Oceans Archives

The Bush administration's announcement Sept. 20 that it intends to encourage rights-based fishing represents significant progress. The administration wants 8 U.S. marine fisheries to adopt a form of "dedicated access privileges" by 2010. These privileges include individual fishing quotas and fishing cooperatives, among other rights-based tools. PERC (the Property and Environment Research Center) has been working with Environmental Defense and the Reason Public Policy Institute to acquaint policy makers with the environmental and economic benefits of such rights.

“The administration has taken an important step in supporting these tools, which throughout the world have led to environmental improvements, safer fishing, lower costs, and higher profits for fishermen,” says Donald R. Leal, PERC Senior Fellow and author of Fencing the Fishery and other publications featuring rights-based fishing tools.

“We wish that the administration had gone further by setting an earlier deadline and by making a firmer commitment to dedicated access privileges, but this is a start. Where they have been adopted, these privileges (DAPs) have proven to be a tool that is superior to government regulation,” Leal adds.

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The Bush Administration has finally unveiled its legislation to reform the Magnuson-Stevens Act governing fisheries in U.S. territorial waters. As expected, the bill endorses the use of tradeable quotas for fisheries -- labeled "dedicated access privileges" in the bill -- a property-based approach to fishery management that is supported by nearly all serious fishery analysts.

Environmental organizations that do serious fisheries work, like Environmental Defense, support the use of tradeable quotas. The opposition, insofar as there is any, comes from local economic interests that are afraid of competition and liberal groups that are afraid of "concentration" within the fishing industry. Whatever the merits of such critiques, it is worth noting that they are not particularly environmental. That is, there is no serious environmental -- as opposed to social -- argument against the use of tradeable fishing quotas. There's a reason for this: Both extensive theoretical work and extensive practical experience have demonstrated that property-based management schemes are the key to fishery sustainability.

I've written on the value of tradeable quotas in fisheries here. for news coverage of the proposal, see here and here. I hope to post more on the specifics of the proposal once I've had more time to go over it.

biologists or economists? John Whitehead makes the case for economists here. To add my own two cents: In my experience economists have an additional edge because they have a greater understanding of the incentives that drive over-exploitation of fish stocks. But the greatest conservationists of all are the fishermen them selves if -- and this is a mighty big if -- they have property rights that tie their economic well-being to the health of the resource and reward their stewardship. And the stronger the property rights, the stronger the conservation incentives. In New Zealand, for example, it's not uncommon for the fishermen themselves to push for lower catch limits than government biologists would authorize (something that reinforces Whitehead's point). Also, as I've chronicled at length here, where such arrangements are allowed, fishermen have powerful incentives to organize so as to reduce harvesting pressures on the fishery upon which they depend.

This month, Alaska's crab fisheries switch to individual fishing quotas (IFQs). This is great news! Out will be the open derbies, where as many as 250 boats race each other at sea for a share of the overall catch. In will be a system in which fishermen will know exactly how much they can catch going to sea.

Crabbers will no longer feel compelled to fish in bad weather, or continue through sleepless nights or extreme fatigue, to catch the lucrative shellfish before other boats grab them. Each fisherman will have an exclusive percentage of the available crab to catch at his leisure.

The program has one unwelcome side condition. In addition to IFQs for fishermen, only buyers with individual processors quotas (IPQs) will be allowed to buy the crab directly from fishermen. This is an unnecessary restriction on commerce. Even the Justice Department has suggested it would not stand up under antitrust law. Nevertheless, the powerful senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) pushed it through as an appropriations rider.

Even so, the advent of IFQs for crabs is an important milestone. For detailed treatment of IFQs and rights-based fishing generally, see "Fencing the Fishery" by Donald R. Leal. For recent news about IFQs, see the IFQs Web site.

John Whitehead wants to know.

For more on whales, check out the whale watching blog.

I hated seeing them on the beach as a kid. These prehistoric holdovers are quite ugly. But horseshoe crabs are important for some species of shore birds. Now, as crab populations decline -- due to over-harvesting (crab ITQs anyone?) -- bird species such as the rust-colored red knot are threatened. The Washington Post has more here.

