HANDBOOK OF MARINE FISHERIES CONSERVATION AND MANAGEMENT
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HANDBOOK OF MARINE FISHERIES CONSERVATION AND MANAGEMENT
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HANDBOOK OF MARINE FISHERIES CONSERVATION AND MANAGEMENT
Edited by R. Quentin Grafton Ray Hilborn Dale Squires Maree Tait Meryl J. Williams
1 2010
3
Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further Oxford University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam
Copyright © 2010 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Handbook of marine fisheries conservation and management / edited by R. Quentin Grafton . . . [et al.]. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-19-537028-7 1. Fisheries. 2. Fishes—Conservation. 3. Fishery management. I. Grafton, R. Quentin, 1962– SH331.H27 2010 338.3'727—dc22 2009003976
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
Quentin, Dale, and Meryl are especially grateful for the support and forbearance of Carol-Anne, Ariana, and Brecon; Shirin, Haleh, and Phillip; and Bill Hansen, to whom we dedicate this book.
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Preface
This book has its origins in Canberra in 2006 when Dale visited Quentin on a trip from Malaysia to the United States via Australia. They shared a vision to bring together in a workshop fisheries managers, policy makers, researchers from various disciplines, and key individuals from nongovernmental organizations and international organizations to address the challenges facing the marine environment. As the vision developed, they were joined by Ray and Meryl, and the four of them, with the assistance of Maree Tait, have worked together to edit and put together this unique handbook. Collectively, we as the editors of the handbook set the goal to provide a framework or blueprint for understanding and overcoming the critical determinants of the decline in fisheries, degradation of marine ecosystems, and poor socioeconomic performance of many fishing communities. To help achieve this ambitious goal, we were generously funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and conducted a five-day workshop, chaired by Meryl, at the Rockefeller facilities in Bellagio, Italy. The workshop brought together 23 individuals from a dozen countries with a wide range of expertise and experience. This aim of this group was to provide (1) a framework for understanding the causes of marine ecosystem decline, (2) a set of innovative policy instruments to get the right set of incentives for fishers and other stakeholders,
and (3) a plan of action, especially for developing countries and their vulnerable fishing communities, to avoid past management mistakes. Some of the vision at Bellagio has been realized in a joint journal publication by the Bellagio attendees and several other individual and joint papers at professional conferences since Bellagio. However, even before the workshop concluded, it was agreed that that the scope of the marine challenges could not possibly be covered in one, or even several articles. Fortunately, while still at Bellagio, Quentin and Dale were able to connect to Peter Prescott of Oxford University Press, who was visiting the facility as a scholar in residence. Peter immediately recognized the importance of the workshop and provided key support to us to realize the vision that has culminated in this handbook. Going far beyond the original Bellagio workshop participants, we sought contributions from the world’s leading marine researchers and practitioners. Although no single book can address every issue, the end result is the most comprehensive and interdisciplinary work on marine conservation and fisheries management ever written. An outstanding feature of the book is the detailed case studies on conservation practice and fisheries management from around the world. These case studies are combined with nine “foundation” chapters that provide an overview of the state of the marine world and many innovative and far-reaching perspectives
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about how we can move forward to face present and future challenges. Whether you are student wanting to learn about the many problems in marine conservation and fisheries management, or a practitioner seeking
solutions, this handbook has a great deal to offer. We believe that, collectively, the handbook’s many valuable contributions offer a way forward to both understanding and resolving the multifaceted problems facing the world’s oceans.
Acknowledgments
This book was made possible through the many valuable contributions of the chapter authors. To them, as editors, we owe our greatest appreciation. We also acknowledge all those who depend on the world’s marine fisheries, to those who take on the responsibility from their communities and governments to help conserve and manage the resources, and to our fisheries colleagues in many countries for their commitment to understanding and finding solutions to the improved management of our oceans and fisheries. We offer our special thanks to those people whose names do not appear in the book as either an editor or author but who nevertheless greatly assisted us in its completion. We thank especially Noel Chan and Sally Carlin for providing help well beyond the call of duty to keep track of the deliveries of chapters and the long review process. We are also grateful for the assistance of Hayley Thorpe, Ben Grono, and Tamara Perry, who, at the very end and at short notice, helped us to edit the many chapters to ensure the consistency required by the publisher. Our thanks also go to Peter Prescott and Tisse Takagi at Oxford University Press. We are especially
grateful for Peter’s support for our vision. His enthusiasm allowed us to “think big” and helped us to make the handbook such a unique collection. Dale Squires is grateful to the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service for supporting the research and generously providing time to work on the book. Dale in his capacity as a visiting fellow, and Quentin and Maree, who are based at the Crawford School of Economics Government at the Australian National University, are especially grateful to the school’s director, Andrew MacIntyre, for his support. Finally, we wish to acknowledge the early support of the Rockefeller Foundation, which funded the February 2007 Conference on the Bellagio Blueprint for Sustaining Global Fisheries. That conference, held at the beautiful Bellagio Center on Lake Como, Italy, was the genesis of the concept for this edited volume. With one exception, all of the attendees at the Bellagio Conference are also authors of one or more of the papers herein. Their contribution has been greatly added to by the many contributors to the book who did not attend the Bellagio conference.
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Contents
I Overview
1. Marine Conservation and Fisheries Management: At the Crossroads 3 R. Quentin Grafton, Ray Hilborn, Dale Squires, and Meryl J. Williams 2. Economic Trends in Global Marine Fisheries Rolf Willmann and Kieran Kelleher
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3. Biodiversity, Function, and Interconnectedness: A Revolution in Our Understanding of Marine Ecosystems and Ocean Conservation 43 Wallace J. Nichols, Jeffrey A. Seminoff, and Peter Etnoyer 4. Aquaculture: Production and Markets Frank Asche and Trond Bjørndal
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5. Gender Dimensions in Fisheries Management Meryl J. Williams
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6. Governance, Science, and Society: The Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries Serge Michel Garcia 7. A Review of Fisheries Subsidies: Quantification, Impacts, and Reform Anthony Cox and U. Rashid Sumaila 8. World Fish Markets 113 James L. Anderson, Frank Asche, and Sigbjørn Tveterås 9. Climate Change and Fisheries Management Keith Brander
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87 99
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II Ecosystem Conservation and Fisheries Management
10. Conservation of Biodiversity and Fisheries Management Jake Rice and Lorraine (Lori) Ridgeway
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11. Minimizing Bycatch of Sensitive Species Groups in Marine Capture Fisheries: Lessons from Tuna Fisheries 150 Eric L. Gilman and Carl Gustaf Lundin 12. One Fish, Two Fish, IUU, and No Fish: Unreported Fishing Worldwide 165 Kaija Metuzals, Rachel Baird, Tony Pitcher, U. Rashid Sumaila, and Pramod Ganapathiraju 13. Ecosystem Modeling and Fisheries Management Anthony D.M. Smith and Elizabeth A. Fulton
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14. Conservation of the Leatherback Sea Turtle in the Pacific Peter H. Dutton, Heidi Gjertsen, and Dale Squires
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15. Conservation of the Vaquita (Phocoena sinus) in the Northern Gulf of California, Mexico 205 Jay Barlow, Lorenzo Rojas-Bracho, Carlos Muñoz-Piña, and Sarah Mesnick 16. Conservation of Cold-Water Coral Reefs in Norway Jan Helge Fosså and Hein Rune Skjoldal
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17. Conservation Investments and Mitigation: The California Drift Gillnet Fishery and Pacific Sea Turtles 231 Chuck Janisse, Dale Squires, Jeffrey A. Seminoff, and Peter H. Dutton
III Case Studies in Governance
18. Southeast Asian Fisheries 243 Meryl J. Williams and Derek Staples 19. West African Coastal Capture Fisheries Benedict P. Satia and Alhaji M. Jallow
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20. Coastal Fisheries in India: Current Scenario, Contradictions, and Community Responses 274 D. Nandakumar and Nalini Nayak 21. Japanese Coastal Fisheries Mitsutaku Makino
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22. Property Rights in Icelandic Fisheries 299 Thorolfur Matthiasson and Sveinn Agnarsson 23. Economic Instruments in OECD Fisheries: Issues and Implementation Lorraine (Lori) Ridgeway and Carl-Christian Schmidt 24. The Chilean Experience with Territorial Use Rights in Fisheries 324 Gustavo San Martín, Ana M. Parma, and J.M. (Lobo) Orensanz 25. Australia’s Commonwealth-Managed Fisheries Richard McLoughlin and Nick Rayns
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26. Evolving Governance in New Zealand Fisheries Robin Connor and Bruce Shallard 27. Norwegian Fisheries Management Stein Ivar Steinshamn
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28. Fisheries Management in the United Kingdom Sean Pascoe and Diana Tingley 29. Governance of Fisheries in the United States Daniel S. Holland
370 382
30. Canadian Marine Fisheries Management: A Case Study L. Scott Parsons
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31. Shared Rules for a Shared Sea: Multilevel Fisheries Governance in Italian Fisheries Management 415 Massimo Spagnolo 32. Red Sea and Gulfs Fisheries 426 Elie Moussalli and Izzat H. Feidi 33. The Challenge of Fisheries Governance after UNFSA: The Case of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission 443 Hannah Parris, Andrew Wright, and Ian Cartwright 34. Salmon Fisheries of British Columbia 458 Diane P. Dupont and Harry W. Nelson 35. European Union Fisheries Management Hans Frost
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36. International Organizations and Fisheries Governance Lorraine (Lori) Ridgeway and Jake Rice
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IV Policy Instruments and Perspectives
37. Fisheries Buybacks 507 Dale Squires, Theodore Groves, R. Quentin Grafton, Rita Curtis, James Joseph, and Robin Allen 38. Corporate Governance of Jointly Owned Fisheries Rights Ralph E. Townsend
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39. Managing Small-Scale Fisheries: Moving Toward People-Centered Perspectives Patrick McConney and Anthony Charles 40. Measuring and Managing Fishing Capacity John Walden, James Kirkley, and Rolf Färe
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41. Strategic Behavior in Fisheries 556 Lone Grønbæk Kronbak and Marko Lindroos 42. Principal-Agent Problems in Fisheries Niels Vestergaard
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43. Allocation Issues in Rights-Based Management of Fisheries: Lessons from Other Resources 572 Gary D. Libecap
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44. Harvest Control Rules and Fisheries Management André E. Punt
582
45. Complexities in Fisheries Management: Misperceptions and Communication Erling Moxnes
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46. Seafood Ecolabeling 608 Trevor Ward and Bruce Phillips 47. Can Voluntary Programs Reduce Sea Turtle Bycatch? Insights from the Literature in Environmental Economics 618 Kathleen Segerson 48. Fisheries Management Science 630 Robert L. Stephenson and Daniel E. Lane 49. Challenges in Marine Capture Fisheries Colin W. Clark
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50. The 1982 U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea and Beyond: The Next 25 Years Gordon R. Munro
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51. Bioeconomic Modeling of Marine Reserves with Environmental Uncertainty 659 Tom Kompas, R. Quentin Grafton, Pham Van Ha, Nhu Che, and Long Chu 52. Privatization of the Oceans Rögnvaldur Hannesson
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53. Fisheries Co-management: Improving Fisheries Governance through Stakeholder Participation 675 Svein Jentoft, Bonnie J. McCay, and Douglas Clyde Wilson 54. Stakeholder Involvement in Fisheries Management in Australia and New Zealand Alistair McIlgorm and Daryl R. Sykes 55. Managing World Tuna Fisheries with Emphasis on Rights-Based Management Robin Allen, James Joseph, and Dale Squires 56. Research Priorities for Marine Fisheries Conservation and Management John Annala and Steve Eayrs
Contributors Index 741
725
713
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I
OVERVIEW
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1 Marine Conservation and Fisheries Management: At the Crossroads R. QUENTIN GRAFTON RAY HILBORN DALE SQUIRES MERYL J. WILLIAMS
consume (FAO 2006). However, many of the highly valued aquaculture species depend on fish protein from capture fisheries to provide the bulk of their feed. Until alternative feeds are readily available, the ability of farmed fish to replace wild harvest will be constrained by the state and productivity of the world’s oceans. Given that the world’s population is expected to rise a further 2 billion this century, this is a major concern, especially as fish provide upwards of 15.5 percent of the animal protein intake by humanity (FAO 2007), and almost the entire animal protein consumed in many poor and fishing-dependent communities. The potential for decline in marine capture fisheries also poses major dilemmas for the 200 million or so fishers and others employed in fish supply chains that, along with their families, depend directly on them for their livelihood. Managing fish stocks and conserving the marine environment on which these communities depend represent the greatest human challenge facing ocean management. This challenge will not be solved by a “one-size-fits-all” approach and will require tailor-made solutions that account for the prevailing institutions and hierarchies, resilience of ecosystems, the multiple private and public benefits, and the distribution of benefits across stakeholders. The difficulties of managing fisheries extend well beyond concerns about overfishing and include environmental, ecological, and biodiversity considerations (Grafton et al. 2008; Squires
1.1. INTRODUCTION Marine fisheries conservation that involves both the biological and physical conservation of oceans habitats and ecosystems, and fisheries management that focuses on harvested species, are at a proverbial cross-road. The past fifty years has seen a massive expansion in fishing capacity that has overexploited many fisheries1 to the point that reducing fishing would increase overall profits from harvesting (Grafton et al. 2007), perhaps by as much as US$50 billion (109) per year (World Bank 2008). About a quarter of the world fisheries are also overexploited in the biological sense that current harvests are less than what they could be if fishing effort were reduced and stocks were allowed to increase (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations [FAO] 2005; Hilborn et al. 2003). Fishing has also changed the age structure and stability of fish populations (Anderson et al. 2008) and the trophic level of exploited species (Pauly et al. 1998) and has altered the species composition of fish communities (e.g., Silvestre et al. 2003), and destructive fishing has damaged marine ecosystems. The impact of these changes over recent decades is evident. The world harvest of capture fisheries reached a plateau in the early 1990s at about 85 million metric tons (see figure 1.1), and much of the future supply of fish will come largely from aquaculture (Delgado et al. 2003). Aquaculture already supplies about half of the fish people directly 3
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Overview Reported Global Marine Capture Production 1950–2006 120
Million tons
100 80 60 40 20 0
FIGURE 1.1 Global marine fisheries catch (1950–2006). (Data from FAO Fish Stat “Capture Production,” www.fao.org/fishery/statistics/software/fishst)
2009). Overlaying these challenges is international trade that allows high-income nations to potentially export their marine conservation problems to other, often lower-income nations while importing their fish to consume. A key issue is how to develop the appropriate mix of private benefits (that accrue solely to their user) from fishing with the environmental, ecological, and public good benefits (that are available to all and are nonrivalrous) aspects of the marine environment to achieve the most socially desirable outcome. This requires design mechanisms to elicit public preferences for the public goods that, unlike private goods, do not have commercial values and are not traded on markets. Developing such mechanisms are made more difficult with transboundary resources and ecosystems and when accounting for international trade. When public goods exist, all countries enjoy their benefits whether they contributed to their supply or not (Barrett 2007). Although public goods are to be desired, they are often underprovided, underprotected, and underconserved. This is because clear incentives exist to catch a “free ride” from the efforts of others, contributing to their undersupply. The “free-rider” problem is more difficult with “global” public goods that are enjoyed universally, or by many nations. Insufficient scientific knowledge and public understanding of the contributions made to social welfare and ecosystem functioning and biodiversity of these public goods also contribute to their underprovision. In an increasingly interconnected world, conservation and management issues extend beyond the boundaries of a single nation, including the
high seas. Conservation and management issues of transboundary resources face an additional issue: how to achieve the cooperation of multiple nations when each country wishes to preserve its own sovereignty and freedom of action. Such cooperation must also be self-enforcing because there is no supranational authority, or world government, to provide enforcement (Barrett 2003). The challenges of overfishing and conservation are exacerbated by global dilemmas such as climate change (see chapter 9). Acidification of the world’s oceans, rising sea levels, changes in salinity and water temperature, and increased variability of ocean currents associated with climate change all represent risks that must be effectively managed to ensure the sustainability of the world’s fisheries. In all likelihood, effective mitigation on anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases is decades away (Anderson and Bows 2008), so we must prepare for and adapt to an increasingly uncertain ocean environment. The best way to face these global challenges is to resolve present-day problems that have remedies. To change what can be changed, to understand how we arrived at the current state of the marine environment, to comprehend the importance of fisheries to coastal communities, to appreciate the constraints that prevent us from moving forward (and how they can be overcome), and to present innovative ideas and thinking on marine conservation and fisheries management are the goals of this handbook. It brings together a comprehensive and multidisciplinary perspective of the world’s marine fisheries and their conservation. Without such a
Marine Conservation and Fisheries Management: At the Crossroads perspective, it is impossible to resolve the complex problems that beset our ocean world. Part I of the handbook provides overviews of the key issues: economic trends in world fisheries, biodiversity of marine ecosystems, aquaculture, gender dimensions of fisheries, governance and the ecosystem approach to fisheries, subsidies, world fish markets, and climate change and fisheries. They provide the foundation for understanding the key global trends in marine conservation. Part II includes detailed case studies of marine conservation and implications for fisheries management. Part III presents case studies in fisheries governance, which seek to answer the following questions: What are the key challenges in management? What can be done to improve outcomes? And what are the constraints (institutional, economic, etc.) that may be preventing managers from achieving these goals? The case studies provide the practical insights needed to put in place management that promotes sustainable fisheries and good governance. Last, part IV of the handbook is a compendium of perspectives from some of the leading thinkers in global marine conservation and management about how to change current practices for the better. Despite their importance, we unapologetically do not examine what we call the “terrestrial drivers” of marine ecosystem decline. The key drivers that, in part, come from a growing world population include the intentional discharges of pollutants, the unplanned run-off of sediments and nutrients from land-based activities, habitat damage from coastal development, and the diversion of freshwater from streams and rivers that compromises the health of estuaries. By focusing on the “marine drivers,” we believe we offer a guide to both understand and resolve those problems that can be “fixed” by those working in the marine environment. The myriad of problems that spill over from the terrestrial to the marine environment are no less important, but they are beyond the boundaries of what we consider to be an already ambitious goal—to provide the definitive guide to marine conservation and fisheries management. It is our view that, collectively, the 56 chapters in this volume provide the ideas to understand both where we have come from and where we should be going in terms of marine fisheries conservation and management. It is our fervent hope that this work will be the guide to many practitioners and others
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who, like ourselves, want our oceans to sustainably provide for our planet, today, and into the future.
1.2. THE NATURE OF FISHERIES Marine fisheries exist in hugely different habitats that range from polar seas to tropical coral reefs. Some fished species are sedentary, at least in their adult forms, such a shellfish, while others migrate thousands of kilometers every year, as with some species of tuna. Even finfish exhibit large differences in their biology and life histories, as well as being caught and consumed in a great variety of ways. Demersal species, such as cod and snapper, are caught close to the seafloor. Such species are frequently harvested using trawl gear with nets towed behind vessels. Pelagic species, such as salmon, tuna, and sardines, are found in midwater and near the surface and can be caught using purse seines that “scoop” schools of fish from underneath, by baited hooks and lines, and also by towed and set nets. Some fish species are very important for recreational purposes (e.g., salmon, rockfish, snapper, marlin, and other big game fish), while many species are harvested primarily to sell to others. Even for traded fish, the fishers who exploit them operate in a great variety of ways. In poorer countries, fishers harvest not only to sell their catch but also to feed their families directly, while in many countries much of the fishing is undertaken as part of a business and operated with modern technology and as a modern commercial activity with a high rate of international trading. Although almost all fishing activity is “targeted” such that fishers wish to catch a particular set of species with certain characteristics, other fish, mammals, invertebrates, and even reptiles may also be caught in fishing gear. The unintentional harvest is called bycatch and that includes many species that have a high rate of mortality when returned to the sea. The quantities of the various types of bycatch are often left unrecorded, making the management of incidental catch a particularly difficult challenge. Today most of the world’s capture fisheries are located in the 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zones (EEZs) established by the United National Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) that was signed in 1982 and became international law in 1994 (Churchill and Lowe 1999). This has given nation states property rights over the harvesting
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Overview
of the fish in their nearby waters. Although some countries, such as Iceland and New Zealand, have used these acquired powers to rationalize their fishing industry to increase profitability, not all countries have made this choice. Some have used the opportunity to displace foreign fishing by their own nationals and provided large subsidies to expand their domestic industry and increase domestic employment. Unfortunately, this has led to overexploitation in many fisheries. Despite UNCLOS and the 1995 United Nations Agreement for the Conservation and Management of Straddling Fish Stocks and Highly Migratory Fish Stocks, highseas fisheries still remain mainly outside of national jurisdictions. Fortunately, in some of these fisheries there is a degree of national control as a number of species in some locations cannot be profitably harvested unless access is also provided to coastal EEZs and ports for ship servicing and landing of product. For highly migratory fisheries, especially tunas, management is also shared between coastal states and distant-water fishing nations in what are called regional fisheries management organizations, which provide a form of collective management over the stocks (see chapter 55). The world’s marine fisheries catch is made by large-scale commercial mechanized operations in both developed and developing countries and by many small-scale operators mainly in developing countries. Most of the world’s fishers are employed or self-employed in artisanal and smaller scale fisheries (FAO 2007). The incomes of fishing operations cover a huge range. Large, purse seine vessels in tuna fisheries can generate millions of dollars in earnings annually, while a small wooden-hulled vessel using hand lines may be lucky to harvest a few hundred dollars worth of fish per year. Within many countries, there are both industrialized fleets and small-scale artisanal fishers. This contrast between the “haves” and “have nots” is reflected by conflicts between small fishers and larger scale operators in some parts of the world. These “fish wars” are symptomatic of overuse and misuse of resources and a lack of accepted and enforceable property rights over the oceans and catches. The many differences across fisheries, fish stocks, and their habitats, however, obscure the commonalities across the world’s oceans. Four key traits shared by almost all fisheries in terms of their characteristics, and why many fisheries are overexploited, offer insights into the way forward to implement effective marine conservation.
1.2.1. Fisheries as Common-Pool Resources Fish stocks are common-pool resources where (1) catches are rivalrous, and (2) it is costly to effectively control the access and the harvest from them (Grafton et al. 2004). The first characteristic means that fishing by one person reduces the catch available to others. In the absence of property rights over the right to catch fish and effective control of fishing effort, this means that individual fishers will catch too many fish because they will fail to consider the costs they impose on others from their own actions. This is not because fishers do not care about sustainability of the stocks on which they depend, but because conservation efforts by any one individual will simply end up benefiting someone else in the absence of effective collective management and control. The second characteristic of a common-pool resource is that it is difficult and expensive to control or limit fishing effort by centralized governments or international bodies. This is because harvesting occurs at sea, often by many different individuals. In contrast to terrestrial environments, fishers are difficult to monitor and fisheries regulations are difficult to enforce. The complexity is compounded with transnational fisheries and highly migratory species when harvesting takes place by individuals from many different nations. Adequate observer program, and other means, to see what, when, and where fish are caught are affordable only in highvalue fisheries. In the absence of such coverage, managers must infer what is happening at sea. The difficulty in implementing adequate monitoring, control, and surveillance is one reason that in many fisheries the incentives do not exist for fishers to behave in a way that promotes both their own individual long-term interest and the sustainability of the resource. This problem is compounded for highly migratory and transboundary species such as tunas, swordfish, sea turtles, sea birds, dolphins, and whales. In such cases, self-enforcing agreements and cooperation among nations are required because of the absence of an enforcing supranational authority.
1.2.2. Fisheries in an Uncertain World The second important feature of fisheries is that their populations are subject to large, and
Marine Conservation and Fisheries Management: At the Crossroads sometimes unforeseen, fluctuations. For example, ocean currents may shift direction in one year that result in the collapse of populations that depend on the nutrients that these currents provide. The difficulties and costs of continuously monitoring the marine environment, and the complex interactions across species in marine ecosystems, present challenges in measuring current stocks. These difficulties are compounded when predicting future levels of fish stocks. The existence of numerous genetic substocks of a species and multiple year classes of fish, the numbers of which vary from year to year, create further complexity in fish stock abundance and behavior. In other words, there are inherent uncertainties in marine capture fisheries that will never be overcome (Ludwig et al. 1993), and much of the fluctuations in fish stocks are results of environmental changes over which we have no control. Thus, effective management of fisheries requires explicit recognition of these uncertainties. This not only demands “robust” methods of management that offer a degree of control under different conditions but also makes resilience, or the ability of marine ecosystems to “bounce back” in response to negative shocks, an important goal of fisheries management. Uncertainty about the current and future state of fisheries and the marine environment requires management approaches that can formulate different actions for different scenarios. This is a form of “management strategy evaluation” (see chapters 13 and 44) that was originally developed to assess the consequences of different harvest strategies on whale populations in the absence of adequate information on the levels of catches and stocks (Kirkwood 1993). Unfortunately, many fisheries managers, whether in national government agencies or locally based, lack the capacity and resources to fully model and consider a full range of scenarios and different states. In these situations, and as an alternative, knowledgeable stakeholders can be recruited to provide ongoing information on sustainability of stocks and habitat, while community and traditional management structures can be supported to limit fishing effort on vulnerable locations and species (for an example for sea cucumber fisheries, see Friedman et al. 2008). Although modeling is helpful to fisheries managers, it is not a prerequisite to implement adaptive management that can be described as a situation whereby managers have quantifiable goals and objectives, monitor outcomes as best they can
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and, where necessary, both learn and adapt their strategies depending on the states of the world (Walters and Hilborn 1976). Given the prevailing uncertainties, adaptive management is necessary for successful marine conservation in the long run because simply setting regulations on “auto pilot” and hoping for the best cannot be the best strategy in every state of the world.
1.2.3. Fishers before Fish As incongruous as it seems, putting fish before fishers has contributed to the current problems of overfishing (Larkin 1978). This is because many regulations and approaches to management are first designed around achieving levels of fishing mortality with little consideration as to how these levels of harvest can realistically be achieved. For example, managers may restrict the number of fishing vessels allowed into a fishery. However, in the absence of controls on these vessels, fishing effort will continue to expand if it is profitable to do so. Subsequently, managers may also limit the length of vessels permitted to fish, but as long as fishers find it in their financial interest, they will substitute to other inputs (Squires 1987; Wilen 1979), such as increasing the width or volume of their vessels or switching to gear that is unregulated (Kompas et al. 2004). In other words, a failure to understand the incentives of fishers and appreciate how fishers respond to regulations will likely lead to poor outcomes in terms of marine conservation (Hilborn et al. 2005). An alternative to a top-down approach to fisheries starts with understanding fishers, the most important all predators. It recognizes that approaches that help to ensure that the individual incentives of fishers coincide with the overall interests of the fishery will be much more successful than approaches that force fishers to act in ways that are contrary to their interests (Grafton et al. 2006). These incentives-based approaches share a common feature: they allow fishers, either individually or collectively, to have “catch shares” or rights over particular fishing locations. By providing fishers with the long-term incentive to conserve fish stocks, managers can change the dynamic of fishing behavior from one of racing to catch the fish before someone else, to one of minimizing harvesting costs and protecting the future returns from fishing. Part of this bottom-up process recognizes preexisting fisher institutions and community property
8
Overview
rights, that is, recognizes customary marine tenure. Considerable insights have already been gained into the conditions for successful collection customary fishery conservation and management (Baland and Platteau 1996; Cinner 2005; Ruddle 1994). We know, for instance, that common property and customary management institutions are not always resilient to the expansion of market forces, technical change, and integration into modern states and forms of property. Practical and conceptual differences between customary and contemporary conservation and management have often led to failed attempts to hybridize modern and customary conservation and management (Cinner and Aswani 2007). When the differences between these approaches are understood and acknowledged, there is the potential to develop adaptive management systems that are highly flexible, are able to conserve resources, and promote community goals.
1.2.4. Fishing, Fisheries, and Marine Ecosystems Fish stocks are part of marine ecosystems. These ecosystems are complex and involve a myriad of interactions across species. Some of these interactions are direct in that big fish eat small fish and are part of the many food webs linking phytoplankton up to the largest predators. Fishing often targets only a few components of ecosystems, primarily, but not exclusively, the larger predators. This affects not only the targeted species but also, through the complex interactions across species and their habitats, influences other parts of the marine environment. Recognition of the impacts of fishing on marine ecosystems has led to the development of ecosystem approaches to fisheries management (Garcia et al. 2003; Pikitch et al. 2004). Such approaches take a broader perspective that goes beyond the sustainability of targeted fish stocks and tries to account for the overall ecosystem health. These approaches are precautionary and seek to promote resilience of ecosystems and the sustainability of fisheries. The ecosystem approach is in contrast to what has been viewed as a “single-species management” whereby fishing on specific target species is regulated with little consideration of the effects of harvesting on other species or habitats. The challenge with ecosystem approaches is to understand the species interactions well enough to improve on existing practice, and then to translate
this understanding into management strategies that result in better outcomes. This is a difficult enough task in rich countries with strong research capacity and well-developed management. It is impossible in the national fisheries of many developing countries, where even single-species management is not done effectively. This suggests that bottomup approaches that provide incentives for fishers to sustain marine ecosystems, and not just the fish on which their livelihood depend, will be critical to achieving the worthy goals of the ecosystem approach to fisheries.
1.3. A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE To better understand the nature of fisheries, and also to have a richer appreciation of where we are going in marine conservation and fisheries management, it is instructive to briefly the review the history of exploitation of three very different marine fisheries: commercial pelagic whaling, the cod in the northeastern Atlantic, and the mixed species and mixed scale fisheries of Kerala on the southwest coast of India.
1.3.1. Exploitation and Conservation of Whales The history of the exploitation of cetaceans provides sobering lessons of the consequences of overharvesting, but also the potential to turn around a seemingly hopeless situation and to successfully conserve rare and endangered species. Whales have been harvested for many centuries in coastal waters. In some locations substocks were extirpated even before the industrial revolution. However, it was only at the end of the 18th and the early 19th century that improvements in navigation, cartography, and shipbuilding allowed whalers to “go global” and actively hunt whales in almost all of the world’s oceans. These whaling operations are staggering in their scope even from the perspective of the 21st century, with voyages of three to four years’ duration. Such trips were made, despite the considerable physical risks, because of the potentially large financial rewards available to whalers from the sale of whale oil that, until the mid-19th century, had very few substitutes. The high returns available to those fortunate to return home fully laden with whale oil encouraged
Marine Conservation and Fisheries Management: At the Crossroads a virtual feeding frenzy of whaling activity. As the coastal stocks disappeared in European and North American waters, whalers searched farther afield to Arctic waters and the Pacific and Indian Oceans. By the time Charles Darwin arrived in the Galapagos Islands in 1835, whalers were already using it as a base for their operations in the Pacific, and there were many hundreds, if not thousands, of whaling vessels operating all over the world (Roberts 2007). Declining stocks in one location prompted further exploration in other areas and a shift to species that were less valuable or more difficult to catch. The more valuable, slower moving species closest to the home ports of the whalers were the most vulnerable. Consequently, some species such as the Atlantic gray whale were hunted to extinction. Although whalers recorded their concerns for the viability of the stocks on which they depended, they lacked the means to conserve whales. No one owned the whales until they were harpooned. Any whale left by one vessel was likely to be taken by another. This open access led to overexploitation as whalers lacked both the legal means and the capacity to limit the total harvest. Any whalers tempted to reduce their own harvest and conserve the stocks for the future would have realized that their conservation would simply end up benefiting others. Modern industrial whaling using steam-powered and later diesel-powered vessels allowed whalers to catch hitherto unavailable species that were too fast to be caught by sailing ships and rowing boats. Larger vessels also enabled whalers to harvest their prey in their last refuge—the waters of the Antarctic. The shift to onboard rather than land-based processing created pelagic whaling by giving even greater freedom of movement to follow whales and harvest in previously inaccessible waters. Modern harpoon cannons dramatically increased the destructive power and reduced the physical risks to whalers. Whalers progressively decimated whale species, beginning with the largest-sized species, then harvesting the next largest, and so forth (with progressively increasing costs and lower oil content), leaving only smaller species such as minke whales (Baleanoptera acustorostrata) with relatively intact populations. As early as 1928, scientists at the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea voiced their concern about the overharvesting of whales in the Antarctic. This common concern led to the 1931 Convention on the Regulation of Whaling, which was the forerunner of the International Whaling
9
Convention (IWC). In 1945 a limit was placed on whale harvesting defined in terms of blue-whale units and set at a maximum of 16,000. The global limit was subsequently reduced, falling to 14,500 in 1955 in response to concern over the sustainability of the stocks, but then was raised to 15,000 to avoid some countries leaving the IWC altogether. Continuing declines in the stocks, however, forced further reductions in the overall IWC quota. It eventually fell to 2,300 units in 1971. By this time, commercial Antarctic whaling was probably no longer profitable. In 1982, after many years of negotiations, the three-quarters majority of the IWC needed to impose an indefinite suspension on all commercial whaling was achieved despite objections from Norway, Japan, and the USSR, although Japan and the USSR subsequently withdrew their objections, leaving them legally obliged to follow the moratorium (Gillespie 2005). Although international whaling agreements undoubtedly contributed to the current stable stock levels, market forces leading to reduced catch were already in place well before the agreements took hold (Schneider and Pearse 2004). Catches were, in part, destined to decline as whale products ceased to be commercially attractive on a large scale. Since the moratorium on commercial whaling, “scientific” whaling has occurred. Many of the targeted whales for scientific purposes are minke whales. Since the commercial moratorium was instituted in 1982, the cumulative catch of all whales has been upwards of 30,000. Fortunately, rare and endangered whale species, such as blue whales (Baleanoptera musculus), have been left to recover free from both commercial and scientific whaling. The IWC declared the Indian and Southern oceans to be sanctuaries. The past two decades has also seen a shift in the value afforded to whales. Where once whales had worth only in terms of their commercial value, there are now important nonconsumptive use values for whales. In 1999, some 9 million people were recorded as whale watching, which generated sales in excess of $US 1 billion, and the numbers are growing at more than 10 percent per year (Hoyt 2001). Additional nonuse values from whales include their existence value to people from simply knowing they are alive and exist in the world’s oceans. The trend of increasing recreational and nonuse values also exists for other species and marine habitats, creating mixed goods or impure public goods, combining private and public consumption and market and nonmarket values. This
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poses an important challenge to traditional fisheries management that has focused on regulating the commercial harvest from the marine environment.
