Sharing the Fish Toward a National Policy on Individual Fishing Quotas (1999) / Chapter Skim
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1 Introduction
1 Introduction
Pages 13-37
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From page 13... ...
Although there have been several successes in U.S. fisheries management in terms of maintaining or restoring stocks examples include Atlantic striped bass, Pacific halibut, Atlantic surf clam, and North Pacific pollock there have been many serious failures (Parsons, 1996; Botsford et al., 1997; Roberts, 1997a)
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From page 14... ...
Through the Sustainable Fisheries Act of 1996,2 Congress placed a moratorium on the ability of the regional fishery management councils to develop or submit any fishery management plan using IFQs until October 1, 2000. Furthermore, it directed the Secretary of Commerce, acting through the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS)
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From page 15... ...
Eight regional fishery management councils were formed and given responsibility for the development of fishery management plans for fish stocks of significance to commercial and recreational fisheries in each region. The benchmark for federal approval and implementation of these plans was a set of seven national standards (expanded to ten in 1996, including the requirement that the plans prevent overfishing and achieve "optimum yield"; see Appendix D)
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From page 16... ...
For the first time, the amendments make the duty to prevent overfishing an enforceable obligation; they also require attention to marine resources used for noncommercial purposes and the broader ecological context of fisheries. These conservation objectives include the need to avoid or minimize the biological waste associated with fisheries, including reducing bycatch, minimizing the discarding of fish, and reducing adverse impacts of fishing on critical fish habitats.
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From page 17... ...
Provisions Related to Individual Fishing Quotas (see Appendix A) The 1996 amendments did not resolve the debate over IFQs, but they did add a statutory definition of IFQs and a statement of policies concerning any IFQ programs designed or implemented after the end of the moratorium.
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From page 18... ...
303 [diL41~. The North Pacific Fishery Management Council was required to recommend to the Secretary of Commerce by October 1, 1997, that the full amount of these fees be used to guarantee loans for small-vessel fishermen and new entrants to the Alaskan halibut and sablefish IFQ fisheries (Sec.
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From page 19... ...
In this sense, recreational king mackerel fishermen, East Coast longliners, the Gulf of Mexico shrimp fleet, California salmon trollers, and members of organizations such as the Coastal Conservation Association and the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations might be considered fishing communities. The implementation of IFQs creates a new community of interest: those who hold IFQs.
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From page 20... ...
Output controls usually establish a total allowable catch (TAC) for a given fish species and close the fishery once this level is reached.
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From page 21... ...
is used to denote an IFQ program that does not allow transferability. A quota that is allocated for the retention of bycatch rather than for a target species is known as an individual bycatch quota (IBQ)
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From page 24... ...
A particularly striking example of the pace and consequences of the race for fish is reported in Gunderson (1984~. The rapid development and subsequent decline of the Pacific coast fishery for widow rockfish (Sebastes entomelas)
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From page 25... ...
showed that rent seeking occurring in association with IFQ programs could decrease their economic benefits. Upon implementation of IFQs, a portion of the rent develops rapidly through a reduction in redundant vessels, reduced gear loss, and reduced catch discards.
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From page 26... ...
HISTORY OF INDIVIDUAL FISHING QUOTAS6 The concept of IFQs arose in the context of long histories of conflict over limiting access to marine resources and, until recently, an apparent social and legal commitment to the principle of open access. They have been depicted as " .
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From page 27... ...
The public trust doctrine, discussed in Chapter 2, protects public rights in tide-washed lands, navigable rivers, lakes, and their resources. In some areas, it also has been interpreted as justifying the right of the state, or the Crown, to ignore or replace local customary and formal systems of allocating rights.
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From page 28... ...
The new proposal included ideas about "economic rent," basing rights on historical performance, and finding ways to retire excess vessels (Scheiber and Carr, 1997~. At the federal level, fisheries management was being based on the goals of maximum sustainable yield (MSY)
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From page 29... ...
However, the concept of limited entry became an easily understood and more politically acceptable reality as applied to foreign fleets than to domestic fishermen. In Canada and some other countries, domestic management moved in the direction of limited entry as well, guided by economists and others trying to bring the goal of economic efficiency into fisheries management.
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From page 30... ...
fisheries (Royce et al., 1963~. At numerous meetings and in book chapters and journal articles, economists continued their work on an economic theory of fisheries management, focusing on the neoclassical principle of the "nexus between efficiency and the vesting of property rights in marine resources" (Scheiber and Carr, 1997; p.
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From page 31... ...
However, the momentum was in the direction of testing individual quotas in actual fisheries. Beginning in 1976, the herring fishery of the Bay of Fundy region of Atlantic Canada was managed by allocating shares of the annual herring quota to vessels in the industry, the owners of which set up a co-management scheme with the support of the government fisheries agency (Kearney, 1984; Stephenson et al., 1993~.
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From page 32... ...
In the early 1980s like many other nations in the context of expanding fishing jurisdictions the fishing industries and ministries of Australia and New Zealand held exchanges of fishery managers and economists who were developing the idea of IFQs. Similar exchanges among managers, industry people, and economists helped shape the early IFQ programs of Iceland, Norway, and Canada.
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From page 33... ...
The following discussion of the three principal rationales for implementing IFQ management provides an overview of the potential benefits and costs of using this form of management. Economic Efficiency In terms of the national standards contained in the Magnuson-Stevens Act, IFQs could be used as part of a strategy to satisfy the requirement that "conservation and management measures shall, where practicable, consider efficiency in the utilization of fishery resources; except that no such measure shall have economic allocation as its sole purpose" (National Standard 5, Sec.
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From page 34... ...
The IFQ programs evaluated by the committee vary with respect to these features. A confounding factor complicates the economic efficiency arguments: not all components of commercial fishing industries operate according to a common economic logic of firms.
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From page 35... ...
Thus, fishery managers should take into account the kinship sector in designing new management schemes, particularly in fisheries and areas characterized by smallboat fisheries with a long history. Conservation Another rationale given for implementing an IFQ program is the promotion of conservation.
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From page 36... ...
. The general conclusion of a 1990 workshop on the effects of different fishery management schemes on bycatch, "joint catch," and discards was that IFQ programs are no better or worse than other fishery management schemes in relation to these factors (Dewees and Ueber, 1990~.
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From page 37... ...
OUTLINE OF THE REPORT The overall goal of this report is to provide Congress with a comprehensive review and analysis of the use of individual fishing quotas and to recommend national policies on the implementation and use of IFQs, addressing the issues that Congress identified in the Magnuson-Stevens Act (see Appendix A)
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