Fisheries Management

Fisheries are complex environments in which fish are just a single inhabitant. Other species, climate change, habitat modification, fishermen, consumers, and bureaucrats all impact fisheries. Economics, as much as ecology, define fisheries.

The success or failure of a fishery can hinge on small changes in the composition of local fishermen, in the policies of their processors, in the regulations that govern them, and in the types of fishing gear they use. According to former EPA head Bill Ruckelshaus, "The problem isn't so much with managing fish as it is with managing people having different needs, values, laws, institutions and accessibility to the fish and the resources upon which they depend."

Long-term fisheries management requires grappling with all of these complex elements. Traditional solutions have predominantly relied upon overt, governmental "fisheries management". And, not surprisingly, many solutions have proven ineffective. Bitter conflicts, depleted fish stocks, depressed local economies, and overinvested fishermen are just some of the unintended consequences of failed management schemes.

Fisheries Management in the U.S.

Background

With the 1976 Magnuson Fisheries Conservation and Management Act, Congress established the management rules for the nation's vast marine resources. Regional Fisheries Management Councils promulgated rules governing America's eight fishery regions within the guidelines of the Magnuson Act and other relevant legislation (such as the Endangered Species Act). They receive scientific and legal counsel from federal agencies such as the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS). Agencies like NMFS and the U.S. Coast Guard are responsible for monitoring and enforcement of Council regulations.

Over the past 20 years, the United States has flexed its managerial muscle over its fisheries. Most significantly, it evicted foreign fishing vessels from U.S. waters. In 1977, foreign fishers caught 40% of the total yield of U.S. fisheries. This figure dropped to 0.2% by 1990. Other tools available to Regional Fisheries Management Councils include: licensing and other limited access systems; fishing ground closures; catch restrictions (size, weight, gender, etc.); and limitations on fishing grounds, seasons, vessel types, and gear.

After 20 years under the Magnuson Act, the effects of federal management are evident. For the fish stocks NMFS has data on, 80% are either overfished or fully exploited. Twenty years ago, this figure was only 68%. A third of all stocks managed under the Magnuson Act were less abundant in 1990 than when Councils began managing. Federal management has overseen only a few instances of significantly increased harvests, most remarkably the Alaska pollock. According to Eugene Buck of the Committee for the National Institute for the Environment, regulations under the Magnuson Act "have resulted in many devastated stocks with substantial financial loss and disruption to the economy, including: the demise of the haddock, cod, and yellowtail flounder off New England; precipitous king mackerel declines in the Gulf of Mexico; and the destruction of the Georges Bank herring fishery." A survey of several regional fisheries reveals the shortcomings of conventional management.

New England

Groundfish management in New England under the Magnuson Act is an excellent example of the problems of politicized fisheries management. Under pressure from commercial fishermen, the regional Council avoided setting quotas and concentrated on mesh size limits. In an open-access fishery dominated by numerous small vessels, however, technical restrictions are generally circumvented. Where cheating doesn't work, simply adding more fishermen or vessels accomplishes the same trick. Unfortunately, such "overcapitalization" led to industry capacity double that needed to fully exploit New England fisheries. The present conditions are worse than twenty years ago, and some species, like haddock and redfish, remain under 10% their previous populations. Overall, harvests of groundfish (like cod) are well below half their potential yield. With every stock fully- or over-exploited, skates and dogfish have infested the fishery; where they accounted for 25% of the biomass of the fishery in 1963, they now comprise 75% of the fishery.

North Pacific

North Pacific fisheries are very different. They boast some of the nation's biologically healthiest stocks and most innovative management plans. But NMFS points out, "As the domestic groundfish fisheries are now fully developed and rapidly over-capitalized, allocation disputes between user groups have been exacerbated." Rampant bycatch and socioeconomic distortions threaten the long-term viability of the region's fisheries.

Take, for instance, the derby-style North Pacific halibut fishery. There was a 128-day season in 1975. Seasons dropped below 32 days by 1978. And, in the 1990s, the fishing season for halibut is just a few days. Such a system lowers fish quality, because every Pacific halibut eaten in a given year must be caught over a few-day period. The scramble for fish pressures fishermen to take greater risks. During the 48-hour derby (when 18 million pounds of halibut were landed) in 1994, one fisherman died and fifteen needed rescuing during the foul weather. Also, derbies distort industry economics. Oversized boats lay idle for 51 weeks a year or move on to another fishery. Fishermen too suffer from such short seasons. Processing plants are built with excess capacity to handle the peak season. And racing fishermen land even more bycatch as environmentally sensitive fishing goes by the wayside.