1.3.2. Northern Cod Fishery The groundfish fisheries of Atlantic Canada, and in particular the northern cod fishery (Gadus morhua) of Labrador and Newfoundland, were for centuries one of the world’s most important. Shortly after John Cabot laid claim to Newfoundland in 1497 in the name of the King of England, reports of vast numbers of fish attracted the attentions of fishers from Spain, Portugal, France, and Britain. Cod was either salted on board or dried on land and provided the main meal on Fridays for Roman Catholic Europe. By the mid 1700s, the total catch averaged more than 50,000 metric tons per year (Cushing 1988). Although the largest fishery in the world by this time, the northern cod fishery was able to withstand much greater levels of fishing. Harvesting remained sustainable up to the 1950s, when large trawlers begin arriving. By contrast to the Canadian fishers, who were mainly small scale and who undertook their fishing in the summer months inshore, the large foreign-owned trawlers were able to harvest cod offshore in winter months. Catches increased dramatically, to a peak of at least 810,000 metric tons in 1968. Unable to withstand this increased fishing pressure, the stocks declined from a high of about three million metric tons. The harvest fell correspondingly, reaching 173,000 metric tons in 1977, while the stock was a quarter of its former size a decade earlier (Grafton et al. 2000). Following Canada’s declaration of a 200-nautical-mile EEZ, foreign fishing pressure was reduced dramatically. The lower catches allowed the northern cod stock to more than double in size between 1977 and 1984. Unfortunately, Canadian governments viewed the fishery as an underdeveloped resource and provided subsidies and grants to assist in the growth of a Canadian-owned trawler fleet. By 1987, inshore fishers were raising concerns about the excessive level of harvesting, although at this stage, some scientists could not support this claim because their models at the time incorrectly overestimated the stocks. As a result, catches were set at too high a level, but when scientists did provide evidence of sharp declines in the stocks, the total harvest was still set at too high a level. This is because successive fishery ministers instituted
a harvesting rule that reduced catches by a lesser amount than that recommended by scientists so as to avoid increasing unemployment in fishingdependent communities. By 1991, the situation was critical and in the summer of 1992 a harvesting moratorium was declared as the stocks collapsed. At the end of the first decade of the 21st century, the northern cod stocks still remain at a fraction of their previous depleted level in the 1980s. The costs to the fishers and their communities have been enormous despite billions of dollars in transfers from the federal government of Canada under the guises of various “adjustment” packages. Equally important, it appears that past overexploitation has helped shift the ecosystem into a different state that may have prevented a recovery of cod stocks despite very little fishing since 1992. The northern cod fishery provides important lessons about fisheries management. First is the importance of acting in a precautionary way and the need to reduce catches when stocks reach their limit reference points beyond which urgent action is required to avoid going beyond critical thresholds. Second is the recklessness and wastefulness of subsidizing fishers to catch fish from a common-pool resource. Third, many fishers lacked individual or collective property rights over the right to catch and thus had no assurance that reductions in catches today would benefit them in the future, should the stocks recover. Consequently, at least among fishers who were able to maintain their catches, there was little support for reducing current harvests even when evidence was presented that the stock was being exploited unsustainably.
1.3.3. Kerala Fisheries in India: Many Species, Mixed Fishing Scales In India, Kerala State has the second largest number, after Tamil Nadu, of fishers and fisheries-dependent households and workers, reporting 140,000 active fishers, 602,000 total “fisherfolk population,” and 29,000 fishing craft of all sizes (Government of India 2006). According to the Kerala state government, 61 percent of fishers live below the poverty line (www.fisheries.kerala.gov.in/faq.htm). In 2006, 22 percent of the total Indian marine catch was landed in Kerala (www.cmfri.org.in/html/cmfriDATA01.html). The nutrient-enriched coastal fisheries of Kerala extend from the inland tidal lagoons and backwaters
Marine Conservation and Fisheries Management: At the Crossroads at the foot of the Western Ghats mountains to mangrove, sandy beach, and rocky coasts out to the limits of the Indian EEZ. The fisheries resources abundance of Kerala have been noted in historical documents from at least the first through fourth centuries a.d., and over at least three thousand years, people from many different cultures visited, inhabited, and made their contributions to Kerala society and therefore to the exploitation of its fisheries (Kurien 2000). The seasonal composition of fish assemblages and their abundance are driven by seasonally reversing wind patterns, namely, the northeast (November to March) and southwest (May to September) monsoon seasons, upwellings, and ocean productivity. During the southwest monsoon, a unique feature is the extensive alongshore suspended mudbanks, which create calm and productive waters (Vivekanandan et al. 2003a), locally called chakara (Kurien 2000). Fish landings are highest during the southwest monsoon and in the postmonsoon season (collectively, May to December). Most fishing occurs within the 70-m depth contour (Vivekanandan et al. 2003a). More of the landings are from pelagic species (59 percent) than from demersal species (23 percent); crustaceans and mollusks make up the balance. Shifts in species of demersal fish landed occurred during the 30 years from 1970 to 2000, with catfishes, goatfishes, rays, threadfins, silverbellies, and whitefish declining in the catch, and flatfish, pomfrets, and lizardfish increasing. Pelagic fish assemblages off Kerala are dominated by the oil sardine (Sardinella longiceps), referred to in the local language as the “family provider” (Kurien 2000). Despite this dominance, the pelagic fisheries are also highly multispecies, including such other groups as sardines, sharks, barracudas, and mackerels (Vivekanandan et al. 2003a). Based on preliminary estimates, the trophic level of the Kerala fisheries reflects the predominance of pelagic species that feed lower in the food web (Vivekanandan et al. 2003b). The modern development of Kerala marine fisheries has been traced to the period of the early 1950s. A coincidence of factors influenced their development: the drive to export shrimp, stateand private-sector-driven modernization of the fisheries hoping to create more uniform and economically efficient fishing units, and the conduct of the first ever development assistance project by the United Nations, Norway, and India, called the
11
Indo-Norwegian Project for Fisheries Development (Kurien 1985, 2000). Small-scale fishing has persisted since mechanization began in the 1950s, but it has become increasingly modernized and, in the case of fishing craft, motorized. From 1980 to 2005, the number of trawlers in Kerala grew from 745 to 3,982, a more than fourfold increase; nonmechanized boat numbers shrank from 26,271 to 9,522 (Government of India 2006). Nevertheless, much of the labor in fishing is provided by those working for others and in the postharvest, services, and marketing sector. In recent times, mechanized fishing boats and gear such as bottom trawlers, gillnets, and purse seines have greatly intensified fishing while displacing, though not replacing, the older fishing methods such as that done from catamarans, dugout canoes, plank-built boats, and the shore with set nets, seines, and small versions of the offshore gear (Vivekanandan et al. 2003b; see also chapter 20). Kurien (2000) notes, however, that the diversity of traditional gears has been reduced through mechanization and motorization of artisanal vessels and gear. The density of inshore fishers has increased from 3.6 to 8.5 fishers per square kilometer in the last four decades (Vivekanandan et al. 2003a). Despite the several-fold increase in fishing effort in Kerala, the total catch, with fluctuations, has been on a plateau of approximately 600,000 metric tons since the mid-1980s (www.cmfri.org.in/html/ cmfriDATA01.html). Off Kochi, Kerala, demersal fisheries biomass shrank by nearly half between the early 1970s and 1980, and many demersal and some pelagic stocks are now overfished, especially in inshore fisheries (Silvestre et al. 2003; Vivekanandan et al. 2003b). Despite the greater standardization of vessels and gear, demersal and pelagic fishing are still executed by many different types of mobile and fixed gears, causing conflict among gear types and fishers. In many coastal communities, traditional “sea courts” handled fishing conflicts, but these have been challenged by the technological change and government-sponsored fisheries institutions, such as cooperatives (Kurien 2000). Growing government regulations have sought to reduce the conflicts by zoning the coast by depth and distance from shore, with vessels being permitted in each zone according to their size and status, such as artisanal vessels and mechanized vessels of 318.31 0.88 –12.05 0.68 78.68 0.46 –38.00 0.45 –4.47 0.32 –24.05 14.82
Source: National Marine Fisheries Service (2008).
12.68
40% 20% 0%
19 8 19 8 8 19 9 9 19 0 9 19 1 9 19 2 9 19 3 9 19 4 9 19 5 9 19 6 9 19 7 98 19 9 20 9 00 20 0 20 1 0 20 2 03
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Supermarkets
Mongers and stalls
Other outlets
8.5 United Kingdom market share of supermarkets, fishmongers, market stalls, and other outlets. (Seafish Industry Authority)
FIGURE
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because many finfish can be refrozen after processing. Increasingly, retailers have become organized in chains with focus on effective logistics and distribution. In several countries, the retail chains have almost completely replaced fish markets and fishmongers. The United Kingdom is a good example (figure 8.5). In 1988, only 16 percent of seafood sales were through supermarkets, while the most significant outlets were fishmongers and market stalls, with 65 percent of the sales. By 2003, this situation was reversed: 86 percent of sales were in supermarkets and only 11 percent was by fishmongers and market stalls. Although not equally strong everywhere, increasing retail chain dominance in seafood retailing has taken place in Western and Eastern Europe, the United States, Japan, and a number of the fast-growing developing countries. There are a number of reasons for this development, but the most important factors relate to economies of scale and scope in the distribution chain and marketing. The focus on efficient distribution has removed many levels in the supply chains, and many intermediaries have disappeared. Moreover, suppliers of limited volumes of seafood find it difficult to meet the requirements of the big buyers, and increasingly it is an advantage, if not crucial, to be big enough to sell to retail chains. This has benefited aquaculture and large sourcing companies. Because diversity is expensive, most retail chains also limit the number of suppliers. Only the high-end retailers will generally have more than a few species for sale. The most significant change in the supply chains is caused by improved freezing technology. As mentioned above, processing has traditionally been done near the harvesting region (when it was not done onboard), because of seafood’s perishability. In the 1990s freezing technology became so good that it allowed double-freezing of fish, at least those with low fat content, which includes a large part of the white finfish species. One could freeze the fish quickly after harvest, transport it to another location, partially thaw it, process it, and freeze it again without significant impacts on quality. This has removed distance as a factor when determining where to process seafood that eventually was to be sold as frozen or other highly preserved product forms. Hence, processing can be set up where processing costs are the lowest. In many fisheries, it is no longer a competitive advantage for the processors to be located near the fishing grounds.
This has led processing to be set up in places far removed from where the fish is caught, such as China, Poland, and Thailand. China now is clearly the largest seafood processing country. It also gives rise to some very interesting trade patterns. For instance, the typical fishstick consumed in Europe today is most likely based on Alaska pollock that was caught in the Bering Sea, shipped to China, and filleted there before being frozen into a block. This block is then shipped to Germany or Poland, where it is processed into the fishsticks. Moreover, one can also observe frozen fish going from Europe to China for processing before being shipped back. The same is true for U.S. fish.
8.6. SUSTAINABLE SEAFOOD, ECOLABELING, AND SEAFOOD SAFETY Most of the main trends in the seafood market share the common factor that they lead to more trade and a less segmented market. They have contributed to the globalization of the seafood market. However, during the last decade there was also an increasing focus on factors that segment the market, particularly in the European Union and the United States. The two most important concerns are the environmental impact of the fishing or aquaculture activity, and seafood safety. In Europe, seafood safety is a part of a larger trend with respect to food safety, which became particularly acute after the bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow disease) outbreaks in the United Kingdom. Many retailers now prefer or require more stringent quality assurances. This had led to demand for more information about how a product is produced and how it moves through the supply chain. This is often referred to as the traceability of a product. The retailers and consumers also want to be assured that the production processes meets different requirements with respect to hygiene, animal welfare, and related concerns. Exporters are therefore increasingly required to meet Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) standards, provide different types of International Standardization Organization (ISO) certificates, or meet national standards in the importing countries. There are certainly cases where such measures seem to be justified; for example, some fish from China were found to contain harmful chemicals such as malachite green. There are also a number of
World Fish Markets exporters that think these requirements are a new form of trade barrier. The experiences of Kenyan exporters of Nile perch and Bangladeshi shrimp exporters are examples, as imports to the European Union have been terminated by the European Union in periods due to food safety concerns. The E.U. Commission claims, of course, that import bans were entirely justified. There is little doubt that many of the world’s fish stocks are not in good condition (FAO 2006). During the last decade, several nongovernmental organizations have become advocates of marketbased management of fisheries. They claim that consumers do not accept the mismanagement of fish stocks. Ecolabels, as discussed in chapter 46, are a market-based tool since they allow the consumers to choose seafood only from well-managed fisheries.12 Certification, labeling, and meeting specific standards has the effect of segmenting the market into those products where the standard is met and those where it is not. Meeting the standards requires that producers provide information that otherwise would not be provided and carry out costly additions to the production processes they otherwise would not undertake. This makes some producers unable or unwilling to meet the standards and therefore further segments the market and reduces trade or changes trade patterns. While some standards seem justified, the myriad requirements that differ among countries create barriers for many producers. This is particularly true for producers in developing countries, where limited infrastructure makes it very hard to document the production process even when it is compliant. This is a particularly acute problem for ecolabeling, as many developing countries lack the governance structure for its fisheries to be certified.
8.7. CONCLUDING REMARKS During the last three decades, seafood trade has increased tremendously as traded value has increased threefold and traded quantity has increased fourfold. There are a number of reasons for this development. Taken together, however, these seafood market drivers project a continued strong demand for seafood, increased supply (primarily from aquaculture), and reduced cost and barriers when trading seafood. As far as we can see, these trends are set to continue, and trade with seafood is therefore likely to continue to increase.
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There have been significant changes in the structure of the seafood trade during the previous decades, and this structural change is also likely to continue as different producers and markets have different abilities to exploit new opportunities or meet new challenges. It is very difficult to predict the development with any detail. However, some features seem relatively certain. Imports will continue to flow to the markets with the best ability to pay. The member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) will therefore remain among the largest seafood importers. However, seafood imports to emerging economies are increasing, since in these countries a substantial share of disposable income growth is directed toward food consumption, unlike wealthy countries, where the food’s share of expenditures tend to decrease when income grows. China and Southeast Asia are the most important regions in this respect. As more and more producers gain access to these markets because of better international transportation networks, competition will increase. Furthermore, aquaculture products will dominate in an increasing number of market segments due to stagnating supply of capture fisheries and continued growth of aquaculture production. This will also reduce the product heterogeneity in the seafood markets, as the largest market segments are likely to be dominated by a few groups of species, predominantly farmed, with similar characteristics.
Acknowledgments Thanks to Jingjie Chu, Barbara Harrison, and Kristin Lien for helpful comments and the Norwegian Research Council for funding. The usual disclaimer applies. Notes 1. Kurlansky (1997) provides a highly entertaining story of the cod trade in the northern Atlantic from about 1000 a.d. 2. Peru, Ecuador, and Chile implemented EEZs as early as 1952. By the time the United States declared its 200-mile EEZ in 1976, 37 nations had already extended their jurisdiction, and by the mid-1980s, nearly all coastal nations had imposed EEZs. 3. Anderson (2003) provides a thorough review of international seafood trade and also discusses trade of the most important species. 4. In figure 8.3, the import figures for China start in 1998.
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5. Dumping is defined as “a price which is lower than the price for which it is sold in the home market, after adjustments for difference in the merchandise, quantities purchased, and the circumstances of the sale” (U.S. International Trade Commission 2001). 6. Keithly and Poudel (2008) provide an interesting discussion of shrimp in the United States. 7. It is interesting to note that the main reason for the long-standing, long-distance fish trade in Europe was that Catholics generally do not eat meat on Fridays and during Lent. 8. We use the term “European Union” to describe Western Europe even though the European Community was not formed before the 1950s, and it took decades to develop into the European Union. 9. Bjørndal (1990) provides an overview of the early development of salmon aquaculture. 10. Asche et al. (2007) provide a review of studies investigating substitution and market integration for seafood. 11. Surimi is defined as an intermediate product of refined, stabilized fish protein concentrate developed in Japan (Anderson 2003, p. 45). 12. Wessells (2002) provides a more general discussion about the role of information in seafood sales.
References Anderson, J.L. (2003). The International Seafood Trade. Cambridge, U.K.: Woodhead Publishing. Asche, F., T. Bjørndal, and D.V. Gordon (2007). Studies in the demand structure for fish and seafood products. In: A. Weintraub, C. Romero,
T. Bjørndal, and R. Epstein (eds.). Handbook of Operations Research in Natural Resources, pp. 295–314. Berlin: Springer. Bjørndal, T. (1990). The Economics of Salmon Aquaculture. Oxford, U.K.: Blackwell. Delgado, C.L., N. Wada, M.W. Rosengrant, S. Meijer, and A.M. Ahmed (2003). Fish to 2020: Supply and Demand in Changing Global Markets. Washington: International Food Policy Research Institute. FAO (2006). The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2006. Rome: Fisheries and Agriculture Organization of United Nations. FAO (2008). FISHSTAT Plus: Universal Software for Fishery Statistical Time Series. Fisheries Department, Fishery Information, Data and Statistics Unit. Version 2.3. Rome: Fisheries and Agriculture Organization of United Nations. Keithly, W.R., Jr., and P. Poudel (2008). The Southeast U.S.A. shrimp industry: Issues related to trade and antidumping duties. Marine Resource Economics 23(4):459–483. Kurlansky, M. (1997). Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World. New York: Penguin. National Marine Fisheries Service (2008). www. nmfs.gov. Norwegian Seafood Council (2008). Personal communication. U.S. International Trade Commission (2001). Antidumping and Countervailing Duty Handbook. USITC Publication 3482, 9th ed. Washington, D.C.: U.S. International Trade Commission. Wessells, C.R. (2002). Markets for seafood attributes. Marine Resource Economics 17(2): 153–162.
9 Climate Change and Fisheries Management KEITH BRANDER
and social concern, as the rates of global warming, rising sea level, altered rainfall, and falling pH become more apparent (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC] 2007). Given the importance of fish in the food supply of many countries, it is not surprising that future fisheries production and the consequences of climate change for fisheries management are also an increasing subject of concern. Fish is the largest net exported commodity for developing countries (Fisheries and Agriculture Organization of United Nations [FAO] Fisheries Department 2004). The adverse impacts of climate on future fisheries production may be severe, so responsible planning needs to take into account the time scale over which such impacts could occur, the areas (countries, marine ecosystems) most at risk, and the scope for adaptation. However the increasing urgency of planning for climate change should not obscure the need to continue to deal with the threats from other human activities, such as overfishing and habitat degradation; the emergence of new pressures, such as climate change, unfortunately does not cause the old ones to go away. How quickly can we expect climate change to affect fisheries? This depends on the rate at which climate changes and on the sensitivity of particular fish species or marine systems to such changes. Ocean climate and terrestrial climate vary in much the same way, and it is difficult to distinguish between “natural” climate variability and the additional changes brought about by anthropogenic
9.1. INTRODUCTION Fish stocks fluctuate in abundance, distribution, and productivity under the influence of changes in their physical and biological environment. We know from sediment cores that such natural fluctuations have occurred over thousands of years (Baumgartner et al. 1992). One of the most striking and globally significant recent fluctuations in marine production and fisheries arose from the effect of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and decadal variability in ocean climate on the ecosystem off the west coast of South America. During the period 1970–2004, catches of Peruvian anchoveta (Engraulis ringens) varied from 94,000 tons to 13 million tons, largely due to ENSO (Barber 2001; Jacobson et al. 2001). Such enormous natural variability of course creates great problems for fishing communities and fisheries managers, but also provides a powerful incentive for scientists to investigate and understand the processes that cause variability, and for managers, the fishing industry and dependent communities to learn how to adapt to environmentally driven changes. Some of the lessons that can be learned from coping with natural variability can be transferred to help in adapting to the new problems generated by global climate change. The impact of anthropogenic climate change on all aspects of the natural world and on human activity has become an issue of pressing political 123
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factors (mainly greenhouse gases). In this chapter, I describe the background of natural climate variability and the effects on marine ecosystems. Over the next twenty to fifty years, the oceans will increasingly experience conditions that move beyond the envelope of previous climate variability and into a state for which there are no past analogues within human history (IPCC 2007). Can we identify which countries, fisheries, and marine ecosystems are most at risk from climate change? Yes—the vulnerability of countries depends on the local rate of climate change, the degree to which they are dependent on fisheries, and their ability to adapt (Allison et al. 2009). Vulnerable fish species and ecosystems are also being identified, and I give examples of these. However, fisheries worldwide exploit a very large number of species that depend on the productivity of natural ecosystems. Our ability to predict or control the response of marine ecosystems to changes in ocean climate is minimal, and there are likely to be sudden, unexpected alterations to their productivity and composition. How can we best adapt to climate impacts on fisheries? In spite of our limited ability to predict and control marine ecosystems, we have some effective adaptation options. Most fisheries are fully exploited or overexploited, and many are suffering from habitat degradation as a result of fishing and other human activities. Reducing the stresses caused by overfishing and by habitat degradation is an effective form of adaptation to the additional pressures that climate change will impose on marine ecosystems. Climate change therefore reinforces the existing imperatives for fisheries management and adds further justification to reducing fishing pressure and allowing stocks to rebuild to higher biomass levels, with consequent increased diversity in age structure and geographic spread. The aims of fisheries management include ensuring that catches (1) are sustained at high levels, (2) remain reasonably stable, (3) do not cause unacceptable damage to the marine ecosystem, and (4) are equitably distributed among the participants. Climate variability and climate change increase the uncertainty in achieving these aims, so climate impacts must be included when evaluating risk and uncertainty in achieving management aims. In order to reduce the uncertainty over impacts of climate, we require better understanding of the processes by which climate affects productivity and distribution of fish stocks, but also well-designed monitoring
and responsive and flexible management processes that can cope quickly with unexpected trends.
9.2. CLIMATE CHANGE AND CLIMATE VARIABILITY The climate of the earth (and of the oceans) has always fluctuated. No two years are the same, and this natural variability also extends over decades, centuries, and millennia. The increase in greenhouse gases that has occurred since the industrial revolution is causing rapid progressive changes in climate, which are superimposed onto this background of natural variability. The most valuable sources of information that we have for predicting the consequences of future climate change are the observations and reconstructions of past climate variability and the impacts that they have had on marine ecosystems and fisheries (Brander 2003). As recent ocean climate moves to the limits of the previously observed envelope of climate variability, we are beginning to observe changes in distribution and productivity of fish stocks and shifts in seasonal timing that go beyond those previously experienced (Beare et al. 2004; Brander et al. 2003; Quero et al. 2000). Ocean climate is the long-term (30 year average) state of a number of environmental factors that affect marine ecosystems and fish stocks, including temperature, winds, ocean transport, oxygen, vertical mixing, and pH. Planetary motion causes daily, seasonal, and longer term cycles (e.g., 18.6-year nodal tide) in the physical and chemical environment, and natural variability (interannual variability, weather) overlays these cycles. Climate change affects not only the mean values of environmental factors, but also their variability. It may alter the frequency and intensity of extreme events (floods, high waves, droughts, heat waves, hurricanes), so although it is difficult to attribute any particular extreme event to anthropogenic climate change, a change in its likelihood of occurrence can be estimated (IPCC 2003). It is very likely (>90 percent chance) that hot extremes, heat waves, and heavy precipitation events will continue to become more frequent (IPCC 2007). Over the next two or three decades, the anthropogenic component of global warming is expected to add a temperature increment that is fairly small, compared with normal variability. Interannual variability in the sea surface temperature of the North
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FIGURE 9.1 Temperature profile at Hell’s Gate (Fraser River, British Columbia) in 2004 (solid top line), also showing 60-year mean (solid middle line), ±1 standard deviation (shaded lines), and 60-year minimum and maximum (dashed lines). For several days in mid-August, Fraser River water temperatures as measured at Hell’s Gate were the highest ever recorded. (Data from Canadian Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans 2005)
Sea, for example, is around 2–3°C, whereas the expected annual anthropogenic increment in temperature is about 1 percent of this (IPCC 2007). Organisms therefore normally experience variability, which is large relative to the climate change effect. However, even though the year-on-year rate of anthropogenic climate change may seem slow, this is very rapid compared with previous natural change, and because it is cumulative it results quite quickly in levels of temperature higher than those experienced for thousands of years. In some cases, long-term changes in mean values of climate variables cause gradual changes in species and ecosystems, by altering growth, mortality, and life history patterns in ways that alter distributions and the balance between interacting species within an ecosystem (Teal et al. 2008). In other cases, extreme conditions (e.g., exceptionally cold winters or hot summers) cause high mortalities that abruptly change the abundance of sensitive species, so a shortduration effect can have long-term biological consequences. We therefore need to be aware of changes in climate variables at all time scales in order to detect and attribute the cause of a particular observed change. For example, figure 9.1 shows part of the annual temperature climatology for the Fraser River
in British Columbia, based on a 60-year time series. This is the observed envelope of climate variability for this location and season. “Abnormally” high temperatures, which were outside this envelope, occurred during July and August 2004 when the salmon run was beginning and caused high mortality (Canadian Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans 2005).
9.3. HOW CLIMATE AFFECTS FISH The effects of increasing temperature on marine ecosystems are already evident, with rapid poleward shifts in distributions of fish and plankton in regions, such as the Northeast Atlantic, where temperature change has been rapid (Beaugrand et al. 2002; Brander 2003; International Council for the Exploration of the Sea [ICES] 2008). Further changes in distribution and productivity are expected due to continuing warming and freshening of the Arctic (Drinkwater 2005). Some of the changes are expected to have positive consequences for fish production (Arctic Climate Impact Assessment [ACIA] 2005), but in other cases reproductive capacity is reduced and stocks become vulnerable to levels of fishing that had previously been
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Overview
sustainable (Brander and Mohn 2004). Local extinctions are occurring at the edges of current ranges, particularly in freshwater and diadromous species, for example, salmon (Friedland et al. 2003) and sturgeon (Reynolds et al. 2005). The rate at which climate can be expected to affect a fish species depends on the size of climate change and on the sensitivity of the species in question: Impact = scale of climate change × sensitivity of species (or ecosystem) The IPCC report (IPCC 2007) is one of the authoritative sources of information about expected scales and rates of future climate change, but there are a number of limitations, particularly for ocean climate. Future rates depend on the chosen scenario for future greenhouse gas emissions, and within the overall global trends, there are quite large regional differences. Only a few of the ocean climate factors that affect fish are included in the global climate models. Some fish and shellfish species are more sensitive to environmental change than are other species, and within a species the sensitivity depends on the life history stage, size, and the position within the tolerance range and within the geographic range. North Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) has probably been studied more intensively than any other marine species and therefore provides many examples to illustrate the complex processes that affect sensitivity, in relation not only to temperature but also to light, salinity, and oxygen. Apart from one or two species like cod, we have very limited knowledge of the sensitivity of species and ecosystems to different environmental variables, and our ability to predict regional rates of change in ocean climate is also very limited. The principal threats to future fisheries production identified here are expected to act progressively (i.e., a linear response) and to interact with each other. However, marine ecosystems can also respond to changes in physical or biological forcing in a nonlinear way (Hsieh et al. 2005), for example, when a threshold value is exceeded and a major change in species composition, production, and dynamics takes place. We know that such nonlinear responses occur but do not yet understand how or under what conditions. These are key limitations in our ability to forecast future states of marine ecosystems.
9.3.1. Identifying and Studying Effects at Different Time and Space Scales The impacts of climate (and environmental variability in general) on fish can be studied and described at different scales and at different levels from individual to population to ecosystem. For example, on a very small scale (hours, millimeters), one can investigate the effect of temperature on the development rate of a planktonic fish egg (Thompson and Riley 1981). At an intermediate scale (days, kilometers), temperature may affect survival rates of fish larvae at an ocean front or in a fiord. At a large scale (years, hundreds of kilometers), one can detect basin-scale effects (e.g., the influence of the North Atlantic Oscillation, a climate index, on fish recruitment; Stige et al. 2006). These different scales and explanations may all be part of the same causal chain, but they present very different requirements for measurement of the environment or “climate.” At the small scale, we can measure the actual conditions experienced by an individual egg; at the large scale, we use statistical methods to explore the consequences of differences in factors such as seasonal pressure fields for fish stocks in an ocean basin. The small scale helps us to understand the “proximate” impact of the environmental factor on physiological processes and development rates. However, in most cases this does not help much with predicting outcomes at larger scales, because the population consists of innumerable other individuals that experience different conditions and because there are many more life history stages and processes that can govern the outcome. Large-scale statistical studies are more useful for predicting impacts of climate on fish stocks but are worryingly vague about the processes behind apparent relationships. One of the most difficult issues in attributing observed changes in a particular species to climate is to identify the appropriate life history stages, time periods, and locations when critical effects occur. The critical processes can involve temperature (e.g., warm or cold tolerance), salinity (including density effects), oxygen (interacting with temperature in setting metabolic limits), transport process (which can carry eggs and larvae away from areas in which they survive), and many other factors. Our confidence in attributing observed change to climate is in many cases limited by uncertainty over the identification of critical biological processes and lack of appropriate, long time series of relevant climate variables.
Climate Change and Fisheries Management
9.3.2. Direct and Indirect Effects Climate change has both direct and indirect impacts on fish stocks. Direct effects act on physiology and behavior and alter growth, development, reproductive capacity, mortality, and distribution (Perry et al. 2009). Indirect effects alter the productivity, structure, and composition of the ecosystems on which fish depend for food and shelter. Plankton species composition, productivity, and phenology (seasonal timing) are affected by climate, with consequences for the different life history stages of fish that depend on them (Beaugrand et al. 2003). In some cases we are able to show that changes in distribution and abundance of commercially exploited species are due to climate effects on a competitor, predator, or parasite. Some of these climate effects affect aquaculture as well as capture fisheries. Effects of climate on both wild and farmed oyster production provide instructive examples of how climate changes may act and also of how this can interact with other human interference, such as deliberate introduction of species to new areas. The Pacific oyster (Crassostrea gigas) was introduced to European waters for aquaculture purposes from Taiwan and Japan in the 1960s. It was not expected to reproduce in the wild in Europe because of low winter temperatures, but it has done so and is now spreading in a number of European littoral areas, such as the Waddensee, where it forms extensive reefs that alter both the local ecosystem and the patterns of sedimentation (Reise et al. 2005). Two possible reasons that reproduction of the species occurred against expectation are (1) winter temperatures were warmer than expected and (2) the information on sensitivity to low temperature was wrong. In fact, both of these contributed to the rapid colonization that this species is now undertaking. One of the lessons is to beware of drawing conclusions from observed distributions about the factors that limit natural range (the observed bioclimate envelope). As the next example shows, there may be other “lurking variables” that in fact govern distribution. Distribution and commercial production of the Eastern oysters (Crassostrea virginica) are affected by the northward spread of two protozoan parasites (Perkinsus marinus and Haplosporidium nelsoni) from the Gulf of Mexico to Delaware Bay and farther north, where they have caused mass mortalities. A combination of field observations, experiments, and coupled physical-biological modeling
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has been used to show that winter temperatures consistently lower than 3°C limit the development of the MSX (multinucleated spore unknown) disease caused by Haplosporidium (Hofmann et al. 2001). The observed effects of winter temperature on the Eastern oyster are therefore due to an indirect effect of cold winters on a parasite. If the oyster were introduced to an area where the parasite cannot survive (perhaps because it requires an intermediate host), then the distribution at the warm end of the range might expand. The poleward spread of this and other pathogens can be expected to continue as such winter temperatures become rarer. Pathogens have been implicated in mass mortalities of many aquatic species, including plants, fish, corals, and mammals, although lack of adequate data makes it difficult to attribute causes (Harvell et al. 1999).
9.3.3. Primary Production and Food Chain Effects The rate of production in any marine ecosystem depends ultimately on the rate at which new primary production (NPP) is created by plant photosynthesis. Climate-induced changes in NPP can occur due to changes in nutrient supply and light environment, which are affected by vertical mixing, ice melt, water runoff from land, and aerial transport of nutrients (dust and sand). In the Pacific and the Atlantic oceans, nutrient supply to the upper productive layer of the ocean is declining due to reduced meridional overturning circulation, increased thermal stratification, and changes in windborne nutrients (Curry and Mauritzen 2005; McPhaden and Zhang 2002). From our present knowledge, we expect that NPP will decline in most regions due to climate change, which is an issue of concern for future global fisheries production and therefore for fisheries management (Behrenfeld et al. 2006). Polar regions will probably become more productive as the ice cover retreats, allowing greater light penetration into the ocean (Loeng et al. 2005). Satellite measurements of ocean color over the past two decades show changes in global NPP, but with large regional differences that can be related to changes in upper ocean temperature gradients, wind stress, and atmospheric iron deposition (Lehodey et al. 2003). An annual reduction in NPP of roughly 1 percent occurred between 1994 and 2004 (Behrenfeld et al. 2006). Paleological evidence and simulation modeling show North Atlantic plankton biomass declining
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by 50 percent over a long time scale during periods of reduced meridional overturning circulation (Schmittner 2005). Most fisheries exploit species that are several steps removed from primary production in the food chain. The transfer efficiency at each step is approximately 10–20 percent. This means that fisheries production is only a fraction of 1 percent of ocean primary production, and with a few notable exceptions (e.g., the Faroe marine ecosystem; Hansen et al. 2005), the relationship between NPP and fisheries production is weak. The effect of temperature on NPP is also uncertain (Sarmiento et al. 2005). Production in aquaculture can be maximized by harvesting fish or other taxa such as bivalves that are herbivores, detritivores, or primary carnivores, but species at higher trophic levels may have greater economic value.
