: as fish become more plentiful, it costs less to catch them. "
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is a short sighted, incomplete and uneducated statement. An Econ 101 course will teach you about supply and demand. If fish is plenty in the market then price will come down. So any gains in numbers made by waiting 25 years will be offset by a lower market price which in turn will render your ITQ's worthless.
You want to solve overfishing? Cut funding to this government quota communist utopia disguise as scientific research. Leave it alone. As stocks of fish become scarce, price will go up, which will reduce demand and in turn move fishing into other more profitable catch. This will give an opportunity to those scarce fish stocks to recover.
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Edited by jrtorres at 12/07/2007 5:29 AM
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Edited by jrtorres at 12/07/2007 5:30 AM
A major issue with stocks is the level of fish which are discarded dead when getting the catch.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCod stocks in the North Sea would recover far quicker if the discard rate was cut from its current 30%.
Last year app 7750 tons were landed whilst app 2250 were discarded by the UK fleet.
Thats about 5 million fish that will never get a chance to breed and add to the stock biomass.
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Hmm... You know. If prices drop because of high supply in the future (high supply being the hypothesis under the ITQ), then ITQ holders will have an incentive to discard large quantities of their catch, just to keep prices at a profitable level. That's the unintended consequences of "government nirvana" that studies like these promote.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGentlemen,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBycatch and discard are indeed a large part of the problem. But your economics analysis is a little off. We're looking at revenue curves here, basically plotting the money to be made from selling the fish against the number of fish in the sea. (Demand is a constant. A simplification but one not uncommon in economics papers.)
Do that as these researchers did and you will see that there are differing optimal points of stock levels for revenue maximization for each of the fish species examined but in each of them, individual gain is not maximized by allowing the stock to collapse.
Rather, allowing the species to recover boosts profits.
The only problem in this is that as profits get boosted, other folks have an incentive to start fishing. (The tragedy of the commons is not entirely averted through profit.) Some mechanism must be imagined to ensure that those who pay the penalty for waiting to fish (in order to allow the fish time to recover) also enjoy the profits from that recovered stock.
The authors argue for some kind of transferable quota system (i.e. property rights) but other methods could be imagined.
I'm not certain demand is a constant :
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSandeel were very prolific in the North Sea until industrial fishing began in order to make 'cake' for use in animal fodder or to supply the 'farmed fish' industry.
Stocks of all that fed on them, including many sea birds, have suffered.
(European) Bass were considered a nuisance fish until they were promoted as 'Sea Bass' by trendy chefs, Wrasse were never considered as edible until a sushi marketplace was opened up for them. Both these species are beginning to seriously decline.
The demand on fish stocks comes from many market sectors and I'd say it will vary according to the activity within each sector.
www.ssacn.org
who thought of fish farming anyways?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI agree with the statement that government interference in business can be undesirable but it should be remembered that business is only possible because of certain guarantees that are afforded by governments themselves. The relevant guarantee here is obviously that of property rights. Property rights of the nature suggested here are already present in almost every other enterprise that involves the acquisition of natural resources. Bringing this same degree of responsibility to fishing will undoubtedly aid the industry and thereby consumers as well.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes. The guarantee not to intervene. Property right is actually a recognition of an individuals right to reap profits from something. The defense of which could include governmental or individual enforcement. Most property right laws were originally to keep government from intervention. So I am not so sure that government guarantees are what makes business possible.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow are you going to enforce ITQ's? With another huge governmental mechanism? This is impractical. Leave it alone. Free market economy will do it for you.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiswhat do you mean by "discounted economic profits to fishers"?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt means that if you quantify the profit you would make by catching and selling the fish now and every year that you wait, subtract that from the future profit (that according to them is higher, and I say its not because of supply and demand), taking into account cash flow, quantifying risk, taxes for licensing and inflation, then you should have a positive return. Meaning, that you would make more profit by waiting. What is peculiar about this is that they have not made this analysis and they are already telling you that it would be better to wait.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnother thing to consider is who is going to police this? The UN? Who?! What are they going to do with the black market on that specific fish? These guys are crazy. The problem is that the rest of us have to live in the real world, while these guy waste tax payer’s money in their field trips to “Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood.†That’s why the call it “Ivory Tower.â€
jrtorres, you may think that it's the ivory tower but check out efforts surrounding alaskan and new zealand fisheries. in both cases, individual quotas have been tried and a great success, largely self-policed and administered by the same agencies that are already involved in regulating fisheries. so there's no need for a world government, just a competent local one.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this> jrtorres, you may think that it's the ivory tower but
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this> check out efforts surrounding alaskan and new zealand
> fisheries. in both cases, individual quotas have been
> tried and a great success, largely self-policed and
> administered by the same agencies that are already
> involved in regulating fisheries. so there's no need
> for a world government, just a competent local one.