NOAA has a new proposal to facilitate aquaculture (aka "fish farming") in federal waters. The administration supports the proposal as a way of satisfying increased demand for seafood products without increasing the pressure on wild fish populations. Some environmentalists, however, think the plan lacks adequate environmental safeguards.

Obsolete oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico have much to offer in the marine environment. Alas, federal law requires rigs' removal. "Most of the bottom is mud, so oil rigs provide the only hard bottom on which marine animals can settle and hunt for food," notes marine biologist Paul Sammarco in the Washington Post. "Once a rig is moved in any way, an entire ecosystem is gone." Sammarco is the author of a new study in Marine Biology on the ecological effects of rigs in the Gulf.

For more on the potential to create artificial reefs in the Gulf of Mexico, see this report by Michael DeAlessi. See also this information from the Department of the Interior.

In May, Canada will be hosting international talks on the problem of overfishing.

Christopher Booker, a UK columnist, writes that over the past year, UK Parliamentarian and Tory spokesperson Owen Paterson

"visited all those countries round the Atlantic where, in striking contrast to the unrelieved disaster of the [Common Fisheries Policy], fisheries are flourishing. In the US, Canada, Iceland, the Faroes, Norway and even the Falklands, he has seen how it is possible to run an effective management regime, based on sound science, that allows fishermen to prosper and fish stocks to grow."

Based on Paterson's research, the Tories have launched a 33-page 'radical new' 'Green Paper' on fisheries , which is announced on Paterson's website.

It seems, however, that Mr. Paterson was asleep when he visited countries like Iceland, thus has failed to learn from their mistakes.

For instance, the report recommends that Britain adopt a "days at sea" approach rather than quotas. However, Hannes Gissurarson explains why this approach failed in Iceland, leading to that country's decision to move to Individual Tradeable Quotas (ITQs), a system of quasi-property rights relied upon to dictate fisheries management in Iceland and many other countries around the world.

Notably, the Tories' report makes zero mention of property rights or ITQs, so it is hardly as 'radical' as its proponents would lead the British public to believe. It could have been a laudable effort to bring Britain out of the failed Common Fisheries Policy, but for ignoring the real causes of successful fisheries management.

The Valley Morning Star thinks individual fishing quotas might be a solution for the crab harvest in the San Francisco Bay. IFQs are among the many ocean policies under consideration by the Bush Administration's new Ocean Policy Committee.

The Council on Environmental Quality has a new website up dealing with the Administration's ocean policy.

The E.U. announced its new fishing quotas yesterday, so that the various countries' agricultural ministers can now fight it out when the member states meet later in the month. The Maltese commissioner noted a need for "greater involvment of stakeholders." Perhaps the beginning of a call for more IFQs in Europe? There is a whale of difference between country-wide quotas and localized quotas. The latter may one day bring the success of sustainable fishing that the former cannot. If the ministers really want to take their national quotas seriously, they will start to foment more localized quotas, which will indeed involve the stakeholders in the fisheries.

And, today, the European Union went back to the seas to promote stiffer fines for marine pollution --- setting minimums for the European countries. The E.U. hopes to put another plan that would set minimum fines for sea captains into international maritime conventions soon. Malta, Greece, and Cyprus refused to include such a program in the E.U. plan.

UPDATE: PERC has a new book out on Evolving Property Rights in Marine Fisheries.

The United States government will seek new global regulations restricting trade in great white sharks and products derived therefrom at the October meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) in Thailand. According to the U.S. Interior Department, the new restrictions will help protect the sharks, which are often hunted for shark fin suit and other purposes. Given the poor history of CITES-imposed trade restrictions at conserving species, I'm skeptical the move will do much good. Nonetheless, seeking greater international regulations is hardly the sort of move one would expect from an administration allegedly out to gut all of environmental law.

The New York Times reports on a renewed debate over whaling. Whale conservation efforts have been sufficiently successful that many whale populations are no longer endangered. This means that whaling could resume for some species without any threat of driving them to extinction. Nonetheless, many groups oppose the resumption of whaling. Whereas once the anti-whaling movement was motivated by a concern with extinction, now environmental and animal welfare organizations argue that killing whales, which are highly evolved and reasonably intelligent mammals, would be immoral.