9.3.4. Increased Climate Sensitivity Due to FisheriesInduced Changes Differences in sensitivity to environmental factors have already been mentioned, but one aspect that is important in relation to fisheries management is the interaction between fishing and the sensitivity of individual species or ecosystems. There is increasing evidence that populations and systems become more sensitive to climate impacts when they are heavily exploited (Brander 2005; Hsieh et al. 2006; Perry et al. 2008; Planque et al. 2008). The increase in sensitivity to perturbation is a result of reduced age structure (Ottersen et al. 2006), constriction of geographic substructure (Hilborn et al. 2003), and other kinds of loss of diversity (Casini et al. 2008). The consequence is that heavily exploited populations may be perturbed more strongly by climate than will less exploited or unexploited populations of the same species. Therefore, a key adaptation strategy to reduce the impact of climate on marine systems is to reduce fishing pressure (Brander 2007b). However, truncating the age structure of populations may also cause increasingly unstable dynamics independently of environmental factors, because of changing demographic parameters such as intrinsic growth rates (Anderson et al. 2008). The interaction between fishing and sensitivity to environment can also take place in the other direction, when productivity of a fish stock is reduced due to environmental change. This can alter the resilience of the stock to fishing and
other pressures such that it becomes vulnerable to levels of fishing that were previously sustainable. Many of the periods of severe decline in fish stocks occurred when fishing mortality remained high or increased following a period of reduced productivity (Brander 2007c). However, climate change can cause increases as well as decreases in productivity, so some species and stocks will become more resilient and able to produce higher sustainable catches (Pawson et al. 2007).
9.4. IMPACTS OF CLIMATE ON FISHERIES MANAGEMENT Climate change is only one of many pressures that fish stocks experience; box 9.1 (table B9.1) lists several causes of changes in fish stocks. Fishing was the earliest anthropogenic pressures on fish stocks and marine ecosystems, beginning hundreds or even thousands of years ago (Jackson et al. 2001; Ojaveer and MacKenzie 2007). Climate change, whose impact has been detected over the past few decades, is the most recent. Management of fisheries, and of marine ecosystems has not yet succeeded in dealing adequately with the old pressures (figure 9.2) and some of them, particularly overfishing, are of greater immediate concern than the effects of climate change (Beddington et al. 2007). Nevertheless, climate change over the coming decades to centuries will have progressively greater impacts on marine ecosystems and fisheries. Anticipating and adapting to such changes will help to minimize the disruption to marine ecosystems and to human food supplies.
9.4.1. Climate Impacts Increase the Urgency of Controlling Fishing Effort The most effective management strategy at present is not a new one, but a reinforcement of the existing imperative to halt increases in fishing pressure on stocks that are currently fully exploited and to reduce the level of fishing on all stocks that are currently overexploited (Brander 2007a). This will help to achieve three goals at the same time: (1) maintaining high, sustainable yields; (2) enhancing adaptation to climate change; and (3) increasing fish stock biomasses, thus allowing the same catch to be taken for less use of fuel (reducing greenhouse gas emissions). A strategy to restrain and reduce the
Climate Change and Fisheries Management
BOX
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9.1 Causes of changes in fish stocks B9.1 Causes of observed changes in fish stocks, divided into climate and nonclimate factors and into “natural” and anthropogenic changes
TABLE
Nonclimate
Climate
Natural
Anthropogenic
Competition, predation, disease, internal dynamics, etc. Temperature, vertical mixing, circulation, etc.
Fishing, eutrophication, pollution, habitat alterations, species introductions, etc. Temperature, vertical mixing, circulation, pH, etc.
The “natural” factors have always varied and caused changes in marine systems. The anthropogenic factors are new (although some have been acting for many centuries) and are, in principle, controllable by human intervention and management. Note that the climate factors are the same whether they are natural or anthropogenic. pH is treated as anthropogenic because of the recent increase in atmospheric CO2. There are, however, interactions among the four categories shown in table B9.1 that cannot be ignored, because they have important consequences for fisheries management in relation to climate change. In particular, the sensitivity of fish stocks and marine ecosystems to environmental variability and climate change depends on how heavily they are exploited and stressed by fishing and other human activities.
level of fishing can be regarded as a “no-regret,” triple-win option since it simultaneously addresses the issues of sustainable fishing, adaptation to climate, and mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions. Taking each of the goals of the triple-win option in turn:
biomass have to be adjusted, and it is clear that many, perhaps most, cases of stock collapse have occurred because fishing mortality remained high or even increased at a time when productivity declined. • The consequence of fishing-induced changes for resilience of fish populations and marine ecosystems has been addressed above. Populations that are less stressed and that retain an adequate age structure and geographic subpopulation structure will be better adapted to resist the effects of climate change. • The amount of fuel used to catch a fixed quantity of fish depends directly on the abundance of fish, which in turn depends on the level of fishing mortality. Fuel efficiency will therefore always benefit from reducing the level of fishing.
• Maintaining high sustainable yields is the principal aim of fisheries management in any case, but the biological limits and reference points to achieve this aim depend on changes in environmental conditions and on climate change, which affect fish distribution and productivity. In situations where productivity is reduced, the reference levels for fishing mortality and
The economic effects of climate change on fisheries need to be taken into account, and research in this field is developing rapidly in order to help with strategies for adaptation or, in some cases, mitigation of future impacts (ACIA 2005). Some of the possible impacts and adaptations to them are set out in table 9.1.
Climate change Introductions Human expansion
Mechanical habitat destruction
Altered ecosystems
Pollution Fishing “Past”
“Present”
9.2 The historic development of pressures on fisheries and marine ecosystems due to human expansion. (Redrawn from Jackson et al. 2001)
FIGURE
TABLE
9.1 Adaptations of fisheries to climate change
Impact
Supply Side
Demand Side
Fish distribution changes
Revise fishing rights allocation Allocate species combinations and access at ecosystem level
Decreased productivity
Economic incentives to switch target species or use other gear Improve product quality and life Reduce production inefficiencies and waste Introduce ecosystem management Switch to new species Increase imports
Changes in consumer preferences, eco-labeling, and certification Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) Quality labeling (the last wild food . . . ) Taxes on ecological costs of fish Advertise unique nutritional value of fish, inform customers
Source: Parry (2000, chap. 9).
BOX 9.2 Response of Atlantic cod to environmental variability Temperature affects rates of maturation of adult cod and rates of development and survival of eggs and larvae (ICES 2005). Rapid growth in early life stages enhances survival and increases the number of recruits per unit of spawning biomass. This results in greater surplus production and greater resilience to fishing pressure so that cod stocks at the warm end of the species range (Celtic Sea, Irish Sea, North Sea) are able to withstand higher fishing mortalities than at the cold end of the range. However, within these warmer ecosystems, cod are rarely the dominant demersal fish species, and they may be vulnerable to further increases in temperature, which either exposes them to temperatures beyond their tolerance range or favors their warm-tolerant competitors. The optimal temperature for cod growth (when food is not limiting) decreases as the fish get bigger, from about 12°C for a 100 g fish to 6°C for a 5,000 g fish (Bjornsson et al. 2001). The change in growth rate and recruitment in response to temperature is greatest at the lowest and highest temperatures within the overall tolerance range (figures B9.1 and B9.2). The question of how much particular stocks of cod have become adapted to their environment is still under investigation. Genetic adaptation to extreme conditions has implications for fisheries management under climate change, and special protection of warm-tolerant strains may reduce climate impacts. The fish farming industry aims to select broodstocks with good food conversion ability under specific environmental conditions, but this requires that the traits in question should be heritable (Folkvord 2005; Jónsdóttir et al. 1999). Two examples of adaptations to extreme environmental conditions are the production of antifreeze in Canadian stocks that experience subzero temperatures (Goddard and Fletcher 1994) and the production of eggs with very low density by Baltic cod, where salinity and consequently water density is much lower than in other areas (ICES 2005). The latter stock also provides one of the few cases where environmental cause and biological effect can be demonstrated all the way from physiological processes to population impact.
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Growth rate (% per day)
1.2 1 0.8 0.6 0.4 0.2 0 0
5
15
10
Temperature (°C) 100 g
1000 g
250 g
5000 g
B9.1 Growth rate of four sizes of Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua L.) in rearing experiments at different temperatures in which they were provided unlimited food. The steep dashed line intersects the growth curves at their maximum values, to show how the temperature for maximum growth rate declines as fish get bigger. (Redrawn from Bjornsson and Steinarsson 2002)
FIGURE
Arcto-Norwegian = 1 Greenland =
0
Recruitment
2
Iceland =
–1
North Sea =
1 Irish Sea =
0 –1 –2 –3
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
Near-surface T (°C) during planktonic stage
B9.2 Composite pattern of recruitment for five Atlantic cod stocks to illustrate the effect of temperature during the planktonic stage of early life on the number of recruiting fish. The scales are log e(number of 1-year-old fish), with the means adjusted to zero. The axes for the ArctoNorwegian and Iceland stocks have been displaced vertically.
FIGURE
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Overview
9.4.2. Vulnerable Countries, Species, and Marine Ecosystems On a global scale, it is not easy to identify the main losers and winners from changes in fisheries as a result of climate change. There are obvious advantages to being well informed, well capitalized and able to shift to alternative areas or kinds of fishing activity (or other non-fishery activities) as circumstances change. Modeling studies have assessed country vulnerability on the basis of exposure of its fisheries to climate change, high dependence on fisheries production, and low capacity to respond (Allison et al. 2009). The studies show that climate will have the greatest economic impact on the fisheries sectors of central and northern Asian countries, the Western Sahel in Africa, and coastal tropical regions of South America as well as on some small- and mediumsized island states (Aaheim and Sygna 2000). Indirect economic impacts will depend on the extent to which local economies are able to adapt to new conditions in terms of labor and capital mobility. Change in natural fisheries production is often compounded by decreased harvest capacity and reduced access to markets (FAO Fisheries Department 2006). Some of the most vulnerable systems may be in the megadeltas of rivers in Asia, such as the Mekong, where 60 million people are in some way active in fisheries. These are mainly seasonal floodplain fisheries, which, in addition to overfishing, are increasingly threatened by changes in the hydrological cycle and in land use, damming, irrigation, and channel alteration (IPCC 2007). Thus, the impact of climate change is just one of a number of pressures that require integrated international solutions if the fisheries are to be maintained. Some marine ecosystems, such as the Baltic Sea, are vulnerable to quite small changes in ocean climate, because certain key species are close to their tolerance limits (Koster et al. 2005). The Baltic Sea is a large, almost totally enclosed sea with a low average salinity, which declines to almost freshwater in the northern and eastern areas. The three principal fish species that are exploited commercially are marine species: Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua), Atlantic herring (Clupea harengus), and sprat (Sprattus sprattus), and tolerance of low salinity rather than temperature is the factor that may govern the population of cod in particular, as the climate changes.
Cod in the Baltic are unable to reproduce at salinities below 11 because the sperm become inactive and the eggs sink into the anoxic layers of the deep basins where spawning occurs (ICES 2005). The frequency of inflows carrying saline, oxygenated water into the deep basins of the Baltic has been low over the past twenty years, due to changes in large-scale atmospheric pressure patterns, and this, together with fishing pressure, has resulted in a declining cod population (Koster et al. 2005). The Baltic is an extreme and very well-studied system, and other examples are less clear-cut and probably more gradual. However, although processes affecting future fisheries production are expected to act progressively (i.e., a linear response) and to interact with each other, marine ecosystems can also respond to changes in physical or biological forces in a nonlinear way (Hsieh et al. 2005), for example, when a threshold value is exceeded and a major change in species composition, production, and dynamics takes place. We know that such nonlinear responses occur (often described as regime shifts) but do not yet understand how or under what conditions. This is a key limitation in our ability to forecast future states of marine ecosystems.
9.4.3. Robust and Adaptive Management Strategies Given the evidence that climate change is beginning to affect the distribution, abundance, and productivity of exploited marine resources and the expectation that further changes will occur as conditions move beyond what we have previously experienced, it is timely to review strategies for future management (ICES 2007). Our ability to predict future regional climate and the impact that this will have on marine ecosystems is limited (Pearce and Le Page 2008); therefore, two kinds of strategy suggest themselves. The first is to devise robust management systems, such as harvest control rules, which are designed to achieve their purpose even if climate causes changes in distribution, abundance, and productivity (Mohn and Chouinard 2007). This can be likened to adopting a strategy for driving a car safely even if conditions (e.g., visibility, ice, volume of traffic) change. The second strategy is to devise responsive management systems that rely on rapid updating about changes in conditions and respond accordingly. This is like an alert driver who immediately
Climate Change and Fisheries Management adjusts driving style as conditions change. The first strategy is more cautious, but both strategies can be followed at the same time, with the more cautious approach being used when the incoming information about conditions is uncertain or is not available quickly enough. The second strategy requires constant monitoring and interpretation of new information, which, of course, has a cost. In the real world, there are many institutional and technical problems in creating fisheries management systems that are well informed and flexible and can interpret and respond quickly to the kinds of change that climate may cause. A basic requirement for most fisheries management is accurate knowledge of how much fish is being caught, but in many parts of the world the quality of this information is poor and may even be deteriorating. Existing fisheries management often uses historic patterns of fish distribution to allocate fishing rights between different countries or communities, which can create problems when fish distribution and productivity changes. Some flexibility in fisheries (gear switching, harvesting different species) is adaptive, and even within communities there may be advantages in allowing or encouraging diversity of alternative livelihoods. The benefits of being well informed and having sufficient resources to plan for changing conditions are obvious. For example, within the Dutch fishing fleet, a number of vessels are investing in fishing gear designed to catch species (red mullet, squid) that have increased in abundance in the southern North Sea and are expected to continue to do so. The problems that climate change poses for fisheries management are very serious in the long term and therefore warrant considerable attention. However, they should not be allowed to divert attention away from the urgent problems caused by overfishing, habitat degradation, and other existing pressures. Ignoring the effects of climate and continuing with existing strategies for fisheries management is not a sensible option. If existing management targets (e.g., maximum sustainable yield) and reference levels (e.g., precautionary fishing mortality and stock biomass) are altered by climate change, then they cease to be suitable as strategic management objectives. The possible consequences of climate change are being taken into account in planning most areas of human activity, including sea defense, water supply, health, tourism, insurance, agriculture, and
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forestry, and it is timely to include them in planning fisheries management.
Acknowledgments This chapter is a product of the ICES/GLOBEC Cod and Climate Change program and the work was supported by Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) contract MF0434 and by E.U. FP6 project RECLAIM, contract no. 44133(SSP8).
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Beddington, J.R., D.J. Agnew, and C.W. Clark (2007). Current problems in the management of marine fisheries. Science 316: 1713–1716. Behrenfeld, M.J., R.T.O. O’Malley, D.A. Siegel, C.R. McClain, J.L. Sarmiento, G.C. Feldman, A.J. Milligan, P.G. Falkowski, R.M. Letelier, and E.S. Boss (2006). Climate-driven trends in contemporary ocean productivity. Nature 444: 752–755. Bjornsson, B., and A. Steinarsson (2002). The foodunlimited growth rate of Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua). Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences 59: 494–502. Bjornsson, B., A. Steinarsson, and M. Oddgeirsson (2001). Optimal temperature for growth and feed conversion of immature cod (Gadus morhua L.). ICES Journal of Marine Science 58: 29–38. Brander, K.M. (2003). Fisheries and climate. In: G. Wefer, F. Lamy, and F. Mantoura (eds.). Marine Science Frontiers for Europe. Tokyo: Springer, 29–38. Brander, K.M. (2007a). Tackling climate change impacts on EU fisheries. El Anzuelo—European Newsletter on Fisheries and the Environment 19: 1. Brander, K.M. (2007b). Global fish production and climate change. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the United States of America 104: 19709–19714. Brander, K.M. (2007c). The role of growth changes in the decline and recovery of North Atlantic cod stocks since 1970. ICES Journal of Marine Science 64: 211–217. Brander, K.M., and R.K. Mohn (2004). Effect of the North Atlantic Oscillation on recruitment of Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua). Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences 61: 1558–1564. Brander, K.M., G. Blom, M.F. Borges, K. Erzini, G. Henderson, B.R. MacKenzie, H. Mendes, J. Ribeiro, A.M.P. Santos, and R. Toresen (2003). Changes in fish distribution in the eastern North Atlantic: Are we seeing a coherent response to changing temperature? ICES Marine Science Symposia 219: 261–270. Canadian Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans (2005). 2nd Report of the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans: Here We Go Again . . . Or the 2004 Fraser River Salmon Fishery. Ottawa: Canadian Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans. Casini, M., J. Lövgren, J. Hjelm, M. Cardinale, J.C. Molinero, and G. Kornilovs (2008). Multilevel trophic cascades in a heavily exploited open marine ecosystem. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 275: 1793–1801.
Curry, R., and C. Mauritzen (2005). Dilution of the northern North Atlantic Ocean in recent decades. Science 308: 1772–1774. Drinkwater, K.F. (2005). The response of Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) to future climate change. ICES Journal of Marine Science 62: 1327–1337. FAO Fisheries Department (2004). The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture (SOFIA) 2004. Rome: Fisheries and Agriculture Organization of United Nations. FAO Fisheries Department (2006). Building Adaptive Capacity to Climate Change: Policies to Sustain Livelihoods and Fisheries. New Directions in Fisheries, A Series of Policy Briefs on Development Issues, 8. Rome: Fisheries and Agriculture Organization of United Nations. Folkvord, A. (2005). Comparison of size-at-age of larval Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) from different populations based on size- and temperature-dependent growth models. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences 62: 1037–1052. Friedland, K.D., D.G. Reddin, J.R. McMenemy, and K.F. Drinkwater (2003). Multidecadal trends in North American Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) stocks and climate trends relevant to juvenile survival. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences 60: 563–583. Goddard, S.V., and G.L. Fletcher (1994). Antifreeze proteins: Their role in cod survival and distribution from egg to adult. ICES Marine Science Symposia 198: 676–683. Hansen, B., S.K. Eliasen, E. Gaard, and K.M.H. Larsen (2005). Climatic effects on plankton and productivity on the Faroe Shelf. ICES Journal of Marine Science 62: 1224–1232.. Harvell, C.D., K. Kim, J.M. Burkholder, R.R. Colwell, P.R. Epstein, D.J. Grimes, E.E. Hofmann, E.K. Lipp, a.d.M.E. Osterhaus, R.M. Overstreet, J.W. Porter, G.W. Smith, and G.R. Vasta (1999). Emerging marine diseases—climate links and anthropogenic factors. Science 285: 1505–1510. Hilborn, R., T.P. Quinn, D.E. Schindler, and D.E. Rogers (2003). Biocomplexity and fisheries sustainability. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 100: 6564–6568. Hofmann, E., S. Ford, E. Powell, and J. Klinck (2001). Modeling studies of the effect of climate variability on MSX disease in eastern oyster (Crassostrea virginica) populations. Hydrobiologia 460: 195–212. Hsieh, C., S.M. Glaser, A.J. Lucas, and G. Sugihara (2005). Distinguishing random environmental fluctuations from ecological catastrophes for the North Pacific Ocean. Nature 435: 336–340.
Climate Change and Fisheries Management Hsieh, C., C.S. Reiss, J.R. Hunter, J.R. Beddington, R.M. May, and G. Suguhara (2006). Fishing elevates variability in the abundance of exploited species. Nature 443: 859–862. ICES (2005). Spawning and Life History Information for North Atlantic Cod Stocks. ICES Cooperative Research Report 274. ICES (2007). Report of the Workshop on the Integration of Environmental Information into Fisheries Management Strategies and Advice (WKEFA). ICES CM 2007/ACFM: 25. ICES (2008). An assessment of the changes in the distribution and abundance of marine species in the OSPAR maritime area in relation to changes in hydrodynamics and sea temperature. In ICES Advice Book 1. www.ices.dk/ committe/acom/comwork/report/asp/advice. asp IPCC(2003). The IPCC Workshop on the Detection and Attribution of the Effects of Climate Change. IPCC Working Report. New York: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. IPCC (2007). Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jackson, J.B.C., M.X. Kirby, W.H. Berger, K.A. Bjorndal, L.W. Botsford, B.J. Bourque, R.H. Bradbury, R. Cooke, J. Erlandson, J.A. Estes, T.P. Hughes, S. Kidwell, C.B. Lange, H.S. Lenihan, J.M. Pandolfi, C.H. Peterson, R.S. Steneck, M.J. Tegner, and R.R. Warner (2001). Historical overfishing and the recent collapse of coastal ecosystems. Science 293: 629–637. Jacobson, L.D., J.A.A.A de Oliveira, M. Barange, R. Félix-Uraga, J.R. Hunter, J.Y. Kim, M. Ñiquen, C. Porteiro, B.J. Rothschild, R.P. Sanchez, R. Serra, A. Uriarte, and T. Wada (2001). Surplus production, variability, and climate change in the great sardine and anchovy fisheries. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences 58: 1891–1903. Jónsdóttir, Ó.D.B., A.K. Imsland, A.K. Daníelsdóttir, V. Thorsteinsson, and G. Nævdal (1999). Genetic differentiation among Atlantic cod in south and south-east Icelandic waters: Synaptophysin (Syp I) and haemoglobin (HbI) variation. Journal of Fish Biology 54: 1259–1274. Koster, F.W., C. Mollmann, H.H. Hinrichsen, K. Wieland, J. Tomkiewicz, G. Kraus, R. Voss, A. Makarchouk, B.R. MacKenzie, and M.A. John (2005). Baltic cod recruitment—the impact of climate variability on key processes. ICES Journal of Marine Science 62: 1408–1425. Lehodey, P., F. Chai, and J. Hampton (2003). Modelling climate-related variability of tuna populations from a coupled ocean
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biogeochemical-populations dynamics model. Fisheries Oceanography 12: 483–494. Loeng, H., K. Brander, E. Carmack, S. Denisenko, K.F. Drinkwater, B. Hansen, K. Kovacs, P. Livingston, F. McLaughlin, and E. Sakshaug (2005). Marine Systems. In: Arctic Climate Impact Assessment. Cambridge University Press, 453–538. McPhaden, M.J., and D. Zhang (2002). Slowdown of the meridional overturning circulation in the upper Pacific Ocean. Nature 415(6872): 603–608. Mohn, R.K., and G.A. Chouinard (2007). Harvest control rules for stocks displaying dynamic production regimes. ICES Journal of Marine Science: Journal du Conseil 64: 693–697. Ojaveer, H., and B.R. MacKenzie (2007). Historical development of fisheries in northern Europe— Reconstructing chronology of interactions between nature and man. Fisheries Research 87: 102–105. Ottersen, G., D.Ø. Hjermann, and N.C. Stenseth (2006). Changes in spawning stock structure strengthen the link between climate and recruitment in a heavily fished cod (Gadus morhua) stock. Fisheries Oceanography 15: 230–243. Parry, M.L. (ed.) (2000). Assessment of Potential Effects and Adaptations for Climate Change in Europe: The Europe ACACIA Project. Norwich, U.K.: Jackson Environment Institute, University of East Anglia. Pawson, M.G., S. Kupschus, and G.D. Pickett (2007). The status of sea bass (Dicentrarchus labrax) stocks around England and Wales, derived using a separable catch-at-age model, and implications for fisheries management. ICES Journal of Marine Science: Journal du Conseil 64: 346–356. Pearce, F., and M. Le Page (2008). The decade after tomorrow. How is the climate going to change over the next few years? New Scientist 199(2669): 26–30. Perry, R.I., P. Cury, K. Brander, S. Jenning, C. Möllmann, and B. Planque (2009). Sensitivity of marine systems to climate and fishing: Concepts, issues and management responses. Journal of Marine Systems. www.sciencedirect. com/science/article/B6VF5-4VNH3V7-J/2/ fcd5d7d7c15892de9845e14e57b8816a Quero, J.C., M.H. Du Buit, J.L. Laborde, and J.J. Vayne (2000). Observations ichtyologiques effectuées en 1999. Annales de la Société des sciences naturelles de la Charente-Maritime 8: 1039–1045. Reise, K., N. Dankers, and K. Essink (2005). Introduced species. In: K. Essink, C. Dettmann, H. Farke, K. Laursen, G. Lüerßen, H. Marencic, and W. Wiersinga (eds.). Wadden Sea
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quality status report 2004. Wilhelmshaven: Common Wadden Sea Secretariat, 155–161. Reynolds, J.D., T.J. Webb, and L.A. Hawkins (2005). Life history and ecological correlates of extinction risk in European freshwater fishes. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences 62: 854–862. Sarmiento, J.L., R. Slater, R. Barber, L. Bopp, S.C. Doney, A.C. Hirst, J. Kleypas, R. Matear, U. Mikolajewicz, P. Monfray, J. Orr, V. Soldatov, S.A. Spall, and R. Stouffer (2005). Response of Ocean Ecosystems to Climate Warming. Global Biogeochemical Cycles 18 (GB3033): 1–23. Schmittner, A. (2005). Decline of the marine ecosystem caused by a reduction in the Atlantic overturning circulation. Nature 434: 628–633.
Stige, L.C., G. Ottersen, K. Brander, K.S. Chan, and N.C. Stenseth (2006). Cod and climate: Effect of the North Atlantic Oscillation on recruitment in the North Atlantic. Marine Ecology Progress Series 325: 227–241. Teal, L.R., J.J. Leeuw, H.W. van der Veer, and A.D. Rijnsdorp (2008). Effects of climate change on growth of 0-group sole and plaice. Marine Ecology Progress Series 358: 219–230. Thompson, B.M., and J.D. Riley (1981). Egg and larval development studies in the North Sea cod (Gadus morhua L.). Rapports et Procèsverbaux des Réunions du Conseil International pour l’Exploration de la Mer 178: 553–559.
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ECOSYSTEM CONSERVATION AND FISHERIES MANAGEMENT
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10 Conservation of Biodiversity and Fisheries Management JAKE RICE LORI RIDGEWAY
10.1. INTRODUCTION Fisheries and marine biodiversity are inextricably linked—not only through the prosecution of fisheries in oceans ecosystems, but across the continuum of international obligations, policy frameworks and standards, management institutions and tools, and science support needed to choose responsible strategies and tactics for management. The role of responsible fishing in helping to maintain biodiversity health—defined as maintaining the general species composition, the trophic diversity of biotic communities, and the functional integrity of habitats—is broadly recognized. Critics outside the fishing community (which includes fisheries policy, management, and science experts, plus industry participants and dependent communities) often argue that fishing interests are cavalier about their role in marine biodiversity loss. These critics question the efficacy of fisheries management approaches and whether fishing can be counted on as part of the solution to better protection of ecosystems and biodiversity. Widespread and continuing evidence of depleted and overfished stocks and species has not helped to alter perceptions in these regards and fosters distrust of those engaged in managing (or prosecuting) fisheries. On the other hand, within the fishing community, the broader “biodiversity agenda”—championed by environmental governmental interests and
nongovernmental organizations—is often seen as hostile to sectoral and fishing community interests. The motives of the “biodiversity agenda” are suspected of including a willingness to shut down fishing to achieve ecosystem “preservation.” Aggressive criticism of management measures, taken by fishing authorities to promote responsible stewardship, for failure to “adequately” reduce fishing effort and close areas to fishing through favored tools of marine protected areas (MPAs), has not helped to alter perceptions of fishing stakeholders or managers in these regards. Biodiversity protection and fisheries are thus too often perceived to be opposed agendas, championed by distinct “expert” communities in separate forums. A consequence is processes that address fisheries and ecosystems/biodiversity on separate— or even competing—tracks, each failing to embrace the expertise and knowledge (much less policy approaches) of the other community. This makes it difficult to achieve the synergies necessary for integrated, holistic approaches to sustainable fisheries and biodiversity conservation. This chapter examines the linkages between fisheries and biodiversity, showing how the entire continuum needs to function as an integrated whole to achieve both conservation and sustainable use. It can do so, necessarily, only in a high-level manner, which does not do justice to the complexity of linkages across the biodiversity and fishing agendas.
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10.2. THE INTERACTIONS OF FISHERIES WITH BIODIVERSITY Fisheries—even well-managed ones—affect biodiversity in a variety of ways: through directed catches, impacts on nontarget species, and impacts on fish habitats. This is no different than terrestrial human activities, some of which are even designed to reduce biodiversity (e.g., crop agriculture). However, when fishing depletes stocks below sustainable levels, normal effects are amplified and new negative interactions may result, especially through dynamic and unsustainable changes in the structure and functioning of the affected ecosystems. The effects may alter biodiversity at the scales of communities, populations and genetic diversity, and habitat quality (International Council for the Exploration of the Sea [ICES] 2000, 2001; Lokkeborg 2005; Rice 2005). The following are key pathways of impact of fisheries on biodiversity.
10.2.1. Direct Mortality on Target Stocks Even when fishing occurs at sustainable rates, a fishery will alter the abundance and size of the target species, as well as any species taken consistently as bycatch. Jurisdictions commonly set management targets for stock biomass below 50 percent of unexploited biomass and set limits often as much as 20–30 percent of unexploited biomass (Mace 1994). Sustainable fishing mortality rates often double total mortality rates of stocks, such that older fish become much less common in the population. Fisheries also reduce population densities, often allowing both the growth rate and survivorship of juvenile fish to increase due to alleviation of density-dependent pressures (Goodwin et al. 2006). As a population becomes increasingly dominated by younger, fastergrowing fish, productivity initially increases. However, many other life history traits, such as age of sexual maturation, may also change if exploitation is high. The life history changes can eventually reduce productivity of a stock because younger, smaller breeders often produce fewer, lower quality eggs per kilogram of size and alter the role of a stock in the ecosystem, as smaller fish feed on smaller prey and support a different size distribution of predators (Bianchi et al. 2002; Pope et al. 2006). Hence, even sustainably managed fisheries have consequences for the structure and function of the
larger ecosystem. In fisheries where many of the larger species are exploited, the aggregate effects on the community dynamics can be noteworthy, even without any single species being seriously overexploited.
10.2.2. Overfishing All the ecosystem impacts described for sustainable harvesting of target species become amplified if a stock is seriously overfished. Overfishing can erode the ability of a population to replace itself, as large fecund adults comprise a decreasing portion of the population, and all ages vulnerable to the fishery suffer high mortality. In addition, with both abundance and size composition further compromised, changes in the role of the species in the food web are also amplified. Ecosystems increasingly composed of smaller individuals experience increased competition among smaller fish, favoring species (and individuals) that mature at smaller sizes and often younger ages. When a number of the larger species in an ecosystem are all overexploited, the entire size composition of the community is altered. Large predators become rare, with much more ecosystem biomass packaged in small individuals with short life expectancies (Piet and Jennings 2004). This makes communities less resilient to other perturbations, because large numbers of long-lived individuals give the population a “buffer” against short-term environmental fluctuations, which is diminished as the population is reduced. Perhaps most important, there is increasing evidence that, whereas population and ecosystem effects of fishing at sustainable rates are usually reversible in reasonable time frames, the effects of overfishing may not be. At the level of populations, there is increasing evidence of a genetic component to most major life history traits that are affected by fishing, such that overfishing selects (in the evolutionary sense) for some kinds of traits and against others. These changes in genetic makeup and diversity of a population may occur after only a few generations of severe overfishing yet may take generations to reverse, even if overfishing ends (Jorgensen et al. 2007). Likewise, there is growing evidence that the changes in food webs and size composition of a heavily exploited community may result in what are known as “trophic cascades.” Species once held at relatively low abundance due to predation by large species of fish increase greatly in abundance, when their predators are overfished. In turn their
Conservation of Biodiversity and Fisheries Management increased abundance puts increasing predation pressure on their own prey, depressing populations of their prey, just as prior to overfishing, they had been held down by their own predators (Oesterblom et al. 2006; Scheffer et al. 2005). These waves of predator–prey fluctuations may reconfigure the entire food web, which may be very slow to recover, even if fishing on larger species were greatly reduced.1
10.2.3. Bycatches Few fisheries are so selective that they take only the species that they target. Species taken as bycatch experience all the same changes in life history characteristics, size composition, and potential ecological role that a target species would experience. The degree of ecosystem impact depends on two key factors: the catchability of the bycatch species, and its productivity and sustainable mortality rate. As a generalization, commercial fisheries strive to harvest target species efficiently. Consequently, good fishing strategies and gears should be able to retain the target species and avoid or allow release of nontargeted bycatch species. Hence, it could be argued that if a fishery is sustainable with regard to the target species, it should be even more likely sustainable with regard to bycatch species. However, there are circumstances where this would not be true. If the habits or shape of a nontargeted species makes it particularly vulnerable to a fishing gear and/or a fishing strategy, then catchability of the bycatch species could even be higher than for the target species (Catchpole et al. 2005). In other cases, bycatch species could be less productive (Musick 1999) than the target species. Even with a lower absolute exploitation rate than the target species, the lower productivity alone would mean such bycatch species could suffer serious overexploitation and decline, even if the abundance of the target species were comparatively stable (Jennings et al. 1998; Walker and Heessen 1996). This situation is particularly true when long-lived, slow-growing species, such as some sharks (www.fao.org/fishery/ ipoa-sharks/en) and seabirds (www.fao.org/fishery/ ipoa-seabirds), are taken in fishing gears.