Gulf of Mexico

Management of the Gulf of Mexico shrimp fishery has relied primarily on closing two fishing grounds and setting size limits on white shrimp. These regulations have proven ineffective, as all three major Gulf shrimp species are "overutilized". The shrimp fleet (subsidized by federally guaranteed loans) is believed to have three times more boats and gear than needed to fully exploit the fishery. Less fishing effort would produce the same yield -- at less cost. But NMFS doesn't target industry capacity in its attempt to "improve the monetary value of the shrimp fishery." The end result is a devalued and overfished fishery. Additionally, because shrimpers' discards often outweigh shrimp by eight to one, the oversized shrimping fleet damages other Gulf fisheries.

Oregon Rockfish

Widow rockfish, a low value fish off the Pacific coast, epitomize fisheries mismanagement. Widow rockfish were relatively unfished until two things happened: (1) all the valuable fish in the U.S. were fished out by the late 1970s, and (2) someone discovered that widow rockfish concentrate in a single area at night. Almost overnight, they became overfished. In 1979, nine vessels fished widow rockfish. That number jumped to 52 in 1980 and 70 in 1981. Despite a 70% drop in its market price, rockfish catch exploded from 1,107 tons to 28,419 tons from 1978 to 1981. The recommended catch level was exceeded by over 50% in 1981 and 1982. After the Council caved to pressure to raise the quota even higher, the catch per trip and the average fish size declined drastically. By 1985, the quota had been slashed to just 7,400 tons -- a number reflecting a severely depleted fishery that could take 20 years to rebuild. A recovered fishery could yield double that, and would still have required only seven vessels to catch the entire annual harvest.

Pacific Northwest salmon

The condition of Pacific Northwest salmon demonstrates the dangers of subsidies and preferential treatment. When managers and legislators "play favorites," eventually everyone loses -- especially the salmon. Federally subsidized dams have transformed the Columbia River Basin into a mechanized river, thereby destroying salmon habitat. Irrigation and other waterworks dramatically alter salmon habitat in the effort to bring water to politically powerful farmers and municipalities. The Marine Mammal Protection Act grants sea lions federal sanctuary to feast upon endangered salmon runs. Ranchers on federal grazing lands abuse watersheds through overgrazing and insensitive grazing techniques.

As a consequence, most Pacific Northwest salmon runs are imperiled. According to the National Research Council, "Pacific salmon have disappeared from about 40% of their historical breeding ranges in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and California over the last century." The American Fisheries Society confirmed that a quarter of Pacific salmon are extinct and over half are endangered.

Some Successes

Because the Magnuson Act and NMFS oversee eight regional fisheries with great biological and economic diversity, U.S. fisheries management resists generalizations. There have been very notable success stories. The recovery of the Atlantic striped bass demonstrates the power of moratoria and size restrictions to give populations time to rebuild. Likewise, Alaska's booming salmon fishery continues to achieve record catch levels under a successful management system. The plentiful salmon are managed in a region with relatively preserved natural salmon habitat (for instance, Alaska lacks the Pacific Northwest's array of dams), excellent data collection, and relatively easy monitoring. Furthermore, local communities have realized their dependence a strong fishery and supported management with long-term conservation goals.

Reasons for Failure

The shortcomings of the federal policy management under the Magnuson Act can be attributed to inappropriate institutions. Traditionally, private entities (fishermen) are given public rights (nonexclusive access) to a common-pool good (the fishery). In other words, individuals can fish from a resource that everyone owns in common for their own private gain, but they cannot stop someone else from doing the same. Under these conditions, nobody has an incentive to conserve the resource, because if they act responsibly they watch others continue fishing. More and more fishermen and boats will arrive until profits disappear altogether, and the long-term health of the fishery deteriorates. The current system rewards fishermen for increasing fleet capacity, for entering a fishery, for discarding some fish, and for maximizing landings in the short term. Such a system creates incentives for fishermen to catch the most, the quickest. They reel in short-term profits from overfishing while society as a whole bears the costs of economic and environmental waste.

Fisheries management in the U.S. introduces faulty incentives via conventional regulatory tools like quotas, gear restrictions, and size limits. By regulating the specific gear types, fish sizes, vessel types, days at sea, catch limits, and other "technical conservation measures," the resource simply becomes more costly to harvest. Eugene Buck observes, "This results in competitive pressure among fishermen to invest in improved gear and boats to maintain their harvests as each tries to make a living; overfishing thus persists in the face of regulation because of capital investments." Unbridled competition produces bigger vessels, better sonar, and larger nets.