While traditional whaling countries (e.g. Japan, Norway) and environmentalists debate the ethics of whaling, technology may move the policy debate beyond a binary choice over whether to resume whaling. Gregory B. Christainsen and Brian C. Gothberg have a provocative paper on how technology could be used to establish tradeable rights in whales. While perhaps not politically viable, such a system would empower those who believe any whaling is immoral to purchase the rights to specific whales in order to protect them. While this might not prevent all whaling, it would help ensure thatn any whaling occurred at a sustainable level and could further reduce whaling by increasing the opportunity costs of holding whaling rights.

Whether or not the Christainsen/Gothberg paper describes a politically viable policy option, it illustrates how increases in technology can facilitate the creation of property rights in environmental resources and true market solutions to environmental problems. On the other hand, if one believes whaling is inherently immoral, then one might not feel trading whaling rights is any more acceptable than trading human slaves.

The blatantly protectionist Common Agricultural Policy is well-known as one of the worst things the European Union does, preventing developing nations from selling agricultural products in a competitive European market. Less well known is the disaster that is the Common Fisheries Policy. Euroskeptic commentator Richard North, who I believe has worked closely with the dying British fising industry, examines the problems in this post at his EU Referendum blog. He notes a publicity stunt by Greenpeace, which arranged for delivery of a load of dead marine life:

This was the by-catch from a two-hour trawl on the Dogger Bank, and comprised 11,000 dead or dying marine species. It included a variety of flatfish, small cod, mackerel, sole, Norway lobster, edible crab and starfish.

The catch represented a fraction of the estimated 720,000 tons of discarded fish returned annually to the North Sea, including some 12 percent (or more) of the total cod and 40 percent of the plaice catch by weight had been discarded.

So far so good. Every fisherman and campaigner would agree that discarding is highly wasteful, and experience from the successful fisheries of Norway, Iceland and the Faroes demonstrate that banning this practice is an essential past of good fisheries management.

But Greenpeace does not make this point. It uses the information to claim that "this type of fishing practice" – and then lumps beam trawling with otter trawling, which is claims are "particularly prone to picking up unwanted species, because they are inherently indiscriminate".

That, in fact, is not true as a matter of principle. Given good design, these nets can be highly selective – the problem being that the rigidities of the CFP prevent the design and development of more selective gear, and prohibit experimentation to reduce by-catch.

North goes on to point out that there are some exclusion zones in the North Sea, notably around oil and gas installations.

These in part may account for the fact that certain species, like haddock, are at a thirty-year high, and that fishermen are taking record catches of large cod, despite scientists' claims that the stock is near exhaustion.

Finally, North notes that, under the proposed EU Constitution, conservation of fish stocks will become the responsibility of the EU itself, and not of member governments. Given the "depradations" of the CFP, this is unlikely to be good for marine life.

Many environmental problems are over-stated by activists and journalists. The plight of fisheries, global and domestic, is not one of them. Fisheries have been in decline for years, yet rarely receive significant media coverage or substantial attention from environmental fundraisers or publicists. Worse, the solution to many fishery problems is well known. At this point there is widespread academic agreement and substantial empirical evidence that the development of property rights in fisheries, such as through the impementation of individual fishing quotas ("IFQs" aka "ITQs") eliminates the "tragedy of the commons" in fisheries, improves efficiency, and creates incentives for sustainable resource management. (I've written about IFQs here.)

The Bush Administration supports greater use of IFQs. Unfortunately, the administration has been reluctant to expend any political capital on the issue. This is a shame because IFQs are a perfect case study of how property rights and market institutions can solve a pressing environmental problem. In other words, if the Administration is looking for an issue where the "conservative" approach is the "greenest" approach, this is it.

Fortunately, the coalition in support of IFQs appears to be growing. Recently, PERC, the Reason Foundation and Environmental Defense teamed up to create a website, IFQs for Fisheries, documenting the need for and benefits of IFQs and monitoring efforts to get them approved. If successful, the effort will represent a tremendous success for free market environmentalism and resource protection.