10.2.4. Habitat Impacts of Fishing Gears There are a number of major reviews of the ways that fishing gears affect seafloor species, communities,
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and habitats (Barnes and Thomas 2005; Lokkeborg 2005). The impacts can include direct damage to structurally complex habitat features; direct mortality of individual benthic organisms due to physical impacts; injuries to benthic individuals making them more vulnerable to other sources of mortality such as disease, predation, or starvation; or indirect harm due to increasing sediment and/or nutrients in the water column (ICES 2001). All gears that have a likelihood of contacting the seabed may have such impacts, although impacts tend to increase as gears are heavier, have a larger surface area in contact with the seabed, and are towed at greater speeds when in contact with the seabed. The consequences of these impacts vary greatly depending on diverse circumstances. Gear impacts can increase total mortality of the benthic populations. Such increased mortality favors species with fast growth rates, rapid maturation rates, and small sizes at maturity, while reducing the abundance of long-lived and slow-growing species, with the concomitant changes in the benthic community. Some benthic species are sessile and have fragile or brittle shells or exterior structures, further increasing their vulnerability to gear impacts. Fishing gear can also affect the physical habitats of the seabed itself. Soft bottoms with sediments, sand, and mud can be stirred up and suspended but generally resettle after disturbances (although animals buried in sediments may be killed). Hard bottoms, particularly if they contain strong threedimensional structures, may be permanently altered in ways that reduce their complexity (Lindeboom and deGroot 1998; National Research Council 2005). This can have significant secondary consequences for animals that may have used such structures for shelter, feeding, and so forth. Sometimes the physical structure is itself biogenic, as with corals and sponge reefs, resulting in both types of negative consequences at the same time, which may require very long periods for recovery. Or the epibenthic community could be habitat for fish, and structural alterations could reduce its functional value to species that depend on the habitat for shelter or feeding (Auster 2005; Costello et al. 2005).
10.2.5. Reducing the Threats of Fishing to Biodiversity None of these potential effects of fishing on biodiversity are new to the fishing expert community, and most can largely be addressed through the
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application of well-known management principles. Strategies to mitigate the undesirable impacts of fishing on biodiversity are generally known, as are the circumstances needed for them to be effective, and many mitigation measures have been at least partially enacted. Generally, sustainable exploitation rates can be achieved by matching harvest rate to productivity of the single species stocks, ensuring that all fish taken by fishing gear are accounted for under harvest limits (i.e., not just the portion of the catch that is legally landed) and distributing the catch broadly over the stock components and sizes (Walters and Martell 2004). Specialized circumstances, such as recovery from past overfishing, may require additional measures to manage specific risks, such as paying attention to sex ratios in the catch or selectively targeting or avoiding some specific ages or sizes. When serious overfishing has occurred, recovery of the depleted stock may require more draconian measures over long time frames and as part of comprehensive recovery plans. Addressing unsustainable bycatches requires, in principle, the same type of approach as addressing overfishing of target species. Management measures and strategies may be harder to develop and apply, because both fisheries data collection and biological knowledge of bycatch species are often poorer than for targeted species, but the concepts are the same. This includes the acceptance of some level of impact on bycatch species, as long as the impact is sustainable. However, for the bycatch species in a fishery, it may be adequate to identify the few species with high catchability and particularly vulnerable life histories that can only sustain the lowest exploitation rates. If a fishery is managed such that these species do not suffer an unsustainable mortality rate, then more productive and less vulnerable species should also not suffer unsustainable impacts (ICES 2001; Rice 2005). The first steps toward addressing the detrimental impacts of fishing and overfishing on communities are simply to ensure that the single species exploitation rates of targeted and bycatch species are all sustainable. This in itself, maintained over time, will allow many community-scale impacts to at least begin recovery. However, most food webs and ecosystems do have some species that play particularly important roles, either as essential prey for some (often many) species of predators, or as “keystone” predators regulating the abundance of
many prey species (Hunt and McKinnel 2006; Mills et al. 1993; Yodzis 1996). Such species require special consideration in an ecosystem approach to management. Again, strategies for accommodating essential forage species in ecosystem approaches to management are well developed and proven (American Fisheries Society 1997; Croxall et al. 1992). Strategies for considering top-down control of predators in management strategies are much less fully developed but are under active discussion (Lessard et al. 2005). Fisheries must deal explicitly with the impacts of fishing gear on benthic populations, communities, and habitats. Strategies for achieving this usually involve spatial management measures (e.g., gear exclusion zones, MPAs), such that the likelihood of potentially harmful gears seriously and adversely affecting particularly vulnerable benthic features is managed directly. However, measures to modify the operation of the gears, substitute less damaging gears for more damaging ones, and occasionally just alter the timing of fishery may also contribute to reducing habitat impacts of a fishery (Lokkeborg 2005). Scientific advice for fisheries management is giving increasing attention to both the biodiversity impacts and appropriate mitigation measures for specific fisheries. If both the general effects of fishing on biodiversity and strategies to address them are known and case-specific advice is forthcoming, why is the ecosystem approach to fisheries (EAF) broadly considered a relatively new development? A key consideration is that until recently the policy environments and institutions for managing fisheries and for conserving biodiversity have evolved largely independently of each other.
10.3. THE EVOLVING POLICY ENVIRONMENT The international legal basis for management of marine fisheries derives from the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS; United Nations 1982). UNCLOS governs obligations on sectoral use of oceans, with obligations and rights generally organized according to maritime zones, and deals explicitly with dependent species. For straddling and highly migratory fish stocks, specific obligations are further delineated in the U.N. Fish Stocks Agreement (UNFSA; United Nations 1995), which formalizes high-level standards for effective
Conservation of Biodiversity and Fisheries Management and compatible domestic and international management of such fish stocks. UNFSA specifically mandates mechanisms for international cooperation (regional fisheries management organizations [RFMOs] and arrangements as discussed further in chapter 36) and includes principles for ecosystembased management (part II, article 5) and the precautionary approach (part II, article 6) to fisheries management. Although discrete (nonstraddling) high-seas stocks are not covered by a similar legal tool, it is widely recognized that, where relevant, the broad principles of UNFSA apply also to these stocks. Regional and national legislation and regulatory frameworks implement the obligations of international law and are a critical part of the international legal regime. The legal obligations contained for fisheries are further detailed through various “soft-law” tools (e.g., the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization [FAO] Code of Conduct on Responsible Fisheries [FAO 1995] and a wide range of guidelines and annexes underlying its components), various voluntary FAO international plans of action (capacity, illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, sharks, and seabirds) that morally obligate states to develop national plans of action. Aside from the Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, UNCLOS, UNFSA, and the subsequent provisions of most regional fisheries management conventions have focused first on the conservation and management of target species in fisheries, even though UNCLOS and UNFSA acknowledge that management authorities have wider ecosystem responsibilities. The Convention on Biological Diversity (1992) has been ratified by most states that have also ratified UNCLOS and UNFSA. Many of its provisions were reinforced and have had their application interpreted explicitly as forward-looking political commitments in the marine contexts through various provisions of the World Summit on Sustainable Development, and the resultant Johannesburg Plan of Implementation, and ongoing Resolutions of the U.N. General Assembly (Resolution on Sustainable Fisheries and Omnibus Resolution on Oceans and the Law of the Sea).2 Together, these agreements commit states to conserve marine biodiversity through the management of human activities in the sea, including the diversity of communities, species, populations, genes, and habitat, with many provisions relevant to the management of marine capture fisheries.
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The fisheries policy and management community has been aware of many of these biodiversity commitments for some time, but fisheries commitments have received priority over biodiversity-related instruments or U.N. political commitments, even though United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) commitments were incorporated into the Code of Conduct for Responsible Fishing just three years after UNCED. Fisheries interests are unequivocally loyal to UNCLOS and, as relevant, UNFSA, which are instruments oriented to respecting sectoral rights and obligations in oceans. Awareness is greatest for initiatives of the specialized U.N. agency responsible for fisheries, the FAO. Notwithstanding explicit provisions in the code, fisheries interests display much less awareness of the relevant provisions of the Conservation of Biological Diversity and its Marine Program of Work (the Jakarta Mandate: Convention on Biological Diversity 1995); provisions that are often the concern of other ministries (often of the environment). The FAO responded to calls for greater focus on ecosystem-based management approaches by elaborating the Code of Conduct and facilitating negotiation of the Reykjavik Declaration on Sustainable Fisheries -2001 (FAO 2002), wherein states agreed to adopt an EAF. Subsequent FAO technical guidelines for the application of the ecosystem approach in fisheries further delineate a specific voluntary management “standard” for EAF. These were being augmented by technical guidelines for the management of deep-sea fisheries on the high seas and the protection of vulnerable marine ecosystems in 2009 (FAO 2009).
10.4. POLICY AND MANAGEMENT IMPLICATIONS OF THESE CHALLENGES: BUILDING COHERENT ECOSYSTEM APPROACHES Although fisheries can have (and often have had) detrimental consequences for biodiversity, we have argued above that sufficient knowledge and tools exist to at least improve performance of fisheries management, and that States have made policy commitments to do so. Nonetheless, high-profile critics of fisheries stress the threats that fisheries pose to biodiversity, and are often scathingly critical of the
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pace of fisheries reform (Jackson et al. 2001; Worm et al. 2006). This broader attention has raised the stakes on fisheries management reform, including fuller implementation of EAF. The onus is now on the fisheries management system to show that it can adequately reform itself to implement needed measures to contribute to conservation and protection of biodiversity, and greater sustainability of its use. There are reasons why progress is likely to be slower than some may desire. Despite the broader appreciation of the effects on biodiversity from fishing, including possible risks of accelerated biodiversity loss from unsustainable fishing, there are a large number of players, institutions, and organizations addressing such risks, often with divergent assumptions regarding the efficacy of solutions and tolerances for the risks. They also interact in a very public setting, partly because fishing is possibly the industry activity with the broadest ecological impact on the ocean ecosystems, the greatest community dependencies, and possibly because of better information on—and broader reporting about—the state of fish stocks than about other threats to biodiversity (the “streetlamp” effect). The necessary fisheries management reforms may also be challenged domestically by lack of scientific knowledge, institutional capacity or political willingness to institute reform, given the possibly high political and immediate cost they may imply. Internationally all these challenges can be magnified by weaknesses in management authorities and international cooperation. Fortunately knowledge, capacity, cooperation, and political will can be built, but an enabling policy environment is needed to assure progress on these commitments. Is this the case currently? A coherent agenda in managing fisheries in a biodiversity context must expect, and enable, various players to play to their strengths. This includes fisheries management authorities and related stakeholders (i.e., “let fishery managers manage”). At the same time the biodiversity challenges must be taken seriously if the sector is to be credible at the biodiversity table. In respect of biodiversity, responsible fisheries must ensure that avoidable negative impacts on biodiversity are indeed avoided, and unavoidable ones are managed to ensure that their impacts are sustainable, using the available tools. Moreover, as will be discussed below, there needs to be a more common understanding and agreement on what is “sustainable” among the various communities.
There has been an impressive and increasingly proactive use of the U.N. to confirm global political direction across the range of key international forums—fishing and otherwise—that are then taken up in specialized forums to enact in terms of guidelines, research and monitoring. The annual United Nations General Assembly Resolution on Sustainable Fisheries signals the emerging political commitments in respect of fisheries and ecosystems. Examples include, among numerous other commitments, commitments to manage incidental impacts of fishing on nontarget species, implement special measures on vulnerable fisheries species, and most recently on the requirements of responsible fishing in avoiding significant adverse impacts on vulnerable marine ecosystems. However the U.N. generally cannot, and should not, become a substitute for specialized forums and their authorities setting specific and detailed management standards. Moreover, U.N. Resolutions trigger actions by many agencies, and these actions must be coordinated, if not collaborated (see chapter 36). The challenges in this context are particularly apparent in the context of the high seas. For high-seas fisheries, the international review and reform of RFMOs is a major step to ensuring that management authorities are adequately informed about the risks that need to be addressed and the tools available to mitigate them, are both competent and appropriately authorized to apply the tools, and accountable for the consequences of using (or not using or not complying with) them.3 More broadly, the Convention on Biological Diversity (which has adopted the code as the instrument of choice to implement the Convention on Biological Diversity provisions in fisheries) undertakes scientific work and thematic reviews on numerous high seas biodiversity issues. The International Union for Conservation of Nature also supports research and builds tools for practical use in conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity. It is also deeply involved in debate on policy issues, with resolutions that often contribute importantly to international agenda setting. Informal global processes, such as the biennial Global Forum on Oceans, Coasts, and Islands (www.globaloceans.org/), are dedicated to informal reviews of progress against a range of international commitments and include a broad range of oceans stakeholders and international institutions, as well as fostering linkages between developed and developing countries. The Global Environment Facility provides significant funding that can be leveraged
Conservation of Biodiversity and Fisheries Management into needed capacity building mechanisms for developing countries in these respects. Actions in all these forums may be triggered by the same U.N. resolution, and fisheries can benefit from all the initiatives to provide information on emerging risks and potential responses. However, for the products of the different initiatives to work together there must be integrated knowledge tools and objective science-based diagnostic and prioritysetting tools, at the level of fisheries and in spatially oriented approaches (Belfiore et al. 2004; Clark et al. 2006; International Maritime Organization 2005). What types of policy environments and institutional practices produce such products and tools in ways that maintain the confidence of fisheries practitioners and stakeholders, particularly if they arise from forums not drawing from that community (e.g., the Convention on Biological Diversity Conferences of Parties)? What would create a willingness for these other forums to trust the fisheries practitioners, and to use their products appropriately?4
10.4.1. Contributions of Traditional Stock Management Unequivocally, the robustness of the regime for comprehensive fisheries management even on single stocks is a sine qua non for better biodiversity outcomes. This involves overcoming the entire range of fisheries governance challenges determining optimal exploitation, respect of international and national management regimes (including compliance), measurement of the impacts of management on fisheries outcomes, and calibration of management. Moreover, industry stakeholders themselves must face the correct incentives to avoid overinvesting in effort and capital and to be compliant with established management measures. This generally implies increased use of economic instruments in management regimes, thus aligning incentives for responsible stewardship (which should also be coherent throughout the entire fisheries value chain: harvesting, processing, trade, and consumers). The international policy environment is increasingly focused on this alignment through discussions on policy coherence, and unilateral measures are also being taken in major market states to force this process (i.e., by asking for certification that fisheries products have been caught in compliance with international management standards). In some markets, private operators (e.g., retailers, buyers) are doing likewise through the use of their buying power.
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Overall, while strong single-species management is a major downpayment on ecosystem approaches to management, it is well known that the more myopic the management regime in scope or space, the more precautionary should be planning, both of management and of development.
10.4.2. Importance of Ecosystem Approaches to Management But the real glue between sectoral management and oceans health and biodiversity protection is the definitive implementation of EAF, nested in linked multisectoral approaches to biodiversity protection, itself based on common buy-in to ecological/environmental goals, ecosystem assessments, and management targets. In policy terms, this is the nesting of ecosystem-based fisheries governance into integrated oceans governance (Ridgeway 2009). This makes the integration of science, management, and policy across many dimensions (including disciplines, sectors, and geographically) essential—an idea developed further in chapter 36. For individual industry sectors such as fishing, the debate about whether or not an ecosystem approach to management will—or should—be taken is long over. The dialogue is about how to implement such an approach, not if it should be implemented. EAF requires that within an ecosystem approach, policy, and management should take account of (1) effects of external influences on resources being used, (2) intraecosystem interactions, and (3) the full impact of the activity on the ecosystem (FAO 2003; Garcia and Cochrane 2005; Rice et al. 2005). These components make integration of science, management, and policy across a much wider range of interests essential. First, simply in accounting for environmental influences on stocks and the ecosystem effects of fishing, it is necessary to consider the status of ecosystem components other than those being harvested in a fishery. Moreover, fisheries policy and management cannot address the sustainability of fishery impacts on nontargeted ecosystem components only in a narrow sectoral management framework. The core question of what is a “sustainable fisheries impact” is not solely a question for fisheries managers. Even for targeted stocks, with a common economic currency, the policy debate about the “acceptable” impact has been long and complex. For the impacts of fisheries on parts of the
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ecosystem that are not marketed commercially, dialogue both on what is “acceptable” and regarding who should pay the immediate and the long-term costs of mitigation (and, where necessary, remediation) has to engage many interest groups with different perspectives and values. In parallel with the different perspectives on what is an acceptable impact on an ecosystem component or components, there may well be authorities other than fisheries management agencies that have both jurisdiction and accountability for conservation, protection, and sustainable use ecosystem components affected by fishing. Although fisheries may have priority in decisions about allocation of use rights (and related human impacts on fish stocks among fishery users), that same priority cannot be assumed for the overall impact on the ecosystem. For example, protected species and environmental quality legislation is commonly administered, at least in part, by environment agencies rather than fisheries agencies. In addition, many activities other than just harvesting fish occur in oceans and seas. Many of these may be affecting some of the same ecosystem components that are being affected by fishing, often with such effects much more poorly documented. In coastal zone management in particular, fisheries are just one of several players sharing both ocean space and impacts on coastal resources, and sometimes not as a dominant player. Thus, as conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity gain increasing policy profile, fisheries become only one of many players on a more level field. This is challenging traditional views of stakeholder primacy within marine use debates in areas where fishing is predominant (as it is also for other users in areas where fishing is not the major ocean industry). Traditional behavior associated with active collaboration among diverse players, in any context, requires dialogue on mutual benefit before active and trusting engagement can be expected. This has not necessarily been a characteristic of the biodiversity agenda up to now, regarding fisheries and nonfishing (especially environmental) interests. Historical distrust among the fisheries and biodiversity communities from the stakeholder level to the most senior policy levels often impedes constructive dialogue on challenges that can only be resolved collaboratively (Ridgeway 2009). Moreover, this kind of strategic cross-sectoral and cross-disciplinary dialogue has not been as evident as might be desired among international
institutions responsible for these diverse agendas. Too rarely have fisheries experts conducted their business as if they were well informed of the implications for fisheries interests of developments in the biodiversity agenda. Coincidently, equally rarely have fisheries interests—including those within the FAO—been actively invited to engage in expertlevel Convention on Biological Diversity initiatives on marine biodiversity, even those relating to fishing. Expert groups advising fisheries agencies and biodiversity agencies on inextricably interrelated problems often have few or no members in common. This greatly enhances the risks that the expert advice will point the different agencies toward different, and possibly incompatible, solutions to each agency’s portion of the common problem, and that each agency will consider the choices of the other agencies unsound and posing unacceptable risks. The unfortunate result has been forum-hopping of initiatives to find agendas of maximum successes and minimum interference from opposing perspectives. Even where the formal mandates of fisheries and biodiversity agencies limit the degree of integration possible on policy and management development, the simple step of seeking their scientific and technical advice from a common set of experts, including the full range of responsible and nonadvocacy interpretational perspectives, could enhance the coherence of all the subsequent policy development, by ensuring the agencies all begin with a common understanding of the range of risks associated with the management options available. Such coherence is developing in some areas, such as between FAO and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora and between FAO and the Marine Stewardship Council within the fisheries sector, but is less evident more broadly. With the specialized institutions internationally clinging to their old constituencies, the integration of issues from increasingly internally coherent U.N. member states has again made U.N. resolutions (both Sustainable Fisheries Resolution and the Omnibus Resolution on Oceans and the Law of the Sea) a major integrating political framework that can be used to knit the agendas together. Thus, even though, as noted above, the U.N. should not become the substitute for effective sectoral-based development of policy and management, it seems often to be the key meeting point for constituencies that must work in an integrated way.
Conservation of Biodiversity and Fisheries Management
10.5. CONCLUSION This chapter has taken a broad and necessarily high-level initial view of how fisheries and biodiversity interact in the governance, management, and prosecution of fisheries. It argues that a continuum is required from international obligations, policy frameworks, and standards, through to management institutions and tools and scientific support for choosing both strategies and tactics for management and for understanding technical aspects of fisheries. The entire continuum needs to function as an integrated whole and to ensure that the collectivity of incentives for oceans users and domestic and international institutions is aligned toward conservation and sustainable use. Because fisheries and biodiversity interact at each point in the continuum, processes that address them in separate tracks are likely not to achieve their own objectives, much less find the synergies necessary for an integrated approach to either domestic or international governance. It is possible to have coherent fisheries and oceans governance without going to the controversial extreme of a formal global environment authority. Biodiversity and fisheries do not replace each other as management frameworks, nor are they opposed agendas. Ecosystem-based approaches to fisheries and integrated management of oceans are frameworks linking sectoral uses of oceans— such as in fisheries—and marine environmental and biodiversity cross-sectoral considerations. Fisheries management institutions are best placed to manage fisheries (i.e., at the level at which they should be managed and with relevant issues, as described above), but to be credible they must accept responsibility for considering and managing impacts of the fisheries on ecosystems, not just the target species, ensuring that the impacts are sustainable and that measures and considerations are transparent. Adoption and determined implementation of an ecosystem approach to managing fisheries provide the means to do this, complemented where relevant by other tools and mechanisms. Nonfishing institutions must share responsibility for integrating policy frameworks, targets, and commitments that realistically accommodate the realities of fishing as a major oceans user, realistic tolerance for sustainable impacts of fishing, and realistic expectations of biodiversity governance. The resultant policies need to respect the roles
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and responsibilities of stakeholders in the fishing sector, including welcoming the advice and perspectives of fishing experts who have long been immersed in issues related to the impacts of fishing on ecosystems.
Acknowledgments The opinions and interpretations presented in this chapter are those of the authors, who take sole responsibility for the content. They are not to be interpreted as policies or positions of the institution(s) by which the authors are employed.
Notes 1. Some of these changes would occur also naturally in relation to natural fluctuations that may boost populations of predators or preys. However, in natural ecosystem fluctuations, not all predator species would be affected in the manner that can be seen in seriously overfished situations. Such a situation leads to changes in communities that can be very hard to reverse 2. See, for example, United Nations General Assembly Resolution 63/111, Oceans and the Law of the Sea (United Nations 2008a) and United Nations General Assembly Resolution 63/112, Sustainable fisheries (United Nations 2008b). 3. The accountability of RFMOs is to their member states, through the governments of the member states and citizens of those states. However, there is no formal and central oversight of the performance of RFMOs. 4. This distrust of tools built by other agencies is not unique to fisheries management agencies. Biodiversity conservation agencies and organizations are sufficiently distrustful of fisheries (and other governmental) regulatory agencies that selection rules for their expert groups can exclude scientists employed directly by governments or RFMOs.
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Barnes, P.W., and T.P. Thomas (2005). Benthic Habitats and Effects of Fishing. American Fisheries Society Symposium 41. Washington, D.C.: American Fisheries Society. Belfiore, S., B. Cicin-Sain, and C. Ehler (eds.) (2004). Incorporating Marine Protected Areas into Integrated Coastal and Ocean Management: Principles and Guidelines. Gland, Switzerland: International Union for Conservation of Nature. Bianchi, G.L., H. Gislason, K. Graham, L. Hill, X. Jin, K. Koranteng, S. Manickchand-Heileman, I. Payá, K. Sainsbury, F. Sanchez, and K. Zwanenburg (2000). Impact of fishing on size composition and diversity of demersal fish communities. ICES Journal of Marine Science 57: 558–571. Catchpole,a, , T.L., C.L.J. Frid, a, and T.S. Gray (2005). Discards in North Sea fisheries: Causes, consequences and solutions. Marine Policy 29: 421–430. Convention on Biological Diversity (1995). Jakarta Mandate on Marine and Coastal Biological Diversity and the Convention on Biological Diversity. www.biodiv.org/programmes/areas/ marine/ Clark, M.R., D. Tittensor, A.D. Rogers, P. Brewin, T. Schlacher, A. Rowden, K. Stocks, and M. Consalvey (2006). Seamounts, Deep-Sea Corals and Fisheries: Vulnerability of Deep-Sea Corals to Fishing on Seamounts beyond Areas of National Jurisdiction. Cambridge, U.K.: United Nations Environment Program–World Conservation Monitoring Center. Conservation of Biological Diversity (1992). The Convention on Biological Diversity. www.cbd. int/convention/convention.shtml. Costello, M.J., M. McCrea, A. Freiwald, T. Lundälv, L. Jonsson, B.J. Bett, T.C.E. van Weering, H. de Haas, J.M. Roberts, and D. Allen (2005). Role of cold-water Lophelia pertusa coral reefs as fish habitat in the NE Atlantic. In: A. Freiwald and J.M. Roberts (eds.). Coldwater Corals and Ecosystems. Berlin: SpringerVerlag, pp. 771–805. Croxall, J.P., I. Everson, and D.G.M. Miller (1992). Management of the Antarctic krill fishery. Polar Record 28: 64–66. FAO (1995). Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries. Rome: United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. FAO (2002). Report of the Reykjavik Conference on Responsible Fishing. FAO Fisheries Report No. 658. Rome: United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. FAO (2003). Fisheries Management. 2. The Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries. FAO Technical Guidelines for Responsible Fisheries 4, Suppl. 2. Rome: United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.
FAO (2009). International Guidelines for the Management of Deep-Sea Fisheries on the High Seas. FAO Fisheries Technical Report 881. Rome: United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. Garcia, S.M., and K.L. Cochrane (2005). Ecosystem approach to fisheries: A review of implementation guidelines. ICES Journal of Marine Science 62: 311–318. Goodwin, N.B., A. Grant, A.L. Perry, N.K. Dulvy, and J.D. Reynolds (2006). Life history correlates of density-dependent recruitment in fisheries. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences 63: 494–509. Hunt, G.L., and S. McKinnell (2006). Interplay between top-down, bottom-up, and waspwaist control in marine ecosystems. Progress in Oceanography 68: 115–124. ICES (2000). Report of the ICES Advisory Committee on the Marine Environment. ICES Cooperative Research Report 241. Copenhagen: International Council for the Exploration of the Sea. ICES (2001). Report of the ICES Advisory Committee on Ecosystems. ICES Cooperative Research Report 249. Copenhagen: International Council for the Exploration of the Sea. International Maritime Organization (2005). Revised Guidelines for the Identification and Designation of Particularly Sensitive Sea Areas. International Maritime Organization Assembly Resolution A.982(24). www.imo. org/includes/blastDataOnly.asp/data_idpercent3D14373/982.pdf Jackson, J.B.C., M.X. Krby, W.H. Berger, K.A. Bjorndal, et al. (2001). Historical overfishing and the recent collapse of coastal ecosystems. Science 293: 629–638. Jennings, S.J., J.D. Reynolds, and S.C. Mills (1998). Life history correlates of responses to fisheries exploitation. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London 265: 333–339. Jorgensen, C., K. Enberg, E.S. Dunlop, R. Arlinghaus, D.S. Boukal, K. Brander, B. Ernande, A. Gårdmark, F. Johnston, S. Matsumura, H. Pardoe, K. Raab, A. Silva, A. Vainikka, U. Dieckmann, M. Heino, and A.D. Rijnsdorp (2007). Ecology: Managing evolving fish stocks. Science 318(5854): 1247–1252. Lessard, R.B., S.J.D. Martell, C.J. Walters, T.E. Essington, and J.F. Kitchell (2005). Should ecosystem management involve active control of species abundances? Ecology and Society 10(2): 1–23. Lindeboom, H., and S.J. deGroot (1998). The Effects of Different Types of Fisheries on the North Sea and Irish Sea Benthic Ecosystems. NIOZ-Rapport 1998-1. Texel: Netherlands Institute for Sea Research. Lokkeborg, S. (2005). Impacts of Trawling and Scallop Dredging on Benthic Habitats and
Conservation of Biodiversity and Fisheries Management Communities. FAO Fisheries Technical Paper 472. Rome: United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. Mace, P.M. (1994). Relationships between common biological reference points used as thresholds and targets of fisheries management strategies. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Science 51: 110–122. Mills, L.S., M.E. Soulé, and D.F. Doak (1993). The keystone-species concept in ecology and conservation. BioScience 43: 219–224. Musick, J.A. (1999). Ecology and conservation of long-lived marine animals. In: JA Musick (ed.) Life in the Slow Lane: Ecology and Conservation of Long-Lived Marine Animals. American Fisheries Society Symposium 23. Washington, D.C.: American Fisheries Society, pp. 1–10. National Research Council (2002). Effects of Trawling and Dredging in Seafloor Habitat. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. Oesterblom, H., M. Casini, O. Olsson, and A. Bignert (2006). Fish, seabirds and trophic cascades in the Baltic Sea. Marine Ecology Progress Series 323: 233–238. Piet, G.J., and S.L. Jennings (2004). Response of potential fish community indicators to fishing. ICES Journal of Marine Science 62: 214–225. Pope, J.G., J.C. Rice, N. Daan, H. Gislason, and S.L. Jennings (2006). Modelling an exploited marine fish community with 15 parameters— results from a charmingly simple size-based model. ICES Journal of Marine Science 63: 1029–1044. Rice, J.C. (ed.) (2005). Ecosystem Effects of Fishing: Impacts, Metrics, and Management Strategies. ICES Cooperative Research Report 272. Copenhagen: International Council for the Exploration of the Sea. Rice, J.C., V. Trujillo, S. Jennings, K. Hylland, O. Hagstrom, A. Astudillo, and J.N. Jensen (2005). Guidance on the Application of the Ecosystem Approach to Management of Human Activities in the European Marine Environment. ICES Cooperative Research Report 273. Copenhagen: International Council for the Exploration of the Sea. Ridgeway, L.R. (2009). Governance beyond Areas of National Jurisdiction: Linkages to Sectional Management. Oceanis 35–1/2. Towards a
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New Governance of High Seas Biodiversity. Paris: Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations. Scheffer, M., S. Carpenter, and B. de Young (2005). Cascading effects of overfishing marine systems. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 20: 579–581. United Nations (1982). United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea of 10 December 1982. New York: U.N. Office of Legal Affairs. United Nations (1995). Agreement for the Implementation of the Provisions of the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea of 10 December 1982 Relating to the Conservation and Management of Straddling Fish Stocks and Highly Migratory Fish Stocks. New York: U.N. Office of Legal Affairs. United Nations (2008a). General Assembly Resolution 63/111, Oceans and the Law of the Sea. www.un.org/Depts/los/general_assembly/general_assembly_resolutions.htm United Nations (2008b). General Assembly Resolution 63/112, Sustainable fisheries, including through the 1995 Agreement for the Implementation of the Provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea of 10 December 1982 relating to the Conservation and Management of Straddling Fish Stocks and Highly Migratory Fish Stocks, and related instruments. www.un.org/Depts/los/general_ assembly/general_assembly_resolutions.htm Walker, P.A., and H.J.L. Heessen (1996). Longterm changes in ray populations in the North Sea. ICES Journal of Marine Science 53: 1085–1093. Walters, C.J., and S.J.D. Martell (2004). Fisheries Ecology and Management. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Worm, B., E.B. Barbier, N. Beaumont, J.E. Duffy, C. Folke, B.S. Halpern, J.B.C. Jackson, H.K. Lotze, F. Micheli, S.R. Palumbi, E. Sala, K.A. Selkoe, J.J. Stachowicz, and R. Watson (2006). Impacts of biodiversity loss on ocean ecosystem services. Science 314(5800): 787–790. Yodzis, P. (1996). Food webs and perturbation experiments: Theory and practice. In: G.A. Polis and K.O. Winemiller (eds.). Food Webs: Integration of Patterns and Dynamics. New York: Chapman-Hall, pp. 133–149.
11 Minimizing Bycatch of Sensitive Species Groups in Marine Capture Fisheries: Lessons from Tuna Fisheries ERIC L. GILMAN CARL GUSTAF LUNDIN
11.1. INTRODUCTION 11.1.1. Ecological, Economic, and Social Issues Related to Fisheries Bycatch Bycatch in marine capture fisheries is the retained catch of nontargeted but commercially viable species (referred to as “incidental catch”) plus all discards (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations [FAO] 2005).1 It is an increasingly prominent international issue, raising ecological concerns, as some bycatch species of cetaceans (whales, dolphins, and porpoises), seabirds, sea turtles, elasmobranchs (sharks, skates, and rays), and other fish species are particularly vulnerable to overexploitation and slow to recover from large population declines (FAO 1999a, 1999b, in press; Fowler et al. 2005; Gales 1998; Gilman et al. 2005, 2006a, 2006c, 2008; Lutz and Musick 1997). Bycatch can alter biodiversity and ecosystem functions by removing top predators and prey species at unsustainable levels (Myers et al. 2007). It also alters foraging behavior of species that learn to take advantage of discards. Economic effects of bycatch on fisheries include loss of bait, reduced availability of baited hooks when they are occupied with unwanted bycatch species, and concomitant reduced catch of marketable species; the imposition of a range of restrictions, closed areas, embargos, and possible closures; allocation among fisheries, where bycatch
in one fishery reduces target catch in another, and bycatch of juvenile and undersized individuals of a commercial species can adversely affect future catch levels (Brothers et al. 1999; Hall et al. 2000). Discarded bycatch raises a social issue over waste: From 1992 to 2001 an average of 7.3 million metric tons of fish were annually discarded, representing 8 percent of the world catch (FAO 2005). Prominent bycatch issues include dolphins and porpoises in purse seine fisheries and driftnets; fish discards in shrimp trawl fisheries; and seabird, sea turtle, marine mammal, and shark bycatch in longline, purse seine, gillnet, and trawl fisheries (FAO 1999a, 1999b, 2005, in press; Hall et al. 2000). In commercial tuna fisheries, the incidental bycatch of sensitive species groups (seabirds, sea turtles, marine mammals, and sharks) and bycatch of juvenile and undersized tunas are allocation and conservation issues. In addition to problematic bycatch, overexploitation and illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing, which complicates bycatch management, are additional conservation issues facing the management of tuna fisheries. This chapter employs examples of bycatch in commercial tuna fisheries to describe (1) the range of options to reduce bycatch, (2) principles and approaches to successfully introduce effective bycatch reduction measures, and (3) initiatives taken by intergovernmental organizations, the fishing industry, and retailers to address bycatch. Changes needed to improve the sustainability of tuna production are recommended.