NMFS' preoccupation with regulating the how, where, and when of fishing amounts to remote bureaucrats telling professional fishermen how to better do their job. Unfortunately, a better question would be to ask who gets to fish. The open-access basis of most management plans undermines any potentially effective policy. Shortening seasons leads to dangerous derbies. Tightening quotas exacerbates overcapitalization and promotes high-grading. Banning factory trawlers or drift nets invites an armada of smaller, inefficient vessels (and more voices to whine when the fishery collapses). None of these efforts will stave off overfishing, because they are all predicated on open access where short-term economic benefits trump long-term sustainability.

But only five out of 43 regional fisheries management plans control access to fisheries.

Politics, Science, and Management

Many observers accuse industry lobbies of dominating the central planning agencies. The adverse effects of special interest politics on the environment, economy, and fishing communities is evident in New England. The regional Council ignored scientific assessments from NMFS and others for over a decade while overseeing the collapse of its fisheries. Finally, a 1991 lawsuit enabled NMFS to step in and begin the restoration process. As New Orleans Times Picayune reporter John McQuaid writes, "When government agencies resort to being sued to get things done, there is clearly something wrong."

While political management ignores sound science, scientific management also has its limits. Fisheries science is confounded by uncertainties unlikely to ever be explained. In the U.S., 34% of commercially valuable stocks have an "unknown" status. According to Donald Ludwig of the University of British Columbia, "Too many interests are involved. There are constraints on getting data. It's very difficult to get any kind of sensible scientific experiment going." Chris Finlayson, a fishery social scientist, echoes this critique that the scientific management approach is "based on the false assumption that science is capable of furnishing information reliable enough to allow a command-and-control approach to ecosystems."

The Magnuson Act issues a command-and-control directive to manage for "optimum yield" (OY). Defining OY has been as impossible as achieving it. According to fisheries expert Francis Christy, "The nebulous nature of this standard ... renders it ineffective in providing a basis for decision-making. 'Optimum yield' becomes merely a 'best' yield, to be defined on an ad hoc basis by decision-makers." Science can't answer these questions, and under centralized planning the answers become politically determined by NMFS and the regional councils. Denying this observation has wrought havoc on fisheries.

Some Useful Models

There are several examples and models that can help improve fisheries management on a practical level. But every fishery has different ecological and socio-economic characteristics. Therefore, no single theoretical model can possibly suit every fishery. Effective solutions must adapt to changing ecological, economic, and political realities.

Forum Fisheries Agency

One example of a very threatened regional fishery struggling for success can be found in the South Pacific Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA). Vast ocean stretches are dotted with tiny island nations whose national incomes are dwarfed by the foreign companies fishing their waters. But those nations, against the odds, have formed an institution from the ground up. While nations like Kiribati and Fiji lack the industry needed to haul in highly migratory tuna, they formed a negotiating bloc to charge foreign fishers for the right to exploit their fisheries. Rather than use size restrictions, quotas, and closures, the FFA has focused on key questions of access and effort. The FFA seeks to monitor and balance fishing pressure with revenues from access fees. By charging foreign fleets for access to their national waters, the FFA hopes to avoid overcapitalization, wasteful regulation, and international conflict. Such a simple mechanism as prices provides revenue for management and serves to control entry into the fishery. Unfortunately, the Maguson Act does not provide for such access fees.

Japanese Villages

Japanese fishing villages receive a lot of attention for their community- and culture-based management system. Entry into a fishery is limited to members of local "cooperatives". With a relatively stable number of participants, social pressures are then used to sanction those members of the cooperative who fish improperly or against cooperative rules. Longstanding custom and tradition have produced effective systems for generating rules and monitoring compliance. In many cases, such as in Shichigahama, cooperatives operate under strict national standards but are free to determine the details of how they meet them. Flexible, local implementation is critical to the success of management.

Individual Transferrable Quotas

The most popular innovation in fishery management is the Individual Transferrable Quota (ITQ). An ITQ holder would have the right to harvest up to a certain percent of the total annual quota for given fish stock. These ITQs could be bought and sold. The incentives that such a system introduces are powerful and much needed. ITQs give their owners incentives to conserve fish. Fishermen can increase the value of their quota and the size of their future catch by allowing fish populations to increase. Such behavior has already been observed in the wreckfish, southern bluefin tuna, and some shellfish fisheries. Because only those with quotas may fish, fishermen need not race to get their share. Year-round fishing improves fish quality, decreases the risks fishermen take, and allows for more selective fishing. If they catch too many, they can buy someone else's ITQ instead of automatically being forced to discard.