Here we go again. The Alaskan fisheries policies and programs for re-stocking are a subsidized program. If you account for the federal subsidies you'll find quickly that this type of fishing is done at a loss. Therefore you can't do this everywhere.
Another thing to consider is that it is not certain that these policies are directly responsible for increase in stock. Just because A precedes B doesn't mean A is the cause of B.
"Its a beautiful day
in the neighborhood..."
Not re-stocking: quotas on catches. You may not like stop signs but they sure do help prevent traffic accidents at intersections.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI did not mean re-stocking as in throwing farm fish into the ecosystem. I meant it a in whatever action that is supposedly to increase fish stock in the ocean.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou obviously have never seen how badly 4-way stop signs work in rush hour. Nevertheless stop signs can be policed.
I know. I've gotten a few tickets for those rolling stops. Quotas are easy enough to police. Simply enforce at market. X amount of a given fish species can be sold. Period. It's really exactly the same as a cap-and-trade solution for air pollution, like the sulfur dioxide market we've had running for over a decade. There they use continuous emissions monitors. Here you can use the market.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNow I'll grant you there'll probably be a black market as well but that's a problem we cope with in any situation.
I do not believe this analysis pertains to species where there are factors affecting their population that are not due to fishing. Specifically, in the Pacific Northwest, salmon populations are significantly impacted by habitat loss due to development in and along our rivers. In the case of Snake River Fall Chinook, over 90% of human induced mortalities are attributible to the hydroelectric dam system on the Snake and Columbia Rivers. (NOAA FCRPS Biological Opinion) In the Puget Sound basin, housing developments line all of the rivers with Endangered Species Act listed Chinook. Populations of Puget Sound Chinook are limited by total available habitat, not by the catch that is strictly limited.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSalmon populations are fairly well described by the "Ricker Curve" that relates the number of spawning salmon to the (unfished) number of returning adults in a spawning stream. Increasing the number of spawning adults increases the number of returning adults of the brood untill the number of returning adults overtaxes available habitat at which point the number of returning adults is reduced by introducing more adult spawners. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game recently conducted studies of Bristol Bay Sockeye (O. nerka) that verify the Ricker Curve description of sockeye populations. " Biological and Fishery-Related Aspects of Overescapement in alaskan Sockeye Salmon Oncorhynchus Nerka", Robert Clark, Mark Willette, Steve Fleischman and Doug Eggers,
Special Publication 07-17 ADFG
The only way salmon populations are going to increase in the Pacific Northwest is if habitat to support them becomes available. Although it is only one year's worth of data, encouraging signs of things to come were seen on the upper Cedar River in Seattle this fall. Seattle was able to open parts of the Cedar River to Chinook Salmon that had been cut off from salmon when the water system was built in the early part of the 20th century. The first childern of the initial spawers in the newly accessable river returned to the Cedar Rive in remarkably high numbers ( significantly higher survival rates) than neighboring Chinook runs. In other words, it looks as though the ocean life phases that include incidental harvest of these fish did not impact their return to the extent that habitat restrictions did.
Quotas are not a good method of protecting stocks - they result in excessive levels of discard once quotas are around their limits and encourage 'highgrading' = dumping of fish if another haul brings in fish with a better market price.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOver 2 billion fish are discarded every year in the North Sea by the european fleets.
As for being easy to police - I'm afraid that's a bit of wishful thinking.
Policing only works if countries make it work - Spanish policing of quotas is so poor it is openly accepted that they regularly exceed quotas by up to 70%.
Reduced fishing effort is the only way less fish will be taken.
www.ssacn.org