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11.1.2. Commercial Tuna Fisheries Purse seine, pelagic longline, and pole-and-line fisheries are the primary commercial fishing methods for catching tunas. Large longline vessels generally catch older age classes of bigeye and bluefin tunas for the sashimi market, and some longline fleets target albacore for canning (figure 11.1). Purse seine vessels catch younger age classes of target skipjack and yellowfin and incidental bigeye tunas for canning (a very small volume is used for tuna ranching) (Majkowski 2007) (figure 11.2). Like purse seiners, pole-and-line vessels catch fish close to the surface, catching mostly skipjack and small/juvenile yellowfin, albacore, and bluefin, primarily for canning (Majkowski 2007) (figures 11.3 and 11.4). Tuna products are an important food source and global commodity. They are the third most important seafood commodity traded in value terms (FAO 2007). The export value of 2004 internationally traded tuna products was US$6.2 billion (109), 8.7 percent of total global fish trade (FAO 2007). In 2005, 82 percent of world tuna was consumed as canned product, and 18 percent as fresh product (including as sashimi). Japan consumed 78 percent of the fresh tuna. In 2004, canned tuna consumption was highest in the European Union, followed by the United States, combined accounting for 83 percent of the total global consumption of canned tuna. Demand for both canned and fresh tuna has been rapidly and steadily increasing: the reported landings of the principal market species of tunas increased from less than 0.2 million metric tons in the early 1950s to a peak of 4.3 million metric tons in 2003, largely due to increased catch of tropical
Sea surface
FIGURE 11.2 Deployed purse seine. A purse seine is made of a long wall of netting framed with float line and lead line, with purse rings hanging from the lower edge of the gear, through which runs a purse line made from steel wire or rope, which allows the pursing of the net. Purse seine nets can be up to 1.5 km long and 150 m deep. (Courtesy FAO)
tunas (yellowfin and skipjack) by purse seiners (Majkowski 2007) (figure 11.5). Japan, Taiwan, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Spain accounted for half of 2004 reported landings (Majkowski 2007). Despite their high fecundity and wide distribution, of the 20 tuna stocks for which the status is known, at least five are “overfished,” meaning their biomass levels are below maximum sustainable yield (MSY) or other biological threshold. “Overfishing” is occurring for at least an additional four stocks, meaning the fishing mortality rate is higher than that which produces MSY or other threshold (Bayliff et al. 2005; Majkowski
Float Float line
Main line
Baited hook
Branch line
FIGURE 11.1 Basic configuration of a section (two baskets) of pelagic longline gear. Gear is suspended from line drifting freely in the pelagic environment, at depths anywhere from the sea surface to 400 m into the thermocline. Lines can be up to 100 km long and carry up to 3,500 baited hooks. Lengths, materials, design, and methods of setting and hauling vary among fisheries and among vessels in a fishery. (Courtesy E. Gilman)
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Ecosystem Conservation and Fisheries Management 2007). Increased purse seine catches of skipjack stocks that are only moderately exploited might be sustainable if gear is restricted to being deployed only on freeswimming skipjack schools. Increased longline and pole-and-line catches of moderately exploited albacore stocks might also be sustainable.
11.2. BYCATCH PROBLEMS IN TUNA FISHERIES Table 11.1 summarizes problems with bycatch of sea turtles, seabirds, marine mammals, sharks, and juvenile and undersized tunas in pelagic longline and purse seine fisheries. There are extremely low bycatch levels in pole-and-line fisheries, where bycatch that does occur consists of juvenile kawakawa tuna, frigate mackerel, mahi mahi, and rainbow runner. Discards are believed to have high postrelease survival rates due to the use of barbless hooks and flick-off practices (in which crew remove unwanted hooked fish by using a quick jerking motion).
11.3. MEASURES TO REDUCE BYCATCH AND MORTALITY
11.3 Pole-and-line vessel fishing for tuna. (Courtesy U.S. NOAA Fisheries photo library)
FIGURE
Table 11.2 summarizes general categories of strategies to reduce unwanted bycatch and mortality in marine capture fisheries. Table 11.3 summarizes the state of
11.4 Longline-caught bigeye and yellowfin tunas for sale at the Honolulu fish auction. (Courtesy Western Pacific Fishery Management Council)
FIGURE
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Minimizing Bycatch of Sensitive Species Groups 2,500,000 Tonnes
2,000,000 1,500,000 1,000,000 500,000 1986 1989 1992 1995 1998 2001
1950 1953 1956 1959 1962 1965 1968 1971 1974 1977 1980 1983
0
Year Purse seine 58% Pole-and-line 14%
Longline 15% Other gear 13%
Troll 1 indicates stock underexploitation. Arnason et al. (2000) calculate these indicators for northeast Arctic cod and Atlanto-Scandian herring. New and updated results for cod are found in Arnason et al. (2004) whereas Agnarsson et al. (2008) look at stochasticity and species interaction. In the Norwegian case, biological interaction between cod and capelin is considered. The harvest indicator reported in Arnason et al. (2004) for cod was 2.73 for the period from 1946 to 2000, which indicates a harvest that on average has been 2.73 times higher than the optimal. The stock indicator for the same period was 0.77, indicating that the stock on average has been 23 percent lower than it should be. TAC regulation for this stock was introduced after adoption of extended economic zones in 1977. Agnarsson et al. (2008) look at the period 1978–2004, which can be used to analyze the situation after introduction of TAC regulation. They report a harvest indicator of 3.42 and a stock indicator equal to 0.61. This indicates a trend toward increasing overexploitation over time and also shows that introduction of TAC regulation has not helped to prevent overexploitation in this case. It is further seen from Agnarsson et al. (2008) that adding a simple stochastic term to the biological submodel has very little effect on the results. Adding species interaction, on the other hand, does alter the results. Applying a bioeconomic predator– prey model with cod and capelin reduces the stock indicator for cod from 0.61 to 0.46 and increases the harvest indicator from 3.42 to 3.56. It is also interesting to notice that exploitation of capelin should be less in a predator–prey setting in order for some of the capelin to serve as food for the cod. For capelin, the harvest indicator increases from 2.24 to 3.71 and the stock indicator decreases from 0.35 to 0.31 when species interaction is taken into consideration. This illustrates that both stocks should be less exploited with species interaction. In the Norwegian case, it also illustrates that the capelin stock is more overexploited than the cod stock. However, we cannot generalize from the last result.
Whether adding species interaction implies lower optimal exploitation of both stocks depends on the relative costs and prices of the species and whether it is a predator–prey or a competition model. In a competition model, the less valuable species should typically be more exploited in order to reduce the competitive pressure. The economic exploitation pattern of AtlantoScandian herring was also studied by Arnason et al. (2000). The study began by looking at the period 1950–1997 and found a harvest overexploitation indicator of 1.97 and a stock indicator of 0.41. This means that the harvest on average had been twice its optimal level and the stock on average had only been 40 percent of its optimal level. By isolating the period 1960–1997 they excluded the “golden years” in the 1950s and put more emphasis on the troublesome period starting in the late 1960s, including the long era of harvest moratorium. This resulted in a harvest indicator of 1.78 and stock indicator of 0.23. As we can see, the harvest indicator suggested less overexploitation while the stock indicator indicated a more overexploited stock in this period. Initially, this may seem contradictory, but it can be easily explained. As the last period put greater emphasis on the era with moratorium, actual harvest was zero in many of these years and therefore the harvest overexploitation indicator was smaller. Yet the stock itself was in a poor state for the majority of this period—after all, this was the reason for the moratorium—and therefore the stock indicator suggested a high degree of overexploitation. In summary, while most of the stocks, especially the most important ones, are within safe biological limits at present, the stocks are still heavily overexploited from an economic point of view. This illustrates the old truth that economists are usually more conservative regarding fisheries management than are biologists.
27.4.4. Efficiency of the Fisheries Sector Thus far, we have looked at biological and economic overfishing by comparing actual harvest and stock levels with their optimal counterparts derived from dynamic optimization. That is, harvest has been treated as an endogenous variable. In this section we look at the question of whether the fishery is efficient for a given harvest. Harvest is now treated as an exogenous variable, and we look at
Norwegian Fisheries Management the problem of inefficiency due to overcapacity and excessive effort. The question addressed is whether Norwegian fisheries perform efficiently or whether the resource rent is exhausted due to excessive levels of capital and labor. This topic has been investigated by Steinshamn (2004) in a study for the Norwegian Ministry of Fisheries. The study applied a linear programming model for the Norwegian harvesting sector. The objective function in the model was to maximize resource rent defined as the gross revenue derived from harvesting minus fixed and variable costs. Fixed costs were associated with the vessels and variable costs with the harvest. The main side constraint was that the given harvest quotas could no be exceeded, nor could the physical catching capacities of the individual vessels. In addition, there were various technical constraints regarding bycatch as well as specific constraints for the individual runs of the model. The study covered 10 different fish species and 29 vessel groups with individual variable costs and prices for each vessel group for each species and individual fixed costs for each vessel group. The endogenous variables in this model were the number of vessels in each vessel group and catch per vessel of each species. In other words, the model determines optimal size and structure of the fleet and optimal quota allocation between the vessel groups. The conclusions from the study were that with the present fleet structure and catch distribution, there is virtually no resource rent that is realized. All the potential profit from the fishery is wasted on excessive catching capacity and inefficient allocation of the catch between vessels. If the vessels were allowed to freely redistribute catch between themselves and reduce the number of vessels accordingly, and the restriction on the reallocation from coastal vessels to large oceangoing vessels or vice versa was retained, then the resource rent would increase from virtually zero as it is at present, to between 34 and 41 percent of the first-hand value depending on the capital cost.4 If, in addition, the restriction on reallocation between coastal vessels and large vessels were removed, the resource rent would increase to between 40 and 46 percent of the first-hand value. If today’s fishing fleet is replaced by the most efficient vessels available within each vessel group, this by itself would increase the resource rent from zero to between 26 and 32 percent of the first-hand value, even when the catch allocation among vessel
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groups is exactly the same as it is today. However, in this model the investment costs in new vessels are not taken into account. In a new, updated fleet, if vessels are allowed to redistribute catch among themselves—but not between coastal vessels and large vessels—the rent will increase further by between 53 and 58 percent of the first-hand value. If all restrictions on catch allocation were removed, the resource rent may reach more than 60 percent of the first-hand value. In one sense, this study shows what is to be expected if the present catch allocation scheme is replaced by transferable quotas. The various outcomes illustrate two alternatives: the first involves transferable quotas only within the broader groups consisting of coastal vessels and large ocean-going vessels, and the second involves transferable quotas without restrictions. In addition, the effect of replacing the present vessels by new and more efficient vessels is also analyzed. In the case with fewest restrictions and new and more efficient vessels, the resource rent may increase from virtually zero to almost US$1.5 billion out of a landed value of US$2.5 billion. In other words, almost US$1.5 billion is wasted on excess capital and labor in the present situation. Similar results have been found by Asche et al. (2009) in an econometric study of the cod trawlers: by removing about two-thirds of the vessels in the fleet, a resource rent of about 60 percent of the first-hand value can be realized as opposed to virtually zero today. The implications of these studies call for fewer vessels and reduced number of fishermen. The present number of fishermen on full-time operated vessels at the time of the study was just above 10,000. Redistribution of catch would reduce this number by more than 50 percent. However, it is interesting to note that if the vessels were replaced by the most efficient vessels within each vessel group, the number of fishermen would slightly increase. This is due to some of the smallest vessels in the demersal fisheries becoming so cost-efficient that if they were renewed they would receive quotas from the less efficient trawlers and hence total labor employment would increase.5 In fact, with free redistribution within the broader groups, but not among them, total labor employment is almost 6,000 people and slightly less with completely free redistribution. This represents a reduction of 40 percent, which is less than if the vessels are not renewed. A renewal of all vessel groups will, in other words, give room for quite a few small vessels and hence higher labor employment.
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Case Studies in Governance
The question of whether reduced employment is positive or negative can be discussed. On one hand, there may be little alternative employment in some rural areas where fishing is an important part of the economy. On the other hand, the situation in Norway has for some time been characterized by excess demand for labor rather than unemployment. If the transition toward fewer vessels and fishermen is accomplished through an ITQ scheme, the process will be voluntary and it may take some time. In the end, the labor that is released from the fisheries sector can be used for more productive purposes. The next question that arises is whether there are any signs that the potential resource rent will be realized or whether it will continue to be virtually zero. There is no doubt that the Norwegian authorities are aware of the problem associated with overcapacity in the harvesting sector. Although individual vessel quotas in principle are not transferable, they have in practice been so for a long time. This is performed by selling a vessel together with the quota, and in many cases the vessel itself is sold back without quota. The authorities have done nothing to stop this practice, and in some fleet segments the practice has contributed to a significant reduction in overcapacity. Decommissioning schemes for old vessels financed by the government have been in place for various fleet segments for many years. In recent years, this has been financed partially by a so-called structure fee where the fishermen themselves pay 50 percent and the government pays the remaining 50 percent. The revenue from this is used to compensate fishermen for destruction of vessels combined with returning fishing rights. This, together with the structure quotas described above, has contributed to a significant reduction in overcapacity, although profitability is low and overcapacity still exists within certain fleet segments. The variation in profitability is still high between vessels and also between those fleet segments where the capacity has been adjusted to quotas compared to the fleet segments without such adjustment. This illustrates that the various schemes that have implemented by no means represent perfect substitutes for individually transferable quotas.
27.5. SUMMARY In this chapter we have given a short description of the Norwegian fisheries sector and a review of Norwegian fisheries management. The most important
fish species have been described as well as the size and structure of the fishing fleet. How quotas are determined and allocated, as well as other more specific aspects of the Norwegian management regime, has been described. Regarding performance of the fisheries sector and the management regime, some studies analyzing biological and economic overexploitation have been reviewed. The conclusions drawn from these studies are that while most of the stocks at present are within safe biological limits, they are far from being at their bioeconomic optimum levels. This result was found by comparing actual stock development and harvest patterns over time with the optimal development of the same variables based on dynamic optimization. A study analyzing the potential resource rent from the Norwegian fisheries sector and whether this potential has been realized was also reviewed. The conclusion from this study is that, at present, the realized resource rent is virtually zero, although the potential resource rent may be up to US$1.5 billion, which is equivalent to 60 percent of the firsthand value. In other words, there is a high degree of inefficiency due to overcapacity and suboptimal quota allocation among vessel groups. The Norwegian government has implemented a number of measures to reduce overcapacity and increase efficiency. Some of these measures, for example, the so-called structure quotas, can be considered as substitutes for ITQs, as ITQs do not seem to be politically acceptable in Norway. However, as they are only substitutes, they have not achieved the same improvement in efficiency as would be realized in a fully developed ITQ system.
Acknowledgments The author is grateful to Rögnvaldur Hannesson, Per Sandberg, and an anonymous referee for very useful suggestions and comments on an earlier draft of this chapter and to the Norwegian Research Council for financial support. The author is, of course, solely responsible for any remaining errors and shortcomings.
Notes 1. Throughout this chapter, we use an exchange rate of US$0.2 per NOK. 2. The 62nd latitude represents an important dividing line in Norwegian fisheries management.
Norwegian Fisheries Management 3. Resource rent is defined as return that comes in addition to normal return on capital and labor due to the existence of a natural resource, in this case fish stocks. 4. The highest estimate is calculated with 5 percent return on capital, whereas the lowest estimate is calculated with 10 percent return on capital. 5. There are three different trawler groups in the model.
References Agnarsson, S., R. Arnason, K. Johannisdottir, L. Ravn-Johnsen, L.K. Sandal, S.I. Steinshamn, and N. Vestergaard (2008). Comparative Evaluation of the Fisheries Policies in Denmark, Iceland and Norway: Multispecies and Stochastic Issues. SNF-Report 25/07. Bergen, Norway: Institute for Research in Economics and Business Administration. Arnason, R., L.K. Sandal, S.I. Steinshamn, N. Vestergaard, S. Agnarsson, and F. Jensen (2000). Comparative evaluation of the cod and herring fisheries in Denmark, Iceland and
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Norway. TemaNord 2000: 526. Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Ministers. Arnason, R., L.K. Sandal, S.I. Steinshamn, and N. Vestergaard (2004). Optimal feedback controls: Comparative evaluation of the cod fisheries in Denmark, Iceland and Norway. American Journal of Agricultural Economics 86(2): 531–542. Asche, F., T. Bjørndal, and D.V. Gordon (2009). Resource rent in individual quota fisheries. Land Economics 85: 279–291. Nakken, O., P. Sandberg, and S.I. Steinshamn (1996). Reference points for optimal fish stock management: A lesson to be learnt from the north-east Arctic cod stock. Marine Policy 20: 447–462. Pedersen, H. (2006). The New Fishery Policy. Speech by the Minister of Fisheries and Coastal Affairs, 13 July. Oslo: Ministry of Fisheries and Coastal Affairs. Sandal, L.K., and S.I. Steinshamn (2001). A simplified feedback approach to optimal resource management. Natural Resource Modeling 14: 419–432. Steinshamn, S.I. (2004). Ressursrenten i norske fiskerier [in Norwegian]. SNF-Report 06/05. Bergen, Norway: Institute for Research in Economics and Business Administration.
28 Fisheries Management in the United Kingdom SEAN PASCOE DIANA TINGLEY
28.1. INTRODUCTION Although small in terms of contribution to the gross domestic product, fishing remains an important industry in the United Kingdom. Along with agriculture, fishing is one of the oldest industries in the United Kingdom, as might be expected from an island nation. The United Kingdom is one of the main fishing nations within Europe in terms of value of production and fleet size. In certain regions within the United Kingdom, particularly the more peripheral regions, such as the Scottish Western Islands, Cornwall, and Wales, fishing remains an important source of regional employment. As a result of its social and employment importance, fisheries management in the United Kingdom aims to provide a balance between ensuring sustainability of the resource and the sustainability of regional communities dependent on fishing. Management measures are complicated through interactions with adjoining European member states. Exclusive legislative jurisdiction to regulate fishing was given to the European Community under Article 102 of the 1972 Act of Accession of Denmark, Ireland, Norway, and the United Kingdom1 (De Santo and Jones 2007). Under the agreement (and originally developed in the 1964 European Fisheries Convention), member states have exclusive fishing rights to waters within 6 nautical miles of their coast. Other European member states with a history of fishing within United Kingdom territorial
waters have limited access rights within 12 nautical miles under Article 17.2 of Council Regulation (EC) 2371/2002. Beyond 12 nautical miles, access is open to all member states and managed through collaboration with the other European member states. The European Community’s Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) provides a framework for the coordinated management of these common fishing waters. However, individual member states are responsible for the implementation, monitoring, and enforcement of these management policies in offshore waters for their national fleets. Individual member states are also fully responsible for the management of fisheries that occur fully within their territorial waters and are not affected by CFP regulations (e.g., inshore potting fisheries).2 However, regulations implemented under the CFP (e.g., quotas, gear restrictions) are also applicable within the territorial waters. This chapter outlines fisheries management and fisheries policy in the United Kingdom and identifies the successes and failures. The chapter starts with an overview of the fishing sector in the United Kingdom, followed by a review of the key challenges facing managers. The institutional structures are next examined, and the successes and failures are placed in context. Finally, the key challenges that differentiate fisheries management in the United Kingdom from that in other countries are discussed, and the lessons that may be learned.
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Fisheries Management in the United Kingdom
28.2. UNITED KINGDOM FISHERIES For management purposes, the U.K. fleet is differentiated in terms of vessel size, with vessels 10 meters or less length (henceforth referred to as the 10-m fleet). The fleet size has reduced steadily over the last two decades as the result of a series of decommissioning schemes and declining economic conditions. Between 1983 and 1997, around 900 >10-m boats were removed as part of the European Commission’s Multiannual Guidance Programs (MAGPs) (Pascoe and Coglan 2000), with at least a further 600 vessels leaving through natural attrition and consolidation.3 Subsequent decommissioning programs have been undertaken in the United Kingdom unilaterally, which, together with natural attrition and consolidation, have removed a further 740 vessels. Between 1990 and 2006, the number of >10-m vessels declined by almost 60 percent (figure 28.1), while the number of 10 m Pelagic (purse seine) Beam trawl Demersal trawls and seines Lines and nets Dredges Pots Total >10 m
15 100 854 187 173 268 1,597
xBE, it seems unlikely that bionomic equilibrium is in fact a desirable outcome. But what would be optimal, economically speaking? One suggestion (inadequate, unfortunately) is that maximum sustained economic yield (MSEY) would be optimal. Setting dx/dt = 0 in equation 49.1, we obtain the expression R = (p -
c )G(x) qx
(49.7)
for sustainable rent R, at stock level x. Setting dR/dx = 0, we find that xMSEY satisfies
Challenges in Marine Capture Fisheries
G´(xMSEY) -
c´(xMSEY)G(xMSEY) =0 p - c(xMSEY)
(49.8)
where c(x) = c/qx. This implies, not surprisingly, that xmsey>xbe
(49.9)
xmsey>xmsy
(49.10)
and also that
MSEY is achieved at a stock level larger than bionomic equilibrium and also larger than xMSY. How well does the empirical evidence support this model prediction? Do fishers wholeheartedly support management strategies that aim to maximize their sustained incomes? They do not. In most cases, the fishers are adamantly opposed to such a strategy. Why would this be so? We will continue to assume, for the moment, that fishers compete for the allowed annual catch. This turns out to be the crux of the problem—obvious, no doubt, but it is only in recent years that the full implications of competitive fishing have become widely recognized. If the effects of competition can be overcome in some way, fishers may actually favor conservation-minded fishing strategies. This is explained further below. For competitive fishing, there are two cases to look at: (1) the fishery is currently at or near xMSY, and (2) it is currently at or near xBE. Consider case 2 first. To shift from xBE to xMSEY, it is necessary to reduce the catch rate temporarily, allowing the stock to recover. (“Temporarily” may mean for several years, or several decades, in some cases.) The fishers, who are breaking even financially at xBE, will see their take-home incomes reduced roughly in proportion to the reduction in catches. Unless they can find alternative employment, they will be worse off, temporarily, during the recovery phase. Case 1 is less obvious. Consider a fishery currently at the stock level xMSEY and managed to remain there. The management is based on TAC quotas, with the managers closing the fishery each year once the TAC has been caught. (How they know what has been caught at any time is another problem.) The existing fishers, we assume, are making positive profits. What will happen next is perhaps not obvious, but experience has shown over and over again that each fisher will be motivated to
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maximize annual profits by investing in technology that increases the ability to catch and store fish. This will result in bigger boats, more powerful engines, extra crew, stronger winches, larger nets, bigger freezers, more sophisticated navigation equipment, and so forth (Turris 1999). Also, additional vessels may be attracted to the fishery. The ultimate result, called “regulated bionomic equilibrium,” benefits no one. This, exactly, is the basic problem facing managed fisheries throughout the world today: brief fishing seasons, excessive fishing power—the “derby” fishery, as it is often called. In some cases the fishery may collapse under the pressure, as managers are unable to cope with the larger fishing fleets. No wonder that fishers oppose MSEY or similar management proposals. In the worst case, this strategy will reduce their short-term incomes for little or no long-term gains; in the best case, it will generate high incomes temporarily, until the expansion of fleet capacity again reduces profitability to low levels. But surely something is missing in this argument. Is there no management strategy that maintains sustainability while providing individual long-term profitability? In the 1960s economists Christy and Scott (1965) suggested that a system of individual catch quotas could emulate the situation of private ownership of the resource and result in profitable fishing. How this would work is that the government sets the annual TAC, which is then shared among specified owners of individual quotas. Since quota holders cannot exceed their quotas (and nonquota holders are excluded), the economic incentive underlying the derby fishery is eliminated. Such individual transferable quota (ITQ) systems have now been instituted in several countries, including Canada, Iceland, New Zealand, Australia, and Namibia. Quotas may be allocated to individuals, vessels, or groups of individuals, depending on circumstances. Needless to say, rigorous enforcement of the quota restrictions is paramount. Also, the quotas need to be flexible, to allow for annual fluctuations in stock abundance. Each specified fisher is granted a certain quota share, entitling the fisher to a specified share of the annual TAC. Individual quotas are not a panacea, however (Ostrom et al. 2007). First, they are a highly sophisticated device, depending on expert scientific input to determine TACs and requiring strict monitoring and enforcement of quotas and other aspects of fishing activity. Individual quotas can be controversial because of the perception that they amount to the
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Policy Instruments and Perspectives
privatization of resource ownership. If the quotas are transferable, as they are under an ITQ system, concentration of quota ownership to a few wealthy entrepreneurs (who may not be actively involved in fishing) may take place. Individual nontransferable quota systems have been tried in some cases, but they usually prove to be unworkable. ITQs have the advantage of flexibility. In addition, under an ITQ system fishers may be willing to accept reduced TACs temporarily when the stock is depleted, because the projected future increases in incomes will benefit the quota owners. The market values of quota shares will reflect expected future income levels. Fishers can decide whether to retain their shares as an investment or to cash them in immediately by selling them to other fishers. Under an ITQ system, fishers will favor management strategies that preserve sustained long-term (discounted) profits. Although the optimal longterm strategies differ from strict MSEY strategies, at least in theory (see appendix), they usually do imply resource conservation. Exceptions may arise for resources that can provide very large profits from initial overharvesting; the great whale fisheries of the 19th and 20th centuries were a notorious example (Clark and Lamberson 1982). One result that typically occurs immediately upon the establishment of an ITQ system is the almost magical disappearance of the derby fishery (see figure 49.1). With an assured annual catch, and no opportunity to exceed it, fishers no longer need to rush to get their share of the TAC before the
Season Length (days)
300
200
100
0 1980
1985
1990
1995
2000
2005
49.1. Season length in the British Columbia Pacific halibut fishery, 1980–2005. Individual catch quotas were initiated in 1991. (A season limit of 245 days is set by the International Pacific Halibut Commission.) (From Munro 2001)
FIGURE
fishing season ends. Fishers can also take the time to carefully process the catch on board, thereby increasing its market value. An alternative to ITQs is community or group quotas, the idea being that the community will then further allocate catches to individual members, or otherwise prevent the occurrence of the commonproperty competitive scramble. I do not know if such systems have worked out in practice.
49.4. ECONOMICALLY MOTIVATED PRECAUTIONARY MANAGEMENT As noted above, ITQ owners can be expected to become supporters of management strategies that protect and enhance the value of their quota shares. In particular, precautionary strategies that reduce the risk of overfishing would be favored. This in turn provides an incentive to identify and then respond to the major risks and uncertainties in the fishery, including the following: • • • •
Inaccurate stock assessment Inaccurate estimates of population parameters Risk of collapse and nonrecovery Unpredictable environmental effects on the fish population • Long-term genetic effects of fishing • Unknown ecosystem dynamics • Risk of habitat degradation How have these uncertainties been dealt with in the past? Often they have been ignored, probably because taking them into account would have meant a reduction in TACs. Besides this, it is seldom obvious how to quantify or interpret these uncertainties, or to account for them in setting management strategies. Let us consider the question of imprecise stock estimates, which is common, if not almost universal, in marine fisheries. Suppose, for example, that the scientists have estimated an optimal level of fishing mortality F for the given population. The TAC is then given by TAC = F · x, where x is the current fishable biomass. But what if the estimated value of x is highly uncertain? What TAC should be chosen? Possibilities include
643
Challenges in Marine Capture Fisheries Midpoint, or “best guess” for x Midpoint with a safety factor Minimum point Maximum point
The minimum point would use the lowest likely level x, whereas the maximum point would use the highest level. The scientists would provide estimated values for xmin, xmidpoint, and xmax (or perhaps a probability distribution for x) and leave the actual decision to the managers. This is more or less what has been done in the past, at least in those situations where uncertainty has been considered at all. Given such information, how is the manager to decide? It is sometimes explained that risk-averse managers will choose xmin, risk-neutral xmidpoint, and risk-prone xmax. Under competitive fishing, the fishers may prefer xmax on the grounds that the scientific evidence is too weak to support a lower TAC. But in an ITQ system, the fishers may also be concerned with avoiding severe overfishing. How can the scientific advice be made more useful to whoever sets the TAC? Clearly, the decision maker would like to have the risks of overfishing quantified in some way for each choice of TAC. By constructing suitable models and performing computer simulations, it is possible to generate estimated probabilities of extinction (or severe depletion) over a specified time horizon, for alternative management strategies. Figure 49.2 indicates the kind of results that can be generated in this way. The graphs depict the probability of some specified undesirable outcome (e.g., collapse below some specified biomass level) as a function of the TAC as set over a given time span. A threshold risk level is also shown; this would be specified in advance by managers and then used to specify the annual TAC from the probability curve. Figure 49.2 shows two probability curves, depending on whether a marine protected area (MPA) is in effect. It might be objected that the probability curve is itself uncertain, but this is unavoidable—at least the displayed curve has the advantage of clearly depicting system uncertainty and its potential consequences for management. The usual procedure of simply presenting managers with a range of possible TACs in fact provides no useful information. Managers need to be made aware of the likely consequences of their decisions. A similar approach can be used in the case of model uncertainty, which arises when one tries to
1 No MPA Probability of Collapse
• • • •
0.8 0.6 0.4
With MPA
0.2
Threshold
0 0
20
40
60
80
100
TAC (Thousand tons) FIGURE 49.2 Hypothetical probabilities of a specified outcome (“collapse”) as a function of the TAC, under stock uncertainty. Case 1 (upper curve), no marine protected area; case 2 (lower curve), marine protected area in place. A hypothetical threshold probability is also indicated; TACs that result in a collapse probability above the threshold would be rejected
decide which of M different biological models best fits the available data. Bayesian methods (Hilborn and Mangel 1997) can be used to attach a probability pm to the mth model, but again, this information by itself would be useless for managers. Instead, one can generate unconditional probability curves, M
Pr(collapse) =
å Pr(collapse|model m) · p
m
m =1
as a function of the TAC. This probability curve is just a convex combination of the separate, modeldependent curves, but the managers do not need to concern themselves with these details.
49.5. MARINE PROTECTED AREAS MPAs are a hot topic these days. Curiously, most of the discussion has been based on deterministic models, the assumption being that other management methods are ineffective and an MPA is the last hope. The idea that MPAs provide a hedge against uncertainty is usually ignored (but see Lauck et al. 1998). Where to locate an MPA and how large to make it are additional decisions that will be required of managers. Until now, fishers have tended to oppose
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Policy Instruments and Perspectives
MPAs on the grounds that they will reduce catches or make them more expensive. But, by reducing the risk of future catastrophes, MPAs can have substantial economic benefits. As fishers gradually become more business oriented (because of ITQs), support for precautionary management, including MPAs, can be expected to increase. To put the point differently, the failure to include an MPA as part of the management strategy of a given fishery can amount to a neglect of the implications of irreducible uncertainty. (MPAs do have other advantages, such as protection of biodiversity.) Lack of an MPA may mean that the values of ITQ shares are placed at an unnecessary risk.
49.6. CONCLUSIONS Ever-growing demand for food fish and other marine products, combined with ever-increasing technical ability to harvest marine resources, has led to today’s crisis in marine fisheries. The declaration of 200-mile EEZs for fisheries jurisdiction in the late 1970s brought the majority of these resources under national control, but the new management systems have often failed to bring about sustainable, profitable fisheries. While these management systems have, in some cases, been successful in preventing overfishing, the final result has often been a greatly overexpanded fishing fleet, built to cash in on a highly demanded resource product. Such overcapacity is a doublewhammy for fisheries, resulting in minimal profitability and lack of controllability. The collapse of Canada’s historic cod fishery in 1991–1992 was but one example of a closely managed fishery that got out of control because of excess harvesting capacity. To a large extent the reason for overfishing and/ or overcapacity lies in the lack of any form of recognized property rights in fisheries (de Soto 2003). Each fisher is then motivated to catch as many fish as possible, subject to the regulations, a behavioral trait that inevitably leads to overfishing or overcapacity, or both. Attempts to prevent such individually rational, but socially devastating, behavior have often proved futile. Likewise, attempts to reduce overcapacity by buying out the excess vessels have also often been futile, and expensive as well (Clark et al. 2005). I have argued in this chapter that a system of ITQs has, under appropriate circumstances, the potential to reverse this type of management failure.
ITQs are a form of limited rights-based management, in which each fisher owns an entitlement to a specified, saleable share in the annual catch quota, subject to overall control by the state. Recent experience in a number of coastal states has demonstrated the effectiveness of carefully designed and operated ITQ systems to generate sustainable, profitable fisheries. Other important aspects of successful resource management, including environmental (and biodiversity) protection, plus hedging against uncertainty and management error, will doubtlessly become integral parts of the new management systems, as these become more familiar and acceptable. Ownership and control of fisheries within 200-mile EEZs will be maintained by coastal states as a source of national wealth. Deep-sea fisheries, on the other hand, will probably continue to be overexploited, unless some way is found to negotiate enforceable international agreements encompassing these resources.