Incentives to overcapitalize the fishery also disappear, because the rights to enter the fishery fixed and assigned to ITQ holders. The more efficient fishermen and those who love fishing will buy or retain quotas; others will leave. Fewer ships and less equipment will be needed to catch the same amount of fish, reducing costs and improving efficiency. In New Zealand, where ITQs have been used for many years, conservation groups are premitted to purchase shares of the fishery -- and then retire them. This allows nonconsumptive values of the fishery to compete on equal terms with the commodity interests of fisheries.

ITQs are not perfect, however. Initial allocation of ITQs is highly political. Some criticize that processors and non-fishers are excluded from most initial allocation schemes. Furthermore, many fear that corporate powerhouses will buy up all the ITQs, abandon small fishermen, and gain monopolistic control over the fishery. Community development quotas, a variant of ITQs, are assigned to communities (usually indian tribes) to be transferred freely within but not to be traded outside of the community.

Criticisms of ITQs are not limited to initial allocation issues. Quota systems are extremely expensive to monitor and regulate. Onboard NMFS observers during a four-day season are much cheaper than year-round observers. Fishermen still have an incentive to poach, especially in high-value fisheries. Finally, quotas are still determined through a political process. The pathologies of "scientific" assessments conducted by government agencies are not resolved under an ITQ system. If anything, the total quota becomes more important.

Community Fishing Corporations

An idea recently introduced into the debate is the notion of distributed governance through community fishing corporations. By incorporating fishing communities, Professor Ralph Townsend of the University of Maine and Dr. Sam Pooley of NMFS argue, the communities could then act as a single owner of the fishery, with much the same sense of responsibility as the FFA, ITQ holder, or other property owner. The community corporation would act to maintain the fishery in a state that provides the optimum benefits for "shareholders". In this case, community shareholders could be fishermen, corporate interests, conservationists, processors, concerned citizens, or anyone else able to meet the criteria of community membership. Their shares would give them proportional representation in decision-making processes and in sharing of the pure profit (or "economic rent") of the fishery. The shares would also be fully transferrable, so long as no more than a certain percentage leaves the community. By giving shareholders a formal, secure stake in the fishery, they would have the incentive to vote and behave in ways that promote the value of their share. Knowledge for decision-making would remain local, respecting local conditions, customs, and values.

The Role of Incentives

These models teach us that people with long-term vested interests in fishery viability usually act responsibly. People with a stake in the future won't act like there's no tomorrow. In contrast, open-access fisheries invite disruptive outsiders with little incentive for sustainable behavior. That is why enduring institutions tend to flow from the community level. Fishing villages recognize the importance of preserving marine resources. Their very livelihoods depend on it.

Long-term stewardship requires stable rights. When decision-makers have solid claims to the benefits of a resource, they will conserve it. David Quammen writes in Song of the Dodo, "For conservation efforts to succeed within human-occupied landscapes, local people must be the proprietors and the managers of those efforts, sharing directly in the tangible benefits." Giving communities or individuals limited rights to fisheries (such as rights to shares of the commercial fishing quota or rights to exclude outisders) provides incentives for long-term stewardship.

Incentives flow from how optimal yield from a fishery is determined and regulated. If optimum yield is simply maximum sustainable yield, then bycatch and overcapitalization result. Other variables like fishing effort, investment, multi-species interactions, regulatory costs, cultural value, recreational fishing, tourism, etc. quickly complicate optimum yield equations. And, because a biologist-dominated NMFS helps define optimum yield, these economic and social values are often neglected. (NMFS employs 1,570 natural scientists, 31 economists, and two anthropologists.) When politics enters the management fray, grappling with such a complex and changing array of variables becomes ever more infeasible.

Politicized managers and scientists will not and cannot know the best, optimum yield of a fishery. A decentralized system where incremental, voluntary decisions and trade-offs are made offers a vastly superior system for coordinating behavior towards the elusive optimum. By limiting access to a fishery to a community dependent upon that fishery, they have a natural incentive to conserve it. There are numerous cases where, despite the imperatives of the commons, communities have structured institutions to promote a conservation ethic. Secure that foreign fishing fleets will not descend upon their fishery, they will tend to exploit it sustainably.