APPENDIX If R = R(t) is the flow of net economic revenues (t ³ 0), then the present value of R, with discount rate d, is defined by ¥ PV = ò e -δ t R(t)dt 0
(49.11)
The effort E(t) that maximizes PV, subject to the model equations 49.1–49.3, is ìEmax when x(t)> x* ï E(t) = íE * when x(t)= x* ï0 when x(t)= x* î
(49.12)
where Emax denotes fleet effort capacity, and where x* is the optimal equilibrium biomass, as given by the equation G´(x*) -
c´(x*)G(x*) =δ p - c(x*)
(49.13)
(see Clark 2006, p. 59). Also, E* = G(x*)/qx* is the effort level required to maintain x(t) at x*. Thus, the optimal fishing strategy is to harvest the initial stock as rapidly as possible, down to its long-term equilibrium level x*, and then to maintain this equilibrium. [If x(0) < x*, the optimal strategy is a fishing moratorium until the stock returns
Challenges in Marine Capture Fisheries to x*.] Clark (2006) explains the assumptions needed to obtain this result and discusses alternative assumptions. Equation 49.13 reduces to equation 49.8 for xMSEY in the event that the discount rate d = 0. Thus, xMSEY is the optimal stock level under zero discounting. For positive discount rates d > 0, we have x* < xMSEY. (In fact, it can be shown that limδ→∞x*=xbe.) If fishers discount the future (as everyone does), they will wish to maintain a stock level somewhat smaller than xMSEY, because of the “tilt” of income preference toward current income. Note that the tilt applies to ITQ fishers, and also to a hypothetical private owner of the fishery. It is not related to the common-pool case (which in fact corresponds to d = +∞). As pointed out above, in the case of stock rehabilitation [x(0) < x*], fishers will favor an earlier resumption of harvesting than would occur under an MSEY strategy. In practice, the difference could amount to several years, depending on circumstances.
Notes 1. As with all equations in this chapter, it is important to realize that those listed above have been chosen with the purpose of presenting a simple basic model of fishery bioeconomics, suitable for newcomers to this field, and convenient for the topic under discussion. Combining biology and economics in this way is already mentally taxing, and many publications have gone far astray in terms of misunderstanding the dynamic interplay between these two aspects. To mention just one example, the role of future discounting in determining optimal harvest strategies remains badly misunderstood even in some contemporary publications. More complicated biological—and economic—models are readily found in the literature, but such advanced topics are deliberately eschewed here. 2. See Clark (2006, 42) for further discussion and alternative models for equation 49.2.
References Christy, F.T., Jr., and A.D. Scott (1965). The Common Wealth in Ocean Fisheries. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Clark, C.W. (2006). The Worldwide Crisis in Fisheries. New York: Cambridge University Press.
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Clark, C.W., and R.H. Lamberson (1982). An economic history and analysis of pelagic whaling. Marine Policy 6: 103–120. Clark, C.W., G.R. Munro, and U.R. Sumaila. (2005). Subsidies, buybacks and sustainable fisheries. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 50: 47–58. de Soto, H. (2003). The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else. New York: Basic Books. Gordon, H.S. (1954). The economic theory of a common property resource: The fishery. Journal of Political Economy 62: 124–142. Harley, S., R. Myers, and A. Dunn (2001). Is catchper-unit effort proportional to abundance? Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences 58: 1760–1772. Hilborn, R. (2007). Moving to sustainability by learning from successful fisheries. Ambio 36: 296–303. Hilborn, R., and M. Mangel (1997). The Ecological Detective: Confronting Models with Data. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Lauck, T., C.W. Clark, M. Mangel, and G.R. Munro (1998). Implementing the precautionary principle in fisheries through marine reserves. Ecological Applications 8 (suppl.): S72–S80. Mackinson, S., U.R. Sumaila, and T.J. Pitcher (1997). Bioeconomics and catchability: Fish and fishers behaviour during stock collapse. Fisheries Research 31: 11–17. Munro, G.R. (2001). The effect of introducing individual harvest quotas upon fleet capacity in the marine fisheries of British Columbia. In R. Shotton (ed.), Case Studies on the Effects of Transferable Fishing Rights on Fleet Capacity and Concentration of Quota Ownership. FAO Fisheries Technical Paper 412. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, pp. 208–220. Ostrom, E., M.A. Janssen, and J.M. Anderies (2007). Going beyond panaceas, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States 104: 15176–15178. Schaefer, M.B. (1954). Some aspects of the dynamics of populations important to the management of commercial fisheries. Bulletin of the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission 1: 25–56. Turris, B.R. (1999). A comparison of British Columbia’s ITQ fisheries for groundfish trawl and sablefish: Similar results from programmes with different objectives, designs and processes. In R. Shotton (ed.), Use of Property Rights in Fisheries Management, FAO Fisheries Technical Paper 404/1. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, pp. 254–261.
50 The 1982 U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea and Beyond: The Next 25 Years GORDON R. MUNRO
50.1. INTRODUCTION The third U.N. Conference on the Law of the Sea, 1973–1982, and the 1982 U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) to which it gave rise (United Nations 1982), led to a revolution in the management of the world’s maritime capture fishery resource. The conference and UNCLOS led to vast amounts of ocean capture fishery resources being transformed in status from that of international common pool resources to that of coastal state1 property. UNCLOS, which achieved the status of international treaty law in 1994, did not mark the end of the revolution. On the contrary, there were further major developments in the 1990s, which resulted in UNCLOS being supplemented by what is popularly referred to as the 1995 U.N. Fish Stock Agreement (UNFSA). The revolution continues at the time of writing and might not be fully completed during the 25 years to come. The focus of the revolution has been on the doctrine of the freedom of the seas, as it pertains to fishing, which in turn gave a legal foundation to the common pool nature of ocean fishery resources. The freedom of the seas, pertaining to fisheries, has been sharply reduced since the early 1980s, but has not been fully eliminated. A remnant remains. In light of the emphasis that other chapters in this volume give to the destructive consequences of fisheries being common pool in nature, some
explanation is required as to why the freedom to fish ever existed in the first place, and why it has taken so long to eliminate it.
50.2. THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS AND THE ORIGINS OF UNCLOS While it is now taken to be self-evident that ocean capture fishery resources have been subject to overexploitation, thanks to their common pool nature, and that some are at risk of being driven to commercial, if not biological, extinction, this fear and concern are, in fact, of relatively recent origin. The first concerns about capture fishery resource overexploitation did not emerge until early in the 20th century, and no serious measures to address overfishing were introduced, until the end of World War II (Munro 2007). Prior to that time, the consequences of ocean fisheries being common pool in nature seemed to be of little concern. While particular local fishery resources might have been subject to overexploitation, the great ocean fishery resources were seen as inexhaustible. Attempting to regulate such fisheries was hardly worth the effort, or so it was argued. This point of view found its clearest expression in the doctrine of the freedom of the seas (Mare Liberum), as propounded by the 17th-century Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius. Under this doctrine,
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The 1982 U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea and Beyond the oceans were divided between the coastal state territorial sea and the remainder, the high seas. The territorial sea was, and is, a narrow strip of water, by tradition extending out from shore to no more than three nautical miles.2 The resources in the high seas were to be deemed res communis, the property of all, and thus open to exploitation by all. The doctrine of the freedom of the seas, as it pertained to fisheries, rested upon two premises: (1) the high seas fishery resources are inexhaustible, (2) coastal states are unable to control effectively resource exploitation activities beyond their territorial seas (Orrego Vicuña 1999). When Grotius developed the freedom of the seas doctrine in the early 17th century, the first premise appeared to have been validated, by virtue of the fact that, given the then state of fishing technology, heavy exploitation of high seas fishery resources was prohibitively costly (not to mention dangerous). The belief that the great ocean fishery resources were protected by economics continued until late in the 19th century. In 1883, at a London exhibition on fisheries, one of Britain’s leading scientists of the day, Thomas Huxley, stated that “probably all the great sea fisheries are inexhaustible” and that there was no point in trying to regulate them (cited in National Research Council 1999: 16). Even as Huxley spoke, however, the first premise was beginning to fray. Fishing technology was changing rapidly, bringing with it a fall in harvesting costs. The shift from sail to steam is the prime example. As harvesting costs fell, the great sea-fishery resources lost their natural economic protection, and the realization gradually began to take hold that offshore fishery resources were not inexhaustible after all. Marine biologists noted that, after both world wars, fishery resources in the North Sea increased in abundance. The marine biologists, putting two and two together, surmised that the growth in the fishery resources was not unconnected to the sharp decline in fishing activities due to wartime conditions. They concluded that (1) fishing does have an impact upon offshore fish stocks, and (2) such fish stocks can recover, if fishing is curtailed (National Research Council 1999). The growing realization that high seas fishery resources were exhaustible, that the common pool nature of these resources did in fact matter, led gradually to curbs being placed upon the freedom to fish in the high seas, initially through international agreements. One example is provided by the International Commission for the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries (ICNAF), established by Canada, the United States,
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and a few European countries in 1949. ICNAF attempted to encourage proactive management of high seas fisheries from the southern boundary of Greenland down to the U.S. mid-Atlantic. The efficacy of fisheries management through international organizations became subject to question. Those who raised such questions (coastal states in particular) were to be given an alternative through the United Nations. Following the close of World War II, coastal states (beginning with the United States) began asserting claims of jurisdiction over marine resources off their shores, beyond the territorial sea. In response to what it saw as a disorderly attempt on the part of coastal states to extend their areas of marine jurisdiction, the United Nations convened an international Conference on the Law of the Sea in 1958. From a fisheries standpoint, the conference resulted in coastal states being granted jurisdiction over shellfish resources out to the edge of the continental shelf, but nothing more (Logan 1974). The 1958 conference was followed by the second U.N. Conference on the Law of the Sea in 1960, which accomplished little or nothing, and then by the third U.N. Conference on the Law of the Sea, 1973–1982, which accomplished a great deal. As already stated, from the perspective of fisheries, it can be said that the U.N. conference of 1973–1982 led to a revolution in the management of world marine capture fisheries. UNCLOS, arising from the 1973–1982 conference, provides the bedrock legal framework for the management of international capture fishery resources.3 For the purpose of fisheries, the key parts of UNCLOS are part V, which addresses exclusive economic zones (EEZ), and part VII, addressing the high seas (United Nations 1982). Under part V of UNCLOS, coastal states are granted the right to establish EEZs out to 200 nautical miles (370.4 kilometers) from shore. Within the EEZ, the coastal state has “sovereign rights for the purpose of exploring and exploiting, conserving and managing . . . the fishery resources contained therein” (United Nations 1982, article 56). To all intents and purposes, the coastal state has property rights to the intra-EEZ fishery resources (McRae and Munro 1989). If the coastal state has effective property rights to fishery resources within the EEZ, then the next, and obvious, question to raise is the significance of the new EEZ regime to world capture fisheries. The answer is that the new regime is highly significant. The EEZ regime has now become all but universal.
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In the mid-1970s, when the EEZ regime was clearly on the horizon, it was estimated that more than 90 percent of the world commercial marine capture fishery harvests, by volume, were taken within 200 nautical miles from shore (Alexander and Hodgson 1975: 586). It is on this basis that one can argue that a massive amount of renewable resource wealth has been transferred from common-pool international resource status to that of coastal state property, with a concomitant radical reduction in high seas fisheries. Indeed, it appeared to many that the freedom of the seas, as it pertained to fisheries, was all but dead. A document published by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in the early 1990s stated that “ten years ago [1982], the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea was signed, marking the end of an era of freedom of the seas” (FAO 1992: 1). The end, in fact, had not yet come. A significant remnant of the freedom of the seas, pertaining to fisheries, yet remained. The establishment of the EEZ regime gave coastal states much increased power to manage fishery resources, power that coastal states have exercised to date with various degrees of success. Several other chapters in this volume deal with the problems of intra-EEZ management of capture fishery resource. What this chapter focuses on is a major fishery resource management issue raised by the new EEZ regime: the management of “shared” fishery resources. The FAO has declared that “the management of shared fishery resources remains one of the great challenges towards achieving long-term sustainable fisheries” (FAO 2002: iv). Here I argue that this key international resource management issue must be resolved, not just within the next 25 years, but well before, if further serious depletion of marine capture fishery resources is not to occur.
50.3. SHARED FISH STOCKS: AN OVERVIEW An internationally shared fish stock can be defined as one that is exploited by two or more states (or entities). The advent of the EEZ regime gave rise to the shared fish stock management issue by virtue of the mobility of the typical capture fishery resource. Given this mobility, it was inevitable that a coastal state, upon establishing an EEZ, would find that some of the fishery resources thereby crossed the
boundaries of the EEZ. There had been shared fish stocks before the advent of the EEZ regime, of course, but the management of such resources had not gained prominence prior to the appearance of this regime (Munro 1979). The FAO sets forth the following categories of internationally shared fish stocks: 1. Transboundary stocks: stocks that cross the EEZ boundary into one or more neighboring EEZs 2. Highly migratory stocks: primarily tuna resources, which, because of their highly migratory nature, are to be found both within the EEZ and the adjacent high seas 3. Straddling stocks: all other stocks to be found both within the EEZ and the adjacent high seas 4. Discrete high seas stocks (Munro et al. 2004). There is, in fact, neither a biological nor an economic justification for distinguishing between categories 2 and 3 (Munro et al. 2004). Merging them into one category—straddling stocks broadly defined—thus leaves 1. Transboundary stocks 2. Straddling stocks (broadly defined) 3. Discrete high seas stocks Note also, in passing, that categories 1 and 2 are far from being mutually exclusive. It would seem reasonable to suppose that, since the EEZs worldwide account for 90 percent of the world capture fishery resources, only category 1 (transboundary stocks) would be of interest. This was indeed the view taken in 1982. The following decade was to prove that this sanguine view of the world was wholly unfounded. Straddling fish stocks (broadly defined) were to constitute a major resource management problem and to force the United Nations to convene another international conference to address the problem.
50.4. THE MANAGEMENT OF TRANSBOUNDARY FISH STOCKS While our main interest here is in the management of straddling and discrete high seas stocks, we
The 1982 U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea and Beyond commence with a discussion of the economics of the management of transboundary fish stocks. The foundation of the economics of the management of straddling stocks and of discrete high seas stocks is provided by the economics of the management of the much simpler transboundary fish stocks. Under UNCLOS, coastal states sharing a transboundary resource are admonished to enter into negotiations with respect to cooperative management of the resources (United Nations 1982, Article 63(1) ). Importantly, however, they are not required to reach an agreement. If the relevant coastal states negotiate in good faith but are unable to reach an agreement, then each coastal state is to manage its share of the resource (i.e., that part occurring within its EEZ) in accordance with the relevant rights and duties laid down by UNCLOS (Van Houtte 2003). We can refer to this as the default option. With the default option in mind, economists find that coastal states have before them two issues that they must attempt to analyze: 1. The consequences, if any, of the relevant coastal states adopting the default option and not cooperating in the management of the resource 2. The conditions that must prevail if a cooperative resource management regime is to be stable over the long run If the answer to option 1 is that the negative consequences of noncooperation are negligible, then, of course, option 2 can be safely ignored. Two prominent aspects of the problem at hand must be brought to the fore that help to differentiate the management of transboundary fish stocks from that of straddling and discrete high seas stocks. The first is that state property rights to the fishery resources are straightforward and clear. The relevant coastal states are to be seen as joint owners of the resources and can be seen as owning the resources on the equivalent of a condominium basis (McRae and Munro 1989). The second is that there is virtually no evidence of “free-riding” on the part of states not parties to a cooperative management arrangement. That is to say that if, for example, three coastal states share a fish stock, there is no evidence of two out of three of those states cooperating to manage the resource, while the third free-rides off the cooperative efforts of its neighbors (Munro et al. 2004). This, as we will see, stands in stark contrast to the
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management of the other two categories of shared fish stocks. The central feature of transboundary stock management is that, with few exceptions, there will, for straightforward reasons, be a strategic interaction between, or among, the coastal states sharing the resource. Consider two coastal states sharing a transboundary resource. The harvesting activities of coastal state 1 can be expected to have an impact upon the harvesting opportunities available to coastal state 2, and vice versa. Coastal state 2 (1) will have no choice but to take into account the likely harvest plans of coastal state 1 (2)—hence the strategic interaction. In attempting to analyze options 1 and 2, economists have no choice but to recognize such strategic interaction. The economics of the management of transboundary fish stocks is, as a consequence, a blend of the standard fisheries economics applied to domestic fisheries (i.e., fisheries confined to a single EEZ) and the theory of strategic interaction (or interactive decision theory), more commonly known as the theory of games. Economists studying other shared resources (e.g., water resources, the atmosphere) also find themselves compelled to incorporate game theory into their analyses. Such is the growing importance of game theory in economics in general that the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences has been awarded twice to specialists in game theory, with the second such award being made in 2005. The press release announcing the awarding of the prize for 2005 laureates Thomas Schelling and Robert Aumann read as follows: Why do some groups of individuals, organizations and countries succeed in promoting cooperation while others suffer from conflict? The work of Robert Aumann and Thomas Schelling has established game theory—or interactive decision theory—as the dominant approach to this age-old question. (see nobelprize.org/economics/laureates/2005/press.html) This “age-old question” is precisely the one we are attempting to address in a fisheries context. There are two broad classes of games: noncooperative (competitive) and cooperative. We draw upon the theory of noncooperative games to analyze option 1, the default option of noncooperative management. The key conclusion arising from noncooperative game theory is that the “players” (coastal states sharing the fishery resources) will be driven inexorably to adopt strategies that
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they know perfectly well will produce decidedly undesirable results. This outcome is referred to as a “prisoner’s dilemma” outcome after a famous noncooperative game developed to illustrate the point (Tucker 1950; see also Munro et al. 2004). The basic nature of the prisoner’s dilemma outcome, in a fisheries context, can be illustrated as follows. Consider a transboundary fishery resource shared by two coastal states. Coastal state 1’s harvesting activity will have an impact on that of coastal state 2, and vice versa. Suppose, further, that there is no significant resource management cooperation between them—states 1 and 2 adopt the default option and manage their respective segments of the resource on their own. If state 1 undertakes to restrict harvests in order to “invest” in the resource, the benefits from this action will also be shared with state 2. What assurance does state 1 have that state 2 will also undertake to conserve the resource? Since there is no cooperation, the answer is none. It is only too possible that state 2 would be content to “free-ride” off of state 1’s resource investment efforts. In these circumstances, it is likely that coastal state 1 will conclude that the return on its resource investment would be less than the cost, and that its best course of action (“strategy”) is to do nothing. Coastal state 2 could be expected to come to the same conclusion. Worse, state 1 has to allow for the possibility that state 2 might deliberately deplete the resource. If state 1 seriously believes this, then it could decide that its best strategy is to strike first. Once again, state 2 could follow the same line of reasoning. The theory has strong predictive power. One example, of which I have considerable knowledge, is that of Pacific salmon in the Northeast Pacific, shared by Canada and the United States. Both coastal states are developed and have extensive fisheries management experience. The two have attempted to manage the salmon resources cooperatively. At times, however, the cooperation has broken down. The reversion to competition has led to “fish wars,” the deliberate overexploitation of the resources (Miller et al. 2001). Thus, except in unusual circumstances, cooperation does matter. With respect to cooperative management, the analysis, appropriately enough, draws upon the theory of cooperative games. It is assumed that each “player” is motivated by self-interest alone and is prepared to consider cooperating only because it believes that it will be better off than by playing competitively. The chief problem in cooperatively
managed fisheries is that of ensuring the stability of the cooperative management regime through time. The following considerations are of key relevance: 1. Prospects for effective intra-EEZ management: if the intra-EEZ management of the “players” is wholly ineffective, the potential gains from cooperation may be simply dissipated, and cooperation will be hardly worth the effort. 2. Satisfaction of the individual rationality constraint: each and every “player” must be assured at all times, now and in the future, of receiving economic benefits from the cooperatively managed fishery resources that are at least as great as it would receive under noncooperation—a principle that should be obvious but is often ignored in practice. 3. Effectiveness of compliance: if compliance cannot be assured—if cheating is allowed to go unchecked—then rational “players” can be expected to assume that, although their allocations of the benefits from the fishery are “fair,” their actual returns may be less than what they would receive under noncooperation—the individual rationality constraint once again. 4. Maximizing the scope for bargaining through the use of side payments (“negotiation facilitators”): side payments are essentially transfers, which can take any number of forms. A cooperative fisheries game, without side payments, is one in which coastal state 1’s (2’s) economic returns from the fishery are determined solely by the harvest of state 1’s (2’s) fleet within state 1’s (2’s) EEZ. The objection to such a cooperative game is that the scope for bargaining may be unduly restricted. Economists would argue further that the focus should be not on the sharing of harvests from the fishery, but rather on the sharing of the global net economic benefits from the fishery resource. The concept of side payments, while seemingly obvious, has been slow to be accepted in practice. There are signs, however, that the lesson is now being learned in the real world (Munro 2008).4 5. Resilience through time: cooperative resource management arrangements are likely to be subject to unpredictable shocks over time. If a cooperative resource management arrangement lacks resilience, the shocks can cause the arrangement to founder. The
The 1982 U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea and Beyond Canada–U.S. Pacific salmon cooperative resource management arrangement provides us with yet another example. The cooperative arrangement, which was established under a formal treaty in 1985, was driven into a state of paralysis in the early 1990s because of an unforeseen climate regime shift that had a negative impact on Pacific salmon stocks off the northwest continental United States and southern British Columbia, but a very positive impact upon these stocks off Alaska. The solution to the cooperative game, reached through extensive bargaining, was upset, with the cooperative resource management arrangement essentially seizing up. The cooperative arrangement was eventually “patched up,” after a six-year hiatus. The hiatus, however, marked by a striking example of the prisoner’s dilemma at work, as “fish wars” reemerged (Miller and Munro 2004).
50.5. THE RISE OF THE STRADDLING FISH STOCK MANAGEMENT PROBLEM Straddling fish stocks, those to be found in the EEZ and the adjacent high seas, are subject to exploitation by coastal states and by so called distant-water fishing states (DWFSs). A DWFS can be defined as a fishing state some of whose fishing fleets operate well outside of the state’s EEZ. Japan and Spain provide prominent examples. Parts V and VII of UNCLOS that address EEZs and the high seas provide the basic legal framework for the management of these resources. The relevant states are admonished to cooperate (as best they can) in the management of the resources. Having said this, the freedom of the seas prevails in the high seas, subject to the proviso that DWFSs exploiting straddling stocks are to take the interests of the relevant coastal states into consideration (United Nations 1982). Maintaining the principle of the freedom of the seas, while recognizing the interests of the coastal states, with regards to the straddling stocks, presented UNCLOS’s drafters with a difficult balancing act. The fisheries articles of part VII (high seas) resulting from this balancing act have been described as a model of opaqueness (Munro 2000). This, in
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turn, made it very difficult to establish effective cooperative resource management arrangements. At first, this did not seem to matter very much, given the seemingly limited fishery resources in the remaining high seas. The 10 percent figure referred to above is, however, misleading. Heavy exploitation of the high seas segment of a straddling stock obviously affects the intra-EEZ management of the stock. Far from being trivial, the FAO estimates that straddling stocks, actual and potential, are estimated to provide the basis for one-fifth of the world’s ocean capture fishery harvests (Munro et al. 2004). In any event, the prisoner’s dilemma played itself out as more and more cases of straddling stock overexploitation emerged during the remainder of the 1980s and into the early 1990s. An example is provided by Alaska pollock, the species that historically has yielded the largest harvest in the North Pacific. Large concentrations are to be found in the Bering Sea. A significant part of the resource straddles the American zone and a high seas enclave, between the American and Russian zones, referred to as the “Doughnut Hole.” The management of the straddling stock was noncooperative. The pollock resources in the Doughnut Hole were not just overexploited; they were, in the words of the FAO, plundered (FAO 1994). As Munro et al. (2004) remark, “the overexploitation of straddling/highly migratory fish stocks worldwide . . . bears powerful testimony to the predictive powers of the economic analysis of the noncooperative management of such resources” (45). The growing concern over the state of world straddling fish stocks led the United Nations to convene an international conference to address the issue. The conference, commonly referred to as the U.N. Fish Stocks Conference, 1993–1995, brought forth an agreement, popularly referred to as the U.N. Fish Stocks Agreement (UNFSA).5 UNFSA, which achieved the status of international treaty law in late 2001, is not meant to replace any part of UNCLOS, but rather is designed to buttress it (Bjørndal and Munro 2003). Under the terms of UNFSA, straddling stocks (broadly defined) are to be managed on a region by region basis through regional fisheries management organizations (RFMOs). The RFMOs are to have as members both coastal states and DWFSs. Examples are provided by the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization (NAFO), the Northeast Atlantic Fisheries Commission (NEAFC), and the Western Central Pacific Fisheries Convention (WCPFC).
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The RFMO regime is still at an early state of development, with many key resource management problems unresolved. It is these problems, along with those pertaining to the management of discrete high seas stocks, that must be resolved well before the next 25 years. With this in mind, let us review the economics of the management of straddling fish stocks.
50.6. THE MANAGEMENT OF STRADDLING FISH STOCKS As noted above, the economics of the management of straddling stocks rests firmly upon the foundation of the economics of the management of transboundary stocks, with economists asking themselves what modifications, if any, to the economics of transboundary stocks are required by the straddling stock management problem. With respect to noncooperative management of straddling stocks, the answer is no modifications whatsoever are required. Noncooperative management brings with it the promise of prisoner’s dilemma types of outcomes and resource overexploitation. Indeed, it was the increasing evidence of just such outcomes that compelled the United Nations to convene the 1993–1995 U.N. Fish Stocks Conference. At the time of this writing, there is no serious alternative to the RFMO regime for the cooperative management of straddling stocks. If RFMOs prove, by and large, to be unstable, then the economics of straddling stock management assures that continuing overexploitation, and in some cases destruction, of straddling stocks is all but guaranteed. We turn, then, to what we might call the economics of RFMO (cooperative) management of straddling stocks. The economics of the cooperative management of transboundary stocks provides us with a foundation for analyzing the cooperative management of straddling stocks, but no more than a foundation. Substantial modifications are required. There are two fundamental differences between the cooperative management of transboundary fish stocks and that of straddling stocks, one a difference of degree and the other a difference in kind. The first difference involves numbers of “players.” The typical cooperative transboundary stock management arrangement involves a small number of players, with such arrangements having no
more than two players being not uncommon. With RFMOs having both coastal states and DWFSs as members, an RFMO-based fisheries cooperative game with fewer than 10 players is to be regarded as being modest in size. As a general rule, the difficulty of achieving a stable cooperative arrangement, of any form, increases almost exponentially with the number of players. The second difference, a difference in kind, pertains to collective property rights to the fishery resources encompassed by the cooperative resource management arrangement. In the case of transboundary stocks, as already noted, the property rights to the resources are clear, with the coastal states sharing property rights to the resources on what amounts to a condominium basis (McRae and Munro 1989). The property rights to straddling stocks, on the other hand, are much less clear, with the lack of clarity arising from what I would term a freedom of the seas “hangover” (Munro 2007). Having said all of this, the conditions for stability pertaining to the stability of cooperative transboundary stock management arrangements must all be met by straddling stock management arrangements. These may be thought of as the initial conditions to be met. Of particular importance is the requirement that the scope for bargaining be made as broad as possible, through the use of side payments, or the equivalent thereof (e.g., “negotiation facilitators”). The problem that has to be addressed in the near future is that of developing mechanisms that will put side payments into effect in an efficient and politically acceptable manner. An example of the thinking that is proceeding along these lines is provided by Chand et al. (2003), who address the question of the management of what is almost certainly the world’s largest RFMO, in terms of area and value of harvests: Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC). The WCPFC oversees the management of the world’s largest and most valuable tuna fishery. Chand et al. call for the establishment of a tuna commission that, through an elaborate and detailed scheme, would facilitate the trading and leasing of harvest quotas for the different tuna species with the WCPFC jurisdiction between and among WCPFC members. The scheme, which clearly has applicability to other RFMOs, both tuna- and non-tunabased, deserves close study (Chand et al. 2003). The most crucial difference between the cooperative management of transboundary stocks and
The 1982 U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea and Beyond that of straddling stocks revolves around property rights. The ambiguity surrounding straddling stock property rights arises in the following manner. The UNFSA, which is now a part of international treaty law, maintains that only those states that are members of an RFMO, or that agree to abide by the provisions of the RFMO, shall have access to the fishery resources under the jurisdiction of the RFMO (United Nations 1995, Article 8(4) ). A fundamental principle of international law is that a treaty binds only those states that are party to the treaty, unless the treaty has achieved the status of customary international law6 (Buergenthal and Murphy 2002: 21ff; Munro et al. 2004: 42). There is not yet complete agreement among legal experts on whether UNFSA has, in fact, achieved the status of customary international law. The consequence is that there is uncertainty about the nature of the property rights to segments of RFMO-governed straddling stocks to be found within the high seas adjacent to EEZs. The property rights ambiguity, in turn, gives rise to the distinction between illegal and unregulated fishing. According to the FAO, illegal fishing involves fishing by one state (or entity) in the EEZ of another state without the latter’s permission, or willful noncompliance with the management provisions of an RFMO by a member of the RFMO (FAO 2001: 3.1). Thus, if a nonmember free-rides by fishing without permission in the EEZ of a coastal state member of the RFMO, the nonmember is engaging in unequivocal poaching, and the affected state can take vigorous action. On the other hand, if vessels flying the flag of a nonmember of an RFMO and nonparty to UNFSA fish in the high seas portion of the area governed by the RFMO, in a manner inconsistent with the management provisions of the RFMO, such vessels are deemed to be engaging in unregulated fishing (FAO 2001: 3.3.1). Unregulated fishing is a much more vague concept than is illegal fishing, reflecting the aforementioned ambiguity of property rights, and the freedom of the seas “hangover” (Munro 2007). While unregulated fishing is deemed to be morally reprehensible, it has, in the past, been unclear what RFMO members can do to curb such activities. Unregulated fishing constitutes free-riding, pure and simple. If free-riding is allowed to go unchecked, the effect will be exactly the same as unchecked noncompliance. The individual rationality condition will not be met by one or more “players,” and the cooperative resource management arrangement
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will unravel. The recent Chatham House Report on the governance of RFMOs, issued by the Royal Institute of International Affairs, states that “a core conclusion [of the report] is that the success of international cooperation depends largely on the ability to deter free-riding” (Lodge et al. 2007: x). The ambiguous property rights issue is complicated by another pair of problems commonly referred to as the “real-interest” and “new-member” problems. The real-interest problem arises in the context of the question of which states should be invited to become “charter” members of an RFMO. Article 8(3) of UNFSA maintains that “States having a real interest in the fisheries concerned may become members of such organizations,” that is, RFMOs. Does this imply that the “charter” members of an RFMO should include, for example, DWFSs, which had hitherto never been involved in the relevant fisheries but now would like to become so involved and express a “real interest” to this effect? Munro et al. (2004: 50n.38) found that experts in international law have far from uniform views on the question.7 The new-member problem arises by virtue of the fact that a state (almost invariably a DWFS), not originally a member of the RFMO, may develop a real interest in the fishery and apply for membership in the RFMO.8 Articles 8, 10, and 11 of UNFSA make it clear that “charter” members of an RFMO cannot bar outright prospective new members that are prepared to adhere to the RFMO management regime (Munro et al. 2004; United Nations 1995). The question is under what terms prospective new members are to be permitted to enter (e.g., what allocations are to be made to new members). The question is important because the new-member problem, along with the real-interest problem, carries with it a more subtle variant of the free-rider threat, quite separate from unregulated fishing. It arises in the following manner. An international group of legal experts, T. McDorman, K. Sigurjonsson, and P. Örbech, maintain that, under UNFSA, new members must be allocated just and reasonable shares of the total allowable catch (TAC) available under the RFMO management plan (Örebech et al. 1998). A number of years ago, Kaitala and Munro (1997) demonstrated the following. If just and reasonable implies that new members/participants, upon joining an RFMO, should be allocated, at no further cost as it were, shares of the TAC, or the equivalent, on a pro-rata basis, then when planning is undertaken
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for the establishment of an RFMO, prospective “charter” members could well calculate that their expected payoffs from cooperation would fall below their respective noncooperation payoffs. Hence, the RFMO would be stillborn, in essence, because of potential new member free-riding. The Kaitala-Munro argument can be explained in terms of the following example. Suppose that a hitherto overexploited straddling type of stock comes under the management of an RFMO consisting of coastal state V and three DWFSs W, X, and Y, all of which had a history of involvement in the fishery. The four “charter” members undertake the cost and sacrifice of rebuilding the resource over, let us say, a seven-year period. In the eighth year, the four are in a position to enjoy a return on their resource investment through harvesting. At the beginning of the eighth year, a prospective new member, DWFS Z, appears. It demands access to the RFMO, agrees to abide by the resource management rules, but demands, “free of charge,” a pro-rata share of the harvest and, by implication, a pro-rata share of the net economic returns from the fishery. If DWFS Z’s demands were acceded to, Z would effectively be a free-rider. Having incurred none of the costs and sacrifices of investment in the resource, it will enjoy, at no cost, a pro-rata share of the return on the investment. A straightforward application of game theory demonstrates that the impact of this new form of free-riding is no different from the impact of the free-riding associated with unregulated fishing (Kaitala and Munro 1997; Munro et al. 2004). The real-interest issue raises a similar free-rider threat. Munro et al. (2004) argue that, if “real interest,” as expressed in Article 8 of UNFSA, is interpreted to mean that states not currently engaged in exploiting resources to come under the management of an RFMO must be invited to become “charter” members of the RFMO, then the same sort of free-rider problem, threatened by the newmember issue, can readily arise. Let us return to our new member problem example discussed in the preceding paragraphs. Suppose, as before, that states V, W, X, and Y come together to establish an RFMO to oversee the management of a straddling or highly migratory stock that had, in the past, been overexploited. Suppose, also as before, that the four had been actively involved in the fishery prior to any thought being given to establishing an RFMO. The four plan to rebuild the resource over a seven-year period. Let us suppose
that DWFS Z is a state that had never participated in the exploitation of the resource but that has developed a real interest in the resource now that it may come under effective management. Rather than wait to come in later as a new member, Z demands full and undiluted “charter” membership. The four feel compelled to accede to Z’s demand. Z incurs no real sacrifice in the rebuilding of the resource, because it had not hitherto been engaged in harvesting the resource. Z will simply bide its time over the seven-year period and then, when the eighth year arrives, will come to enjoy an allocated share of the return on the resource investment, as the free-rider that it most certainly is. Once again, the possibility of such free-riding could undermine the viability of the RFMO. Willock and Lack (2006), in a study of RFMO practices, maintain that there have been two broad approaches to addressing the new member problem. The first, for which NAFO and NEAFC provide examples, involves informing prospective new members that the RFMO fisheries are fully subscribed and that they can expect allocations from new fisheries only. Willock and Lack (2006: 27) aptly describe this approach as “effectively closing the door on new members.” The second approach, as exemplified by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna (ICCAT) and the Commission for the Conservation of Southern Bluefin Tuna, is to grant prospective new members allocations at the expense of “charter” members. Some RFMOs attempt to mask the pain to “charter” members by adding the allocations to new members to the existing TACs. Rational “charter” members will, however, soon strip the mask away. A “charter” member of ICCAT, South Africa, referred to this practice, then being carried out by ICCAT, as “nothing less than ICCAT-sanctioned overfishing in complete violation of our convention” (Willock and Lack 2006: 26). The two approaches combined pose a dilemma. If allocations offered to prospective new members, or hitherto nonparticipants in the fishery(ies) now claiming a “real interest,” are too generous, then the RFMO may be undermined for reasons discussed. If, however, states/entities found in these two groups deem the offered allocations to be insufficient, they may refuse to join the RFMO and turn to unregulated fishing in the adjacent high seas, regardless of UNFSA. How, then, is the dilemma to be resolved?