Outsiders with no rights to the benefits of a fishery can still encourage responsible fishing through market incentives. The case of "dolphin-safe" tuna demonstrates how an upwelling of consumer sovereignty reshaped the entire tuna industry. With an overriding incentive to please consumers, industry changed its fishing practices.

The World Wildlife Fund recently seized upon this incentive-based approach to protecting world fisheries with their Marine Stewardship Council initiative. Nongovernmental, nonprofit eco-labelling programs such as theirs have the potential to radically alter industry behavior based on consumer preferences. While certainly not sufficient to bring about sustainable fisheries management at any level, consumers are a necessary part of any fishery -- and exploiting their preferences for environmentally friendly management holds great promise.

Nongovernmental, voluntary efforts are increasingly popular and effective. In the case of salmon fisheries, in the U.S. and especially in Scotland, nongovernmental conservation efforts are widely successful when the stakeholders have stable rights. The success of groups like Trout Unlimited and The Nature Conservancy are testaments to the powerful incentives that private rights can give conservationists. Through volunteer efforts, Trout Unlimited has protected tens of thousands of miles of river. Ownership by independent entities, public or personal, can restore the conservation ethic.

Moving Forward

Fisheries management in the United States and worldwide is in need of a major overhaul. The recent reauthorization of the Magnuson Act did not accomplish that. A serious look at the history of fisheries management reveals more failures than successes. It has become clear that in the U.S., traditional models of fisheries management have fared (at best) only marginally better than the previous system of no management at all. Economic distortions, bitter conflicts, and overfishing run rampant.

Yet it is also clear that some management is needed. But the Magnuson Act's approach, highly centralized ad hoc determination of "optimum yield", is riddled with flaws. Politics aren't going to save fisheries or even encourage their rational exploitation. Federal technocrats and regional politics can't coordinate such vastly complicated systems.

Sustainable management should link the economic health of individuals and "corporate communities" to the biological health of a fishery and protect their exclusive rights of access from external pressures. Market forces and secure, private rights have proven effective tools for sensitive and sensible resource management. ITQs, as a sort of private-property fishing rights, are finding success in New Zealand and some Alaskan fisheries. A fisherman guaranteed indefinite proprietorship of an ocean resource is unlikely to squander it by overfishing. Like responsible farmers and foresters, profit-maximizers would conserve and optimize resources -- not harvest like there is no tomorrow.

Individuals and society will benefit by overcoming the political costs of reform. Fisheries are in dire straits, and new approaches are needed. Without secure rights granted to communities and individuals, our beleaguered fisheries will drown in a tragic tide. The challenge is to develop institutional arrangements that harmonize ecological realities with laws of human behavior.

PATHOLOGIES OF FISHERIES COMMAND-AND-CONTROL

Overfishing: If fishing effort isn't restrained, fishermen may catch fish faster than the fishery can replace. Also, as fish become harder to find, profits vanish and the economic benefit of a fishery disappears (even if biological overfishing doesn't occur).

Overcapitalization: Overinvestment in fishing capacity (bigger vessels, better sonar, larger nets) comes from the race to catch the last fish first.

Subsidies: Worldwide, fishing is a $70-billion a year industry. Subsidies, direct and indirect, to the industry amounted to $54 billion worldwide in 1994.

Derbies: Shortened seasons produce fishing "derbies". Some seasons last only a few hours. Overcapitalized fishermen marshall the best in technology, including satellite, aerial surveillance, and satellites, to their cause. Derbies reduce fish quality because of storage and processing limitations and increase health risks because caution is discouraged.

Cheating: Fishermen play one political boundary off against the other. The jurisdiction with the weakest regulations becomes the most popular -- and the anarchic "high seas" beats them all. Underreporting is pervasive. Poaching is common, especially in the Third World.

Conflict: Fishing precipitated nearly 30 international conflicts in 1994 alone. Recent violence includes nations from Canada to Tunisia, Spain to Thailand.

Bycatch: Incidentally landed, non-target species are generally discarded because of low market value or laws restricting their harvest. Discards rarely survive. Some estimate that a third of the total world catch is discarded.

High-grading: With finite storage space and regulations limiting the number of fish returned to port, many fishermen "high-grade", or throw out less valuable fish.

Complicated rules: In 1980 there were 14 regulations listed in the U.S. Federal Register. In 1994, there were 226. By 1994, there were 417.

For more information on U.S. fisheries, please refer to the Pulitzer-prize winning series:

"Oceans of Trouble: Are the World's Fisheries Doomed?" John McQuaid, Mark Schleifstein, Bob Marshall. 24 March 1996.

The Times-Picayune. Click here to find it online.