The 1982 U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea and Beyond A group of European fisheries economists who are, I would argue, at the cutting edge of the application of game theory to the management of shared fish stocks have addressed this very problem (see in particular Pintassilgo and Lindroos 2008). Their conclusion is that if restrictions on unregulated fishing are weak—property rights to the high seas segments of straddling stocks remain ambiguous— there will be instances in which no resolution of the dilemma is possible, regardless of how ingenious the allocation schemes might be. The analysis developed by these economists was tested empirically by being applied to the case of east Atlantic bluefin tuna fisheries, under the management of (ICCAT). Pintassilgo (2003) concluded that if restrictions on unregulated fishing are weak, it will not be possible to achieve a stable cooperative arrangement for the management of the resource, UNFSA notwithstanding. Pintassilgo also concludes, however, that if unregulated fishing can be eliminated, the prospects for effective cooperative resource management will be much brighter. Another pair of European economists add that, if effective cooperative management measures are not applied to these tuna resource, the sustainability of the fishery will be under severe threat (Bjørndal and Brasão 2006). There remains a third approach that is coming up for increasing discussion. This is to allow—to enable—prospective new members to buy, or lease, quota from existing RFMO members, similar to prospective new entrants to a domestic ITQ fishery buying quota from existing ITQ holders. The alternative was discussed at the 2002 Norway–FAO Bergen Expert Consultation on the Management of Shared Fish Stocks. The report of the consultation states: “if . . . it were possible for prospective new members to purchase quotas from existing members of RFMOs, this would serve to ease the problem of quota allocation to new members” (FAO 2002). It was recognized at the expert consultation that if this approach were to be adopted, then, by implication, the “charter” members of the RFMO would be granted de facto collective property rights to the fishery resources encompassed by the RFMO; that is, the property rights ambiguity hitherto discussed would be eliminated (Munro et al. 2004: 37). The approach to the elimination of property rights ambiguity is of academic interest only, of course, if it is found to be in violation of international law. International fisheries law specialist Andrew Serdy (2007) argues that the proposal is fully compatible with international law. He goes further—a
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contributor to the unregulated fishing problem, if not the main contributor, is, as argued above, the fundamental principle that a treaty is nonbinding on third parties until such time as the treaty is deemed to be a part of customary international law. Serdy argues that allowing for the transferability (i.e., sale or lease) of national quota between existing RFMO members and prospective new members will tend to hasten the parallel crystallisation of the customary rule of cooperation in international fisheries law into a requirement that nonmembers abide by the RFMO’s rules in order to fish, as long as these are non-discriminatory. This test should not be hard to satisfy, since a could-be new entrant can at any time, by becoming a member of the /RFMO . . . make itself eligible to buy quota from and existing member—and refusal of an offer is non discriminatory. (p. 286) If all of these measures are implemented, little progress will have been made unless there are accompanying strong surveillance and enforcement measures against what has hitherto been deemed unregulated fishing. Fortunately, enforcement measures are already being put into place, the current state of international law notwithstanding. Blacklisting of vessels engaged in unregulated fishing is now becoming commonplace.9 RFMOs have strengthened the blacklisting measures through cooperation. Thus, for example, the two North Atlantic RFMOs, NAFO and NEAFC, have a blacklisting agreement. A vessel that is blacklisted by NAFO is automatically blacklisted by NEAFC, and vice versa (Lodge et al. 2007).10 What is required is that such inter-RFMO cooperation should become worldwide.
50.7. DISCRETE HIGH SEAS STOCKS There remains the issue of discrete high seas stocks, those stocks to be found exclusively in the high seas. The issue can be dealt with summarily. Munro et al. (2004: 57) describe these stocks as the “orphan” fish stocks of the ocean. Many of the stocks have been protected to date, by virtue of the fact that it is too costly to exploit them on a commercial basis. The history of world fisheries assures us that, with the ongoing advance of fisheries technology, this protection is but temporary.
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Munro et al. (2004) pointed out that the only legal protection, which the resources then had, came from UNCLOS part VII addressing the high seas (United Nations 1982). States exploiting such stocks are admonished to cooperate for the purpose of conserving the resource. Needless to say, no mechanism for cooperation is suggested. Part VII of UNCLOS, in and of itself, they continued, proved to be quite inadequate for the conservation of straddling stocks. It was questionable, they argued, whether one could have any justification whatsoever for assuming that these articles would prove to be any more adequate for the conservation of discrete high seas stocks. Property rights to these resources would be not just ambiguous but essentially nonexistent. One could therefore look forward with confidence to an intractable free-riding problem. Without an effective mechanism for cooperation, one could further anticipate that the discrete high seas stocks fisheries would play themselves out as competitive fisheries games, with the usual destructive consequences. Munro et al. (2004: 57) went on to say that “it may be that a solution could be found in extending the existing mandate of RFMOs to cover these resources, but this is, of course, pure speculation at this stage.” Since 2004, there have been moves in this direction. Perhaps the most important such move is the undertaking to establish the South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organization (SPRFMO; see www.southpacificrfmo.org). The proposed SPRFMO spans the Pacific and is designed to complement the two tuna-based Pacific RFMOs, the WCPFC and the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission. The SPRFMO is explicitly being designed to encompass discrete high seas stocks, as well as nontuna straddling stocks (SPRFMO 2008).
50.8. CONCLUSIONS The 1982 U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea revolutionized the management of ocean capture fishery resources. UNCLOS, by leading to the implementation of the EEZ regime, sharply reduced the impact of the freedom of the seas doctrine, as applied to fisheries, which had enshrined in legal terms the common pool nature of the bulk of the world’s ocean capture fishery resources. UNCLOS did not complete the task, however. The freedom of the seas continued to influence the
management of shared fish stocks in the form of straddling (broadly defined) and discrete high seas stocks. Extensive overexploitation of straddling stocks resulted in a further diminution of the freedom of the seas, with the coming into force of the 1995 U.N. Fish Stocks Agreement (United Nations 1995), designed to buttress and support UNCLOS. There yet remains, however, what this chapter has termed the freedom of the seas “hangover.” The effective management of shared fish stocks continues as the great unresolved fisheries management issue, under what has come to be called the New International Law of the Sea. The issue must be resolved well before the end of the next quarter of a century. The economics of shared fish stock management, which is a blend of intra-EEZ fisheries management, discussed in other chapters in this volume, and the theory of games (theory of strategic interaction), makes it clear that what is required is the establishment of collective RFMO property rights to both straddling and discrete high seas stocks. Freedom of the seas, pertaining to fisheries, must be eliminated de facto, if not de jure. If the pernicious effects of the freedom to fish are not eliminated and the emerging RFMO regime founders, we can look forward with confidence to the ongoing depletion, and in some cases destruction, of straddling and discrete high seas fish stocks. This conclusion is now coming to be accepted by noneconomists as well as economists. The 2007 Chatham House Report on RFMOs states that “society has learned painfully over the past several decades [that] the freedom to fish on the high seas is now incompatible with the goals of conservation, sustainable use and optimum utilization of the world’s capture fishery resources” (Lodge et al. 2007: 18).
Acknowledgments I express my gratitude for the generous support of the Sea Around Us Project, of the Fisheries Centre, University of British Columbia, which is, in turn, sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trust of Philadelphia, USA. I also express my gratitude for the helpful comments of an anonymous reviewer.
Notes 1. The term “coastal state” refers to a state with significant marine coast line (e.g., Australia), as opposed to a landlocked state (e.g., Paraguay)
The 1982 U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea and Beyond or a geographically disadvantaged state (e.g., Singapore). 2. Extended now to 12 nautical miles (United Nations 1982). 3. UNCLOS does, of course, cover much more than fisheries. 4. One difficulty that afflicts game theory is its terminology. The term “side payments” is an example. To some, the term smacks of bribery and corruption, which has led to the search for euphemisms. One such euphemism for side payments is “negotiation facilitators” (FAO 2002). 5. The full title of the agreement is Agreement for the Implementation of the Provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea of 10 December 1982 Relating to the Conservation and Management of Straddling Fish Stocks and Highly Migratory Fish Stocks (United Nations 1995). 6. Customary international law arises out of state practice, a conviction, by major powers as a minimum, that states are obliged to abide by the rules laid down by the law. If a state is to disregard such customary international law, it must explicitly object to the law, which is, of course, often costly politically (Buergenthal and Murphy 2002: 22–23). For example, UNCLOS part V (EEZ) is now deemed to be customary international law. The United States is not a party to UNCLOS. It does, nonetheless, adhere strictly to the provisions of part V. 7. Compare, for example, the views of Dutch legal expert Erik Molenaar (2000) with those of Chilean expert Francisco Orrego Vicuña (1999). 8. There are a few cases of RFMOs, particularly those which are tuna based, in which relevant coastal states were not “charter” members. This has to be regarded as an aberration. The Chatham House Report argues that such coastal states should be brought into the RFMOs with all possible speed (Lodge et al. 2007). Discussion, at a later point in this chapter, about the possibility of new members buying their way into an RFMO does not apply to these coastal state new members. 9. Blacklisting can lead to denial of port facilities, bans on trade in fish offloaded from the vessel, and other sanctions. 10. For a complete discussion of punitive actions being taken against those engaging in unregulated fishing, see Lodge et al. (2007, chapter 5).
References Alexander, L.M., and R.D. Hodgson (1975). The impact of the 200-mile economic zone on the law of the sea. San Diego Law Review 12: 569–599. Bjørndal, T., and A. Brasão (2006). The east Atlantic bluefin tuna fisheries: Stock collapse or
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recovery? Marine Resource Economics 21: 193–210. Bjørndal, T., and G. Munro (2003). The management of high seas fishery resources and the implementation of the UN Fish Stocks Agreement of 1995. Pp. 1–35 in Folmer, H., and T. Tietenberg (eds), The International Yearbook of Environmental Resource Economics 2003/2004. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Buergenthal, T., and S. Murphy (2002). Public International Law: In a Nutshell. St. Paul, Minn.: West Group. Chand, S., R.Q. Grafton, and E. Petersen (2003). Multilateral governance of fisheries: Management and cooperation in the western and central Pacific tuna fisheries. Marine Resource Economics 18: 329–344. FAO (1992). Marine Fisheries and the Law of the Sea: A Decade of Change. FAO Fisheries Circular 853. Rome: Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations. FAO (1994). World Review of Highly Migratory Species and Straddling Stocks. FAO Fisheries Technical Paper 337. Rome: Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations. FAO (2001). International Plan of Action to Prevent, Deter and Eliminate Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated Fishing. Rome: Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations. FAO (2002). Report of the Norway-FAO Expert Consultation on the Management of Shared Fish Stocks Bergen, Norway, 7–10 October 2002. FAO Fisheries Report 695. Rome: Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations. Kaitala, V., and G. Munro (1997). The conservation and management of high seas fishery resources under the new law of the sea. Natural Resource Modeling 10: 87–108. Lodge, M., D. Anderson, S. Løbach, G. Munro, K. Sainsbury, and A. Willock (2007). Recommended Practices for Regional Fisheries Management Organizations: Report of an Independent Panel to Develop a Model for Improved Governance by Regional Fisheries Organizations. London: Chatham House. Logan, R.M. (1974). Canada, the United States and the Third Law of the Sea Conference. Montreal: C.D. Howe Institute and the National Planning Association. McRae, D., and G. Munro (1989). Coastal state “rights” within the 200-mile exclusive economic zone. Pp. 197–112 in Neher, P., R. Arnason, and N. Mollet (eds), Rights Based Fishing. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Miller, K., and G. Munro (2004). Climate and cooperation: A new perspective on the management of shared fish stocks. Marine Resource Economics 19: 367–393.
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Miller, K., G. Munro, T. McDorman, R. McKelvey, and P. Tydemers (2001). The 1999 Pacific Salmon Agreement: A Sustainable Solution? Occasional Papers: Canadian-American Public Policy, No. 47. Orono: Canadian-American Center, University of Maine. Molenaar, E. (2000). The concept of “real interest” and other aspects of cooperation through regional fisheries management mechanisms. The International Journal of Marine and Coastal Law 15: 475–531. Munro, G.R. (1979). The optimal management of transboundary renewable resources. Canadian Journal of Economics 3: 271–296. Munro, G.R. (2000). The UN Fish Stocks Agreement of 1995: History and problems of implementation. Marine Resource Economics 15: 265–280. Munro, G.R. (2007). Internationally shared fish stocks, the high seas and property rights in fisheries. Marine Resource Economics 22: 425–443. Munro, G.R. (2008). Game theory and the development of resource management policy: The case of international fisheries. Pp. 12–41 in Dinar, A., J. Albiac, and J. Sánchez-Soriano (eds), Game Theory and Policymaking in Natural Resources and the Environment. London: Routledge. Munro, G.R., A. Van Houtte, and R. Willmann (2004). The Conservation and Management of Shared Fish Stocks: Legal and Economic Aspects. FAO Fisheries Technical Paper 465. Rome: Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations. National Research Council (1999). Sustaining Marine Fisheries. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. Örebech, P., K. Sigurjonsson, and T.L. McDorman (1998). The 1995 United Nations straddling and highly migratory fish stocks agreement: Management, enforcement and dispute settlement. International Journal of Marine and Coastal Law 15: 361–378.
Orrego Vicuña, F. (1999). The Changing International Law of High Seas Fisheries. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pintassilgo, P. (2003). A coalition approach to the management of high seas fisheries in the presence of externalities. Natural Resource Modeling 16: 175–197. Pintassilgo, P., and M. Lindroos (2008). Application of partition function games to the management of straddling fish stocks. Pp. 65–84 in Dinar, A., J. Albiac, and J. Sánchez-Soriano (eds), Game Theory and Policymaking in Natural Resources and the Environment. London: Routledge. Serdy, A. (2007). Trading of fishery commission quota in international law. Ocean Yearbook 21: 265–288. Tucker, A.W. (1950). A Two-Person Dilemma. Unpublished paper, Stanford University. United Nations (1982). United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. U.N. Document A/Conf.62/122. Geneva: United Nations. United Nations (1995). Agreement for the Implementation of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea of 10 December 1982 Relating to the Conservation and Management of Straddling Fish Stocks and Highly Migratory Fish Stocks. United Nations Conference on Straddling Fish Stocks and Highly Migratory Fish Stocks, Document A/Conf./164/37. Geneva: United Nations. Van Houtte, A. (2003). Legal aspects in the management of shared fish stocks: A review. Pp. 30–42 in Papers Presented at the NorwayFAO Expert Consultation on the Management of Shared Fish Stocks, Bergen, Norway, 7–10 October 2002. FAO Fisheries Report 695 (suppl.). Rome: Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations. Willock, A., and M. Lack (2006). Follow the Leader: Learning from the Experience and Best Practices of Regional Fisheries Management Organizations. Sydney, World Wildlife Federation International and TRAFFIC International.
51 Bioeconomic Modeling of Marine Reserves with Environmental Uncertainty TOM KOMPAS R. QUENTIN GRAFTON PHAM VAN HA NHU CHE LONG CHU
51.1. INTRODUCTION A marine reserve may be defined as a spatial area where some or all species receive long-term protection from harvesting. Reserves may exist in certain locations because of natural or physical features (e.g., natural spawning grounds and inaccessible fishing areas), but they are also imposed as part of the overall management of marine resources. In recent years, marine reserves have received increased attention by both policy makers and researchers. This has been driven in part by concerns over the need to preserve both representative marine habitat and biodiversity, but also because of fears that traditional fisheries management has failed to adequately manage much less conserve marine resources (Ludwig et al. 1993; Pauly et al. 2002). There is often a perceived tension between the conservation and biological benefits of marine reserves and the economic profitability of the fishing industry when faced with the imposition of a reserve. On the biological side, support for reserves includes empirical evidence that they can raise the spawning biomass and mean size of exploited populations, increase the abundance of species and, relative to reference sites, raise population density, biomass, fish size, and diversity. By contrast, fishers often oppose the establishment and expansion of marine reserves and claim that reserves provide few (if any) economic payoffs, since closing part of the
fishing area necessarily restricts harvests and forces more effort into smaller (perhaps already overexploited) fishing grounds. This chapter provides an exposition of recent contributions to the bioeconomics of marine reserves. The focus is on bioeconomic models that incorporate two forms of environmental uncertainty, namely, a jump-diffusion process that allows for both typical random temporal variation and occasional and relatively large negative shocks that may affect both the fishery and reserve. The results of this modeling demonstrate that marine reserves create a “resilience effect” that allows for the population to recover faster, as well as increase harvest immediately following a negative shock (Grafton et al. 2005b). The trade-off of a larger reserve is a reduced harvest in the absence of a negative shock such that a reserve will never encompass the entire population if the goal is to maximize the economic returns from harvesting, and fishing is profitable. Under a wide range of parameter values with environmental uncertainty, a marine reserve (because of the resilience effect) can increase the economic payoff to fishers even when the harvested population is not initially overexploited, harvesting is economically optimal, and the population is persistent. In other words, even if a fishery is optimally managed with knowledge as to the size and probability of environmental variability to maximize the net returns from fishing, a marine reserve still generates a higher economic payoff than no reserve
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(Grafton et al. 2006). In this sense, and in the presence of negative environmental shocks, marine reserves can provide a “win–win” situation, ensuring not only habitat and species protection but also increased profitability to a commercial fleet. Thus, under environmental uncertainty, marine reserves are a fundamental, but not exclusive tool, of fisheries management. Section 51.2 of this chapter briefly reviews some of the recent literature on marine reserves. Section 52.3 provides an illustration of the positive effect of marine reserves on fisher profitability in the face of negative environmental shocks in an otherwise standard bioeconomic model. Section 52.4 discusses some recent advances on this modeling, and section 52.5 provides a few closing remarks.
51.2. PREVIOUS LITERATURE A large literature (see Grafton et al. [2005a, 2006], on which this section is based) exists on marine reserves, mostly written from a biological perspective. A key insight is that how many, and under what conditions, fish migrate or “spill over” from reserves to harvested areas is critical to maximizing the direct benefits of no-take areas (Polachek 1990). These spillovers occur whenever individual fish are afforded a measure of protection in a reserve, but also provide a source of recruitment for exploited areas outside of the reserve (Pulliam 1988). Roberts et al. (2001) and McClanahan and Mangi (2000), among others, provide empirical evidence that reserves can generate positive spillovers that may improve harvests in adjacent exploited areas. Pezzey et al. (2000) and Sanchirico and Wilen (2001) show, in theoretical models with density-dependent growth, that a reserve can increase the abundance of the population and, in some cases, may even raise the aggregate harvest in the exploited population. However, this “double payoff” arises only when the chosen area for the reserve is at a low population level such that the marginal benefits of a closure outweigh the loss of harvest in a previously exploited area. One of the earliest economic contributions to the reserve literature is by Holland and Brazee (1996). They used a deterministic model to show that the relative benefits of reserves depend on their effects on harvesting in exploited areas and also the discount rate. Given high levels of fishing effort, a reserve provides insurance against a collapse in the
population, but reserves give little or no benefit if there are effective management controls on effort. Holland (2000) observes in a spatially explicit model that optimal controls on effort and catches make reserves superfluous but stresses that there can be a positive economic payoff to a reserve if fishing effort is excessive. Sanchirico (2004) also finds in a spatial model that a first-best strategy is to optimally set fishing effort in every possible fishing location, but that establishing reserves in some patches can generate a higher resource rent in an open access fishery. He emphasizes, as do Sanchirico and Wilen (1999), that the costs and returns of harvesting in different locations, as well as the spillovers, play an important role in determining where to establish reserves. In terms of stochastic approaches, Lauck et al. (1998) show that if management uncertainty exists regarding population size, marine reserves should increase with the size of the negative shocks to ensure population persistence. Mangel (1998, 2000a) generates a similar result whereby reserve size should increase with the size of an uncertain harvest rate so as to ensure sustainability of the population. Grafton et al. (2005b) find that reserves increase resilience in the presence of negative shocks. Conrad (1999) shows that reserves may generate economic benefits by reducing the variance of the population if net growth in the reserve and the fishery are uncorrelated, or if they are perfectly correlated. In addition, Sladek Nowlis and Roberts (1998), Mangel (2000b), and Hannesson (2002) demonstrate that with environmental variability a reserve can lower the harvesting variance. Grafton et al. (in press), based on actual fishery parameter values and known shocks, show that the presence of an optimal reserve may have even prevented the collapse of the northern cod fishery in Canada.
51.3. THE ECONOMICS OF MARINE RESERVES WITH ENVIRONMENTAL UNCERTAINTY The brief survey of the literature shows that in a deterministic setting that it is hard to justify marine reserves from an economic point of view unless there is overharvesting. Our main goal in this section, based closely on the work of Grafton et al. (2005b, 2006), is to show how marine reserves can generate a potential win–win situation even with optimal harvesting. To demonstrate this important result,
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Modeling Marine Reserves with Environmental Uncertainty assume that the population, without harvesting and uncertainty, is governed by density-dependent growth defined by x f (x) = rx 1 − , K
(51.1)
where x is the population or biomass, f(x) is its growth, r is the intrinsic growth rate, and K is the carrying capacity. Following Grafton et al. (2005b), the model assumes the economic benefit from the population is simply the resource rents or economic profits it generates from harvesting. Intertemporal rents or economic profits from harvesting the population are defined by x ∏(h, xNR ) = p(h)h − c h, NR KNR
(51.2)
where h is harvest, xNR is the size of the harvested population, KNR is the carrying capacity of the harvested population, p(h) is the inverse demand function, and c(h, xNR/KNR) is the aggregate cost function where costs rise with the harvest but do not increase with the population density of the harvested population. In the case of a permanent reserve that protects proportion s Î (0, 1] of the population, the carrying capacity of the harvested population is defined by (1 − s)K, so that for s > 0 the growth function of the reserve population, f(xR, s), and the harvested population, f(xNR, s), are x f (xR , s) = rxR 1 − R , sK xNR f (xNR , s) = rxNR 1 − , (1 − s)K
(51.3)
(51.4)
where xR and xNR are the reserve and harvested populations, respectively. To analyze the effects of reserves on economic profits, it is appropriate to incorporate two stochastic shocks that may affect both the reserve and harvested populations. One source of variability is environmental stochasticity that can be either a positive or a negative and represents a temporal variation in both (reserve and harvested) populations, as defined by a Wiener diffusion process (Brownian motion) that follows a normal distribution (Wt). The other stochastic process is a negative shock that occurs randomly over time and is defined as a jump process (q) that follows a Poisson distribution, governed by the parameter l.
Brownian motion in the reserve and harvested population is defined by g(xR) and g(xNR) that represent the proportional effect on the two populations from the same realization, dW. Sensitivity to negative shocks in the reserve and harvested population is defined by y(xR) and l(xNR) that represent the proportional effects on the populations from the same realization, dq. The functions y and l differ to allow for the possibility that the sensitivity to the negative shocks may vary in the reserve and harvested populations. To solve for the optimal harvest trajectory and reserve size, we must first determine the optimal harvest for a given reserve size, and then select the reserve size that maximizes the overall value function defined over s Î (0, 1]. Thus, the solution to the overall optimization problem is defined over all possible values of s and involves the selection of both a harvesting trajectory and a reserve size that maximize the discounted net returns from fishing. The initial harvest optimization problem, incorporating the two stochastic processes and for an arbitrary s, is defined by equations 51.5–51.8: ∞
V (xR , xNR ) = max h ∫ e − pt ∏(h, xNR , s) (51.5) 0 subject to x xNR dxR = f (xR , s) − φ(1 − s)K R − dt sK (1 − s)K + g(xR )dW + ψ (xR )dq, (51.6) x xNR dxNR = f (xNR , s) + φ(1 − s)K R − − h dt (1 ) − sK s K (51.7) + g(xNR )dW + γ (xNR )dq, x0 = x(0),
(51.8)
where V(xR, xNR) is the value function, x0 is the sum of the initial population inside and outside of the reserve, r is the discount rate, and f is the transfer coefficient. The transfer function, f(1 − s)K(xR / sK − xNR / (1 − s)K), is consistent with evidence that dispersion is strongly density dependent (MacCall 1990) and ensures that the transfer of fish is governed by both reserve size and the relative population density of the reserve and harvested populations. The solution procedure involves evaluating all possible values of s to solve for the optimal harvest levels for any given reserve size. The optimal reserve size (s*) is that which gives the highest economic value for all possible reserve sizes and
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51.1 Parameter values for the bioeconomic model of marine reserves
Notation r l s j r a x0 K a b y(xR) g(xNR)
Value 0.05 0.1 0.01 3.5 0.3 1 0.5 1 1 –0.3 –0.1 xR –0.1 xNR
Variable Name Discount rate Arrival rate of the negative shock Standard deviation of the Brownian motion Transfer rate Intrinsic growth rate Parameter of the growth function Initial biomass Carrying capacity Inverse demand parameter Inverse demand parameter Magnitude of negative shock in the reserve area Magnitude of negative shock in nonreserve (fishing) area
maximizes the overall value function V*(xR, xNR) that is an envelope of value functions for all possible values of s. To illustrate the economic effects of reserves, we use the following inverse demand and cost functions: ln p = a + b ln h,
(51.9)
xNR ch(1 − s) c h, = , (1 − s)K xNR
(51.10)
with a full parameter set given in table 51.1, showing all specific values and relevant variable names for equations 51.1–51.10. For the given parameter set, assuming optimal harvesting with a 10 percent negative shock, the optimal reserve size is 50 percent—the win–win in terms of conservation and profitability. Figure 51.1 shows a realization of the time profile for harvest assuming a Brownian diffusion process and six discrete negative shocks for reserve sizes of 0, 30, and 60 percent. Two things are immediately clear. First, as expected, a negative shock results in a fall in harvest. But second, given a transfer function from the reserve to the fishery, harvest both falls less and recovers to near its former state more quickly the larger the reserve size. This resilience effect is most pronounced in figure 51.1 for the case of a 60 percent reserve. With no reserve, the fall in harvest in the face of a negative shock is the largest and the time to return to a near harvest level prior to the realization of the negative shock is the longest of the three cases.
Figure 51.2 shows the time profile for the difference in harvest between a 20 and 50 percent reserve size, assuming a single negative shock (at time line “nine”). At the optimal value of a 50 percent reserve, the harvest difference is negative (i.e., harvest is much lower with a 50 percent compared to a 20 percent reserve) whenever there is an absence of a negative shock. However, with a negative shock, given the positive spillover from the reserve to the fishing area, harvest is much larger for the 50 percent compared to the 20 percent reserve case. This also remains true for a substantial period of time after a negative shock.
0.05
Harvest
TABLE
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0.03 0% reserve 30% reserve 60% reserve
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Time FIGURE 51.1 Harvest values over time for a 0, 30, and 60 percent reserve size given six large negative shocks and a given diffusion process
Modeling Marine Reserves with Environmental Uncertainty
smaller sized fishery in the absence of a negative shock. The point at which the benefit and the cost from a marginal change in reserve size are equal is the optimum reserve size (or 50 percent of the marine area with the specific parameter set).
0.004
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51.4. MODELING AND FISHERIES MANAGEMENT
0.002
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0
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51.2 The difference in harvest over time between a 50 percent and a 20 percent reserve size given a single large negative shock and a given diffusion process
FIGURE
In both figures 51.1 and 51.2, this resilience effect is (1) not confined to the parameter values used in the simulation (alternative results and sensitivity exercises for different parameter sets are given in Grafton et al. 2005b, 2006); (2) not the same as population persistence as it occurs even when the population is not subject to extinction; and (3) will always occur if the shock sensitivity in the reserve is equal to or less than in the harvested population. In simple terms, a greater population density in the reserve allows for a transfer of fish to the harvested area. This, in turn, reduces the recovery time of the harvested population and also permits fishers to harvest at a higher rate immediately after a negative shock than they would otherwise (as in figure 51.1). Although the spillover or transfer can increase with reserve size, the cost of a larger reserve is a reduced harvest in the absence of a negative shock (as in figure 51.2). As a result, a reserve will never encompass the entire population if the goal is to maximize the economic returns from harvesting and fishing is profitable. This is because, eventually, the marginal benefit or spillover from a slightly larger reserve with a negative shock will equal the marginal cost from harvesting forgone from a
The simulation outlined above, and in Grafton et al. (2006), established the desirability of a marine reserve of “fixed size.” However, changes in the underlying parameter values (e.g., changes in the costs of fishing and the price of fish) would normally lead to changes in optimal reserve size. This model context assumes that the cost of setting up and changing the size of a marine reserve is negligible. In practice, however, these costs can be significant, so much so that it is conceivable that establishing a reserve may not in fact enhance profitability. Consequently, comprehensive modeling of marine reserves with nontrivial establishment and running costs must allow for a “dynamic option” to set up, alter, and potentially remove existing reserves. In such a set up the decision maker can thus switch between two regulatory modes: no reserve (single-state variable, with the reserve set temporarily equal to zero) and a marine resource with a reserve (two-state variables). This variabledimension model is analyzed in Chu et al. (2008a), and numerical results of this modeling exercise provide some useful insights for fisheries managers. This work shows that higher set up and running costs lead to smaller optimally sized reserves. More important, the results show that in many cases a temporary closure of the marine reserve after a negative shock may improve economic payoffs from harvesting. This temporary access to a reserve allows firms to fish in a relatively high density area (formally the reserve). In the “fixed reserve” model, once a large negative shock occurs, the only option is to rely on the stock-recruitment relationship and the transfer process from the reserve to the fishery. The opening up of reserves to limited forms of exploitation, especially if they do not compromise the biodiversity and habitat protection goals of reserves provide a way to get greater acceptance by the industry for their implementation and increase the returns from harvesting. A recent extension of the fixed reserve model is to allow for marine reserve switching or
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“rolling reserves” (Chu et al. 2008b), permitting the establishment of a marine reserve to spatially move within the marine resource, depending on parametric shocks and relative population densities. Unlike the temporary reserve model, which has variable dimensions, the model of switchable reserves always has two dimensions. The two state variables are (1) the protected stock and (2) the exploitable stock. In this exercise, when the reserve is “switched” or moved, its location will change but the size of the protected and exploitable areas remains unchanged. As the protected area is moved from a high- to a low-density area, the size of the protected stock will decline. By contrast, the exploitable stock increases immediately following the opening of a reserve with a higher stock density. This result allows for higher profits than in the fixed reserve case. In this context, a switch often occurs in the face of a large negative shock, or immediately after a negative shock, allowing for harvest smoothing without the need to wait for fish transfers from the fixed reserve area. Another recent innovation (Chu et al. 2008c) allows for variable transfer rates (depending on fish densities) and flexible reserve sizes. This is modeled as a “dynamic regime switching” model and provides the most general results. It is computationally more demanding but allows for rolling reserves and changes in reserve size, with transfer rates, simultaneously. Unlike spatially implicit models, comprehensive modeling of both the spatial dimension and environmental stochasticity provides decision makers with a framework to help determine the location and duration of no-take areas. The application of such models offers the real possibility of maximizing the bioeconomic payoffs of marine reserves.
To bridge this divide, the chapter provides a selected review and exposition of some of the key benefits of marine reserves, combined with a more detailed description of stochastic bioeconomic models of marine reserves with a negative shocks and environmental stochasticity. These stochastic bioeconomic models show that a marine reserve can generate economic payoffs, even if harvesting is optimal, the population is persistent, and no uncertainty exists over the size of the current population. A marine reserve can increase resource rents and reduce the recovery time for a harvested population in the presence of negative shocks. A reserve has economic value because it allows for spillovers of fish from the reserve to the harvested population following a negative shock that can raise resource rents. In this sense, reserves act as a “hedge” against negative shocks, provided the sensitivity to the shock is not greater in the reserve than the harvested population. The trade-off with a reserve, however, is lower harvests and resource rents in the absence of such shocks. While deterministic bioeconomic models provide important insights about reserves, they also understate the value of reserves to fishers in a fluctuating or uncertain environment. A proper understanding of the economics of marine reserves, and its importance to fisheries management, requires well-articulated stochastic bioeconomic models. Ideally, such models should contain important spatial information, in ways that matter not only to the biology of fishing (e.g., the distribution of fish stocks), but also to its economics (e.g., fuel and travel costs given different spatial placement of marine reserves).
References
51.5. CONCLUDING REMARKS Despite the increased attention and a commitment by many governments to establish a network of marine protected areas, many policy makers are still struggling to decide where to establish reserves, of what size, and how to reconcile short and longterm trade-offs and differences among stakeholders, particularly between fisher and conservation groups. One of the barriers to moving toward the better use of marine reserves, at least in a policy context, is the relatively small number of studies that combine both the biological and economic drivers of marine reserves.
Chu, L., T. Kompas, and Q. Grafton (2008a). A Parametric Linear Programming Approach to Stochastic Optimal Control Problem with Discontinuous Jumps: Switchable Reserves. IDEC working paper, Crawford School of Economics and Government. Canberra: Australian National University. Chu, L., T. Kompas, and Q. Grafton (2008b). Rolling Reserves and Optimal Marine Reserve Design. IDEC working paper, Crawford School of Economics and Government. Canberra: Australian National University. Chu, L., T. Kompas, and Q. Grafton (2008c). Parametric Linear Programming Approach to Stochastic Optimal Control Problem with Variable Dimensions: Marine Reserve Design
Modeling Marine Reserves with Environmental Uncertainty with Variable Reserve Size and Transfer Rates. IDEC working paper, Crawford School of Economics and Government. Canberra: Australian National University. Conrad, J.M. (1999). The bioeconomics of marine sanctuaries. Journal of Bioeconomics 1: 205–217. Grafton, R.Q., T. Kompas, and V. Schneider (2005a). The bioeconomics of marine reserves: A selected review with policy implications. Journal of Bioeconomics 7: 161–178. Grafton, R.Q., T. Kompas, and D. Lindenmayer (2005b). Marine reserves with ecological uncertainty. Bulletin of Mathematical Biology 67: 957–971. Grafton, R. Q., T. Kompas, and H. Pham (2006). The economic payoffs from marine reserves: Resource rents in a stochastic environment. Economic Record 82: 469–480. Grafton, R. Q., T. Kompas, and H. Pham (2009). Cod today and none tomorrow: The economic value of a marine reserve. Land Economics 85(3): 459–469. Hannesson, R. (2002). The economics of marine reserves. Natural Resource Modeling 15: 273–290. Holland, D.S. (2000). A bioeconomic model of marine sanctuaries on Georges Bank. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences 57: 1307–1319. Holland, D.S., and R.J. Brazee (1996). Marine reserves for fisheries management. Marine Resource Economics 11: 157–171. Lauck, T., C.W. Clark, M. Mangel, and G.R. Munro (1998). Implementing the precautionary principle in fisheries management through marine reserves. Ecological Applications 8: S72–S78. Ludwig, D., R. Hilborn, and C. Walters (1993). Uncertainty, resource exploitation and conservation: Lessons from history. Science 260(7): 36. MacCall, A. (1990). Dynamic Geography of Marine Fish Populations. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Mangel, M. (1998). No-take areas for sustainability of harvested species and a conservation
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invariant for marine reserves. Ecology Letters 1: 87–90. Mangel, M. (2000a). On the fraction of habitat allocated to marine reserves. Ecology Letters 3: 15–22. Mangel, M. (2000b). Irreducible uncertainties, sustainable fisheries and marine reserves. Evolutionary Ecology Research 2: 547–557. McClanahan, T.R., and S. Mangi (2000). Spillover of exploitable fishes from a marine park and its effect on the adjacent fishery. Ecological Applications 10: 1792–1805. Pauly, D., V. Christensen, S. Guénette, T. Pitcher, U. Sumaila, C. Walters, R. Watson, and D. Zeller (2002). Towards sustainability in world fisheries. Nature 418: 689–695. Pezzey, J.C.V., C.M. Roberts, and B.T. Urdal (2000). A simple bioeconomic model of a marine reserve. Ecological Economics 33: 77–91. Polachek, T. (1990). Year around closed areas as a management tool. Natural Resource Modeling 4: 327–354. Pulliam, H.R. (1988). Source, sinks, and population regulation. American Naturalist 132: 652–661. Roberts, C.M., J.A.M. Bohnsack, F. Gell, J.P. Hawkins, and R. Goodridge (2001). Effects of marine reserves on adjacent fisheries. Science 294: 1920–1923. Sanchirico, J.N. (2004). Designing a cost effective marine reserve network: A bioeconomic metapopulation analysis. Marine Resource Economics 19: 41–65. Sanchirico, J.N., and J.E. Wilen (1999). Bioeconomics of spatial exploitation in a patchy environment. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 37: 129–150. Sanchirico, J.N., and J.E. Wilen (2001). A bioeconomic model of marine reserve creation. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 42: 257–276. Sladek Nowlis, J.S., and C.M. Roberts (1998). Fisheries benefits and optimal design of marine reserves. Fishery Bulletin 97: 604–616.
52 Privatization of the Oceans RÖGNVALDUR HANNESSON
52.1. INTRODUCTION This chapter deals with the emergence of private property rights to fish that has taken place in many countries since the establishment of the 200-mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ). The organization of this chapter is partly chronological: Why did private property rights to fish develop so late? What forces led to their development? What form do they take? We then move on to the economic interests providing the necessary political support for property rights to fish, what they accomplish, and who gains and who loses from establishing such rights. Do they serve any socially useful purpose? Do they promote conservation?
52.2. THE COMMON PROPERTY PROBLEM That common resources tend to be overexploited is well established, both theoretically and empirically. The most widely cited reference probably is Hardin (1968), but in the context of fisheries the conclusion can be traced back, in the English language literature, at least to Gordon’s classic 1954 paper, but a much earlier reference is Warming (1911; see also Andersen 1983). Briefly told, the reason this happens is that each additional user of a common resource will in all probability diminish the benefits other users derive from the resource,
but the additional user has no incentive to take into account benefits other than his own. Hence, the result could easily be that the total benefits are less than maximal while each individual user derives large enough benefits to justify his or her own use of the resource. The solution of this problem obviously requires some control of access to the resource. Such a mechanism will not, however, arise unless some with the necessary authority find it worthwhile to put it in place. Access control is costly; the users must be authorized, and it is necessary to monitor the use and to punish those who exceed their authorizations or are not authorized at all. Furthermore, it is necessary to determine how much use can be permitted. This requires investigating the capacity of the resource—in the context of fisheries, how much surplus growth the fish stock is able to produce in each period and how it is related to the size of the stock and its exploitation. Such investigations are costly in terms of time, manpower, and other necessary inputs. This line of reasoning is well known from the economic literature. A classic reference is Demsetz (1967). Property rights to common resources arise when the benefits of defending claims to a resource exceed the costs of doing so. In many cases, these claims relate to the use of the resource rather than control of the entire resource as such, and such claims are often informal and supported by extralegal actions. Demsetz cites claims to sites
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Privatization of the Oceans where beavers could be trapped. Collectors of the cherished matsutake mushroom in British Columbia try to keep secret the spots where these mushrooms grow. Sometimes the development may be in the opposite direction. Access rights to bird cliffs in the Faeroe Islands belong to individual farms, but the importance of egg and bird collecting has now declined so that only devout collectors do this any more. Nevertheless, out of courtesy they usually ask permission for their activities. So, access controls to previously common resources arise out of self-interest and involve capturing benefits that otherwise would accrue to someone else. This holds not only for individual rights, but also for community rights where the rights of access are reserved for some particular group. In the latter case, the control involves the exclusion of those who do not belong to the community, however defined. There is no fundamental difference between saying “this is mine and not yours” and “this is ours and not yours.” But the story does not end with noting that exclusive use rights, whether private or communal, involve the capture of benefits others could have got. Restricting access is productive, because it generates benefits that otherwise would be lost through excessive use. This is the social justification for exclusive rights to resources. Exclusive use rights can in principle increase the benefits enjoyed by everyone, but whether in fact that happens is another issue, depending on how they are established, how widely they are shared, and their economic repercussions, which may be quite complicated.
52.3. WHY EXCLUSIVE RIGHTS TO FISH CAME LATE The above references to the problems of common fish resources (Gordon 1954; Warming 1911) are fifty to a hundred years old. Yet this is recent, from a historical perspective on property rights. The English commons were enclosed and privatized over a long period hundreds of years ago (Gonner [1912] 1966). How private rights to land came to develop is for the most part lost in the mists of history. We know that when European settlers came to unoccupied territories or lands where the original inhabitants could not resist them, they brought with them the concept of private property rights to land as an unquestioned mode of organization and developed procedures to divide up the new land. When
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the Norsemen settled Iceland, men could claim as much land as they could demarcate by lighting fires in the course of one day, and women could claim as much land as they could lead a heifer around in one day. In the United States, property rights were allocated on open lands by federal legislation, and where Europeans settled in the lands of the British Empire, they got property or long-term lease rights from the Crown. Why did such rights not develop in the fisheries? There are two reasons for this. First, fish are fugitive resources to which it is difficult to claim ownership. Fish cannot be branded or otherwise marked so that the owners could recognize their fish. Because of this and because fish stocks migrate far and wide, property rights to fish stocks would have to imply exclusive rights to fish within wide areas, which would vary greatly in size from one stock to another, due to differences in the migration habits of different stocks. Second, the impact of the fishing industry on growth and fecundity of fish stocks was until recently so limited as to make a negligible difference. In the late 1800s, Thomas Huxley, one of the most prominent biologists at that time, argued that the fish resources of the oceans were virtually inexhaustible (Smith 1994). In fact, the growth and fecundity of fish stocks fluctuates so much due to environmental reasons that it can sometimes be challenging enough even today to identify the effects of fishing. Given that there was enough fish for everyone, there was little incentive for a single fisherman or even a nation state to claim exclusive rights to fish. Nevertheless, the King of England tried in the 17th century to claim exclusive rights to herring off the coast of England and attempted, unsuccessfully, to have the Dutch pay rent for fishing in the area (Fulton 1911). It is doubtful, however, whether the King of England and his advisers perceived a threat to the herring stocks from the Dutch fishermen; it is more likely that he wanted a cut of the profitable Dutch fishery, and all the more so since English attempts at emulating the Dutch met with little success. It is also known that fishermen in the Pacific Islands claimed exclusive fishing spots (Ruddle and Johannes 1984). Since reef fish populations are much smaller and more stationary than populations spread out over a vast area like the North Sea, it is possible that protection of the local fish stock was a motivating factor, but this arrangement could also have come about because fish were more
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600000
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500000 400000 300000 200000 100000
Others
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52.1 Catches of cod at Iceland by Icelanders and others, 1905–2007. (Hafrannsóknastofnun 2008: 95, table 3.1.1)
FIGURE
accessible in certain areas than others, without any conservation motive being involved. This happy state of abundance did not last forever. In the 1800s, fishing technology made great strides with the development of vessels powered by steam engines and bottom trawls scooping up all fish in their way. That fishing affected fish stocks was noticed in the trawl fisheries in the North Sea, and Thomas Huxley retracted his previous pronouncements on the inexhaustibility of the oceans (Smith 1994). Gradually this happened in other areas as well. Both world wars of the 20th century had a protective effect on the most exploited fish stocks in the Northeast Atlantic. A case in point is illustrated in figure 52.1, which shows the catches of cod at Iceland. During the wars, fishing vessels from Britain and the continent of Europe disappeared from the area, which led to a steep decline in catches, as more than half of all catches of Icelandic cod were at those times taken by foreign fishermen, mainly from England. After both wars, the foreign fleets returned, and the fish catches increased disproportionately, due to the fish stock recovery during the war years. A similar effect was noticed for fish stocks in the North Sea.
52.4. THE FIRST STEP: THE 200-MILE EXCLUSIVE ECONOMIC ZONE After World War II, fishing technology continued to improve. Fish stocks were, however, still common resources, so the effectiveness of a better technology ultimately resulted in, or was feared
to result in, decline of fish stocks and worsening prospects for future catches. This gave rise to ever louder demands from coastal states to exclusive rights to the fish stocks off their shores. A major boost to these claims was provided by the Truman Proclamation of 1945, claiming that all resources on and underneath the seabed on the continental shelf of the United States were the property of the federal government. Many countries for which fish resources were important took this a step further and claimed exclusive rights to the fish stocks above the continental shelf, and the three states on the west coast of South America, which have a narrow continental shelf and fished stocks close to the surface, claimed 200 nautical miles without any reference to the continental shelf whatsoever. The 200-mile norm finally won international recognition at the third UN Law of the Sea Conference in the early 1970s, and shortly after that many countries established a 200-mile EEZ, well before the conference was over. Most of them acted after the United States set precedence in 1976 by establishing a 200-mile exclusive fishery zone, later converted to an EEZ in accordance with the Law of the Sea Convention. The 200-mile EEZ established national jurisdiction over resources in the area, including fish. This went a long way toward enclosing all fish stocks within national jurisdiction; at the time the zone was established, 5–10 percent of world fish catches were estimated to be taken outside 200 miles. Within its zone, a state can set limits to fish catches, decide who has the right to fish, and in general regulate the fishery in any way that serves its interests. This is a necessary prerequisite for establishing any kind of private property or use rights to fish. Such rights require that unauthorized persons or firms can be persecuted and punished for taking fish they are not allowed to take. The enforcement must ultimately be sanctioned by the jurisdictional power of some state. Prior to the establishment of the EEZ, jurisdiction outside the territorial sea (usually three and sometimes twelve nautical miles) was in the hands of the state where the vessel is registered (the flag state), which is still the case in the area outside 200 miles. Effective control of fishing would under those circumstances have required cooperation among all states whose vessels were fishing the stock under regulation. The more states that are involved, the less likely it is that such cooperation is forthcoming, and prior to the 200-mile EEZ there were few examples of this. One was the Pacific
Privatization of the Oceans Halibut Commission, which regulates the lucrative Pacific halibut fishery. Only the United States and Canada were involved in this fishery. The establishment of the 200-mile EEZ can be seen as establishment of state property rights to resources. Within the zone, the coastal state has an exclusive right to extract resources, but can authorize firms from other states to do this, and many have in fact done so, both for fish and other resources. The coastal state charges a fee for this, whether it is a license to fish or to extract oil, unless it is a part of a mutual access agreement or some other agreement of mutual benefit. The establishment of these property rights is in accordance with the economic theory of property rights, which claims that such rights develop in response to rising benefits from such claims compared with the costs of defending them (Demsetz 1967). The improving technology of fishing meant both increased profitability and an increased threat that fish stocks might be destroyed, or their yields substantially harmed, through overexploitation. Countries that owed a substantial part of their income and living standards to fishing off their shores pressed for exclusive rights for fishing in this area, on the basis of the principles implied by the Truman Proclamation. Technological change also facilitated enforcement of extensive territorial claims at sea. Airplanes made it possible to monitor vast swaths of the ocean, and stronger engines and navigational instruments (radar, positioning equipment) made the coast guard more effective.
52.5. PRIVATE RIGHTS TO FISH Once the necessary jurisdictional framework had been put in place, private property rights to fish began to emerge in a number of countries. In all cases these rights are use rights and not rights to stocks of fish. Usually these are rights to catch a certain quantity of fish, determined as a share of the total catch quota set for a fish stock in each time period (typically a year). Rights to operate fishing vessels of a certain kind with a certain type of gear and for certain fish stocks have also emerged, but they are usually complementary to rather than substitutes for rights specified as fish quotas. This is, for example, the case in Norway, where rights in the form of fishing licenses (concessions) emerged in the early 1970s, well before the establishment of the 200-mile limit, as a result of a moratorium on the dwindling herring stocks. The allocation of fish
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quotas, which emerged later, was based on the vessel licensing system (Hannesson 2007). In the Faeroe Islands, a system based on fishing days replaced a fish quota system after the latter had been tried out for a brief period in the 1990s. Why do we have these use rights to fish and not fully fledged ownership rights to fish stocks? There is little doubt that ownership of fish stocks would be more effective for achieving economic efficiency. The owner of a fish stock would have as good a guarantee as nature permits for reaping the full benefits of saving some fish today in order to improve catches tomorrow. But because fish stocks typically migrate over a large area, these rights would have to be quite extensive in order to be effective. In cases where fish stocks migrate across national boundaries, private ownership would entail a far-ranging cooperation of the states involved. National governments are likely, therefore, to balk at vesting such extensive rights in private individuals or companies. Furthermore, economic efficiency is not the only goal of fisheries management. Preserving fish stocks as such for reasons of biodiversity, or as feed for other types of fish or marine mammals, is an increasingly important consideration in many countries. Private individuals or firms owning fish stocks would have no incentives to take these aspects into account unless being compensated for the forgone catches involved in doing so. This identifies a role for the state in fisheries management as a provider of public goods, just as in other arenas (parks, infrastructure). Even if use rights to fish are less effective than property rights to fish stocks, they can still go a long way toward achieving economic efficiency. The right to catch a given amount of fish over some time period provides a strong incentive for maximizing the net value of the fish one is authorized to take. There are two ways of accomplishing this. First, the value of the fish can be raised by a better treatment of the catch. A good example of this is what happened in the Alaska halibut fishery after individual fish quotas were put in place. Prior to this the fishing season was very short, sometimes just a few days. Most of the catch had to be frozen and in effect turned into an inferior product instead of being sold in the fresh fish market. After the quota system was put in place, the fishing season lengthened to eight months, and virtually all the fish was sold fresh at a considerably higher price (Herrmann and Criddle 2006). A similar
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development took place in the trawl fishery for Alaska pollock. The so-called fisheries cooperatives that were established in this industry in effect amounted to a fish quota system that removed the incentive to catch the fish as quickly as possible and before someone else would take it. The vessels could fish at a more leisurely rate, and the amount of product extracted from the raw fish increased (Wilen 2005). The more relaxed way in which fishing can be conducted under a system of fish quotas points to another source of increased efficiency, that is, lower costs of fishing. Safety is also likely to be improved, as the vessels can limit their activities to reasonably good weather conditions if they have a right to a certain quota of fish and do not face the risk that the fishery will be closed down because the total fish quota has been taken. This is not trivial; fishing is in fact one of the most hazardous occupations in the world. The cost savings are particularly likely to be substantial if the fish quotas can be sold or rented out. In years when there is less fish available than the fleet has capacity to take, it would clearly save costs if some fishermen rented out their quotas to others who can fish them more effectively and so would be prepared to pay more for them than the original owners could obtain by catching the fish on their own. These are gains for a given fishing fleet. What about the fleet size? Individual fish quotas that can be bought and sold and are valid for the long term are likely to lead to near-optimal investment in fishing fleets. A firm owning a certain fish quota that it will keep at least as long as a fishing vessel can be expected to last has an incentive to invest in a vessel that can fish its quota efficiently. If there are increasing returns to scale in the fishery and the firm’s quota is too small for a vessel of an optimal size, it could buy additional quota from other firms that wish to leave the fishery, or it might find it in its interest to sell its quota to some other firm that wishes to acquire quota for a vessel of an appropriate size. It has been shown that when fishermen get a share of the catch instead of a fixed wage this system will fall somewhat short of full optimality, but still be a great improvement over open access (Hannesson 2000). Finally, it may be noted that when fish quotas fluctuate for environmental reasons, it is virtually certain that there will be some years with excessive fishing capacity and other years with an insufficient one (Hannesson 1987).
52.6. THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF USE RIGHTS Drawing on the economic theory of property rights and the reasons why the 200-mile limit was put on the agenda, it would be tempting to conclude that these rights developed on the initiative of individuals or firms seeking a gain from excluding others from the fishery. There is some truth in this, but it is not the whole story. In many cases the initiative to establish fish quotas came from government officials and politicians concerned about economic efficiency. This was the case both in New Zealand and Iceland. However, in all cases support from industry has been necessary to bring proposals for use rights to fruition. In the rockfish fisheries off British Columbia an individual transferable quota system was developed in close cooperation with the industry (Rice 2004). An interesting lesson of that experience is that the more open the process and the wider the group of stakeholders, the more difficult it is to establish a system of use rights, with more restrictions being needed to satisfy the specific interests of certain groups of stakeholders. Where the necessary support for a use rights system has not been forthcoming from industry such proposals have failed. This happened in Chile, where certain groups in the industry opposed the individual transferable quota system proposed in the late 1980s (Peña-Torres 1997). Industry opposition to individual transferable quotas in the Faeroe Islands prompted a transition to a system of individual transferable fishing days. Despite the economic gains that can be realized through use rights such as individual transferable quotas, it is important to note that they do not solve the fundamental problem of the commons, which concerns limiting the present use for preserving the future potential of the common resource. This trade-off between present and future use can be resolved by maximizing the present value of benefits over an infinite time horizon. To accomplish this, property rights over the resource stock valid for an infinite time horizon would be conducive, but this is not what we have, for reasons that have already been mentioned. Under a use rights system such as individual transferable quotas the setting of the total fish quota, the length of the fishing season, or whatever variable is used to limit the catch, is in the hands of the authority managing the fishery and not in the hands of the industry. What use rights accomplish is economic efficiency, given the
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Privatization of the Oceans annual fish quota or the rule by which annual fish quotas are set, but neither of these is necessarily set appropriately. It is wrong, therefore, to blame individual transferable quotas for not succeeding in rebuilding fish stocks. This depends on how the total catch is limited, but not on how it is divided among the industry players or whether use rights, be they quotas or whatever, are transferable or not. That said, use rights such as individual transferable quotas are likely to promote the rebuilding of fish stocks. These rights, if transferable, are valuable, and the more so the better the fish stock is managed. Quota holders are likely, therefore, to try to influence fisheries managers to manage the stock for which they hold quotas in a way that maximizes the present value of the fishery, as this will also maximize the market value of the fish quotas they hold. Besides, individual fish quotas will help implementation by making it clear how much each vessel or firm can fish. In fisheries where the total quota is set, or fishing effort limited, in a way that comes close to maximizing the net present value of the fishery, fish quotas or fishing effort units can be quite valuable. Indeed, this is the driving force behind the industry’s interest in a system of use rights; giving fish quotas or fishing licenses to vessel owners in an industry plagued by overcapacity and allowing them to buy and sell these rights will generate an economic surplus that will materialize in the form of market value of such rights. Owners of less efficient vessels will be able to sell their rights to the owners of more efficient vessels willing to pay a price for the fish quotas that
the others are willing to accept. In this way, redundant fishing vessels will be phased out of the fishery, and those that remain can be used much more efficiently. To the extent the fish stock is managed in a better way, the value of the fish quotas will be further enhanced. This scenario has played out in a number of fisheries. In Norway there has been some trade in fish quotas, resulting in a considerable decline in the number of fishing vessels in the fisheries affected and an increase in the value of fish quotas (Hannesson 2007). The rationalizing effect of individual transferable quotas is well illustrated by the development of investment in the Icelandic fishing industry. Figure 52.2 shows a volume index of investment in the fishing industry. Three periods can be distinguished. After 1970 investment increased about fourfold, compared to the period 1945–1970. This increase was in the beginning associated with the extensions of the Icelandic jurisdiction at sea, first to 50 miles in 1972 and then to 200 miles in 1975. This brought the expulsion of foreign fishing fleets, and the Icelanders rapidly expanded into the void. It soon became clear that far too many vessels had been built, which led to a decline of the cod stock, the most important resource for the Icelandic fisheries. At first, avoiding overfishing was attempted through limiting the number of fishing days, but this turned out not to be very effective. In 1983 individual transferable quotas were tried for the first time, an arrangement that was then prolonged with certain modifications for one or a few years at a time. As is clear from figure 52.2 this did not reduce the
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FIGURE 52.2 Volume index of investment in fixed capital in the Icelandic fisheries, 1945–2007. Straight lines show averages over three periods. (Hagstofa Íslands, Statistics Iceland, www.hagstofa.is)
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investment, but rather the opposite. In 1986–1989 there was a surge in investment. At this time, the individual quotas were not valid for the long term, and more important perhaps, vessel owners could affect their future quota allocations by going for an effort option and establish a more favorable catch record. This provided a strong incentive to acquire more powerful vessels. This is the most likely reason for the investment peak in this period. In 1990, the individual quotas were established for an indefinite period, and there have been no major changes in the system after that. It is hardly a coincidence that the level of investment fell by almost 40 percent after 1990 compared with the period 1971–1990.
52.7. THE BENEFITS OF PRIVATE USE RIGHTS The value of fish quotas or other forms of use rights in fisheries reflects the resource rent in the fishery. Fish stocks are renewable resources, but their regenerative capacity is limited. To make the best possible use of these resources involves maximizing the net present value of revenues less costs, taking into account how the amount of fish left after fishing in any particular year affects the growth of the fish stock. Typically, the solution of this problem implies an excess of revenues over costs, or resource rent by another name. This is the maximum amount a sole owner of a fish stock could charge for the use of the fish stock, much as the owner of good agricultural land can rent out the land for a fee while farming on marginal land breaks even. In long-term equilibrium, the price of fish quotas will reflect the resource rent; a fish quota will be valuable if the revenues from the fish catches it permits exceed the costs for taking them. The value of a fish quota that is valid forever is equal to the present value of the difference between revenues and costs (the rent) in all future years. In a competitive market for quotas, the market price might come close to reflecting this value, but quota buyers will of course try to get away with paying less for their quotas, so the quota price depends on the interplay between supply and demand for quotas. The resource rent and the value of quotas are the factors behind the interest of the industry for quotas and its support for implementing a management system based on quotas. However, these values are not a permanent gain for the industry; they are a gain for those who initially get the quotas for free, or for
less than their true value, but for those who enter the industry later the quota value is a cost they have to pay for entering the industry in the hope of getting it back when in turn they decide to leave. In most fisheries where individual quota rights have been established, they have been handed out for free. The resulting gains, which often have been substantial, have been a source of much controversy. First, there has been strife between groups within industry. Quotas have typically been allocated to vessel owners on the basis of previous catches, and crew members without any investment in vessels have often resented the windfall gains of vessel owners. Controversies over eligibility have arisen between those who have recently entered the industry and those with a long catch record, and sometimes the allocation of quotas has been modified to take into account investment in vessels in addition to previous catch records. There have been controversies over the allocation rules between different groups of vessel owners, with each group trying to influence the rule makers in its favor. A similar process of rent seeking has often resulted when establishment of individual quotas has been anticipated or announced, with vessel owners scrambling to establish a favorable catch record, resulting in excessive participation in the fishery or unnecessary investment and a further depletion of the fish stock if no mechanism has been in place to limit the catch. A further controversy is over whether the fishery rent should accrue to the industry and become capitalized as quota values or whether some of it should be taxed away. It has been argued that society at large is the rightful owner of the fish stocks in its economic zone and therefore entitled to the benefits these resources can provide. In countries or regions where the fishing industry is a substantial part of the economy, such taxes could be important sources of revenue, much as taxation of the extraction of oil and minerals is an important source of public revenue in countries rich in such resources. The Falkland Islands receive a substantial income from renting out licenses to foreign fleets fishing for squid. Other countries where this could make a difference are Iceland, the Faeroe Islands, and regions of certain countries such as Norway and Canada. Iceland has a resource rent tax in place, but it is quite moderate compared to the market values of quotas. Controversies over windfall gains from fish quotas have often intensified as the value of the quotas has increased over time, due to the rationalization of the fishery. However, the windfall gains accruing to the industry due to the value of fish quotas are gains
Privatization of the Oceans due to a rationalization process and not gains taken at anybody’s expense. Without the quota system in place, these gains would not have existed. Furthermore, there is a certain conflict between taxing away fishing rents and the support from industry for the quota system and for a better management of the fishery. If fish quotas are valueless, they will largely be a matter of indifference for the industry, and so will management measures that would improve future catches and raise the value of the quotas.
52.8. CONCLUSION Private property rights to fish are rights of extraction, not rights of ownership of resource stocks. In this they differ from property rights to forests or livestock. One could say that property rights to oil and minerals also are extraction rights, but for minerals these also are in effect rights to stocks, because mineral deposits do not migrate out of their locations. Oil and gas, on the other hand, are a bit similar to fish in that they migrate underground, which gives rise to some of the common resource problems encountered in the fisheries. The extensive migrations of fish are one reason why we are not likely to see property rights to fish stocks emerge any time soon. Another reason is public goods aspects of fish stocks, which appear to be assuming increasing importance. But even if property rights to fish are likely to remain use rights, they can be very useful for promoting economic efficiency. There is little point in using more capital and manpower than necessary to catch the available amount of fish; nature limits the amount of fish that can be taken in any time period without harming future catch possibilities, and in managed fisheries this is often formalized by setting a limit to the amount of fish that can be taken. This would appear to be particularly important for poor countries where a large part of the population of working age is engaged in fisheries. Poor countries need above all to use their resources more productively; poverty reduction is synonymous with economic growth. No new value is created by having more people and vessels than necessary chasing the fish that can be taken. Yet one often hears the argument that allowing as many people as possible to fish will allow them to make a living and alleviate their poverty. Historically this is what has happened in many countries, and in those
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that now have become industrialized and rich. But it is surely a sign of failed distribution mechanism if poverty is reduced by allowing so many people to fish that the total fish catch declines; it is as if a better distribution requires having less to distribute. Allowance should also be made for the possibility that accommodating more people in the fisheries than necessary is likely to be a drag on economic development; closing the fishing industry to those who are not needed there pushes them to look for something else more productive to do. Where use rights have been introduced in the fishery, they have increased economic efficiency, through higher product values, less costs (including less of redundant investment in fishing vessels), or both (for formal investigation, see Grafton et al. 2000; Fox et al. 2003). While not directly improving fish stock management, use rights are likely to have done so indirectly through changing the incentives of the industry from pressing for higher short-term quotas to avoid bankruptcies because of overcapacity to pressing for better fish stock management that maximizes the value of these rights. Successful fisheries management by transferable use rights invariably results in a rising value of those rights. This brings a windfall gain to those who initially got the rights, the greater the less they paid for their rights (and they have usually been handed out for free). Such distributional effects have often been controversial. There are proverbial tales of twin brothers who started out with empty hands but where one followed a track that gave him a fish quota for free while the other lost his job in the ensuing rationalization of the industry. There are methods to deal with distributional effects of this kind, although they are hardly perfect and perhaps never will be. In practice, it is not possible to make a watertight separation between allocation and distribution; economic development is often accompanied by changes in income distribution that moves some forward and sets others back. In the fisheries case, it may very well be that putting in place a wealth-enhancing management system based on private use rights requires that the rights holders get a large enough share of the wealth generated by the use right system. Generally speaking, we can say that one must weigh the gains in efficiency against the distributional effects. The worst possible trade-off that can be imagined is one where any distributional inequity, however small, will always outweigh any efficiency gain, however large.
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References Andersen, P. (1983). On rent of fishing grounds: Translation of Jens Warming’s 1911 article, with an introduction. History of Political Economy 15: 391–396. Demsetz, H. (1967). Toward a theory of property rights. American Economic Review 57: 347–359. Fox, K.J., R.Q. Grafton, J. Kirkley, and D. Squires (2003). Property rights in a fishery: Regulatory change and firm performance. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 46: 156–177. Fulton, T.W. (1911). The Sovereignty of the Sea. Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons. Gonner, E.C.K. [1912] (1966). Common Land and Inclosure. 2nd ed. New York: Augustus M. Keelley Publishers. Gordon, H.S. (1954). The economic theory of a common property resource: The fishery. Journal of Political Economy 62: 124–142. Grafton, R.Q., D. Squires, and K.J. Fox (2000). Private property and economic efficiency: A study of a common-pool resource. Journal of Law and Economics 43: 679–713. Hafrannsóknastofnun (Institute of Marine Research) (2008). Nytjastofnar sjávar (State of marine stocks in Icelandic waters) 2007/08, Reykjavík: Hafrannsóknastofnun. Hannesson, R. (1987). Optimal catch capacity and fishing effort in deterministic and stochastic fishery models. Fisheries Research 5:1–21.
Hannesson, R. (2000). A note on ITQs and optimal investment. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 40: 181–188. Hannesson, R. (2007). Buyback programs for fishing vessels in Norway. In Curtis, R., and D. Squires (eds.), Fisheries Buybacks, pp. 177– 190. Oxford: Blackwell. Hardin, G. (1968). The tragedy of the commons. Science 162: 1243–1247. Herrmann, M., and K. Criddle (2006). An econometric model for the Pacific halibut fishery. Marine Resource Economics 21: 129–158. Peña-Torres, J. (1997). The political economy of fishing regulation: The case of Chile. Marine Resource Economics 12: 253–280. Rice, J. (2004). The British Columbia rockfish trawl fishery. In Report and Documentation of the International Workshop on the Implementation of International Fisheries Instruments and Factors of Unsustainability and Overexploitation in Fisheries. FAO Fisheries Report 700, pp. 161–187. Rome: Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations. Ruddle, K., and R.E. Johannes (1984). The Traditional Management of Coastal Systems in Asia and the Pacific. Paris: UNESCO. Smith, T. (1994). Scaling Fisheries. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Warming, J. (1911). Om Grundrente av Fiskegrunde. Nationaløkonomisk Tidskrift. 49: 499–505. Wilen, J. (2005). Property rights and the texture of rents in fisheries. In Leal, D. (ed.), Evolving Property Rights in Marine Fisheries, pp. 49–67. Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield.
53 Fisheries Co-management: Improving Fisheries Governance through Stakeholder Participation SVEIN JENTOFT BONNIE J. MCCAY DOUGLAS CLYDE WILSON
53.1. CO-MANAGEMENT IN FISHERIES Recurrent crises have tarnished the top-down, bureaucratic, science-based approach to fisheries management (McGoodwin 1990). Not only have governments frequently failed to prevent fish populations from overexploitation, but in many instances they have even exacerbated the problems through mismanagement (Finlayson and McCay 1998; Hannesson 1996; Marchak et al. 1987). Increasingly, this has led to recognition that fisheries management needs to be reinvented, that new approaches must be tried out (Pitcher et al. 1998). Concepts such as “adaptive management” (Walters 1986), “ecosystem management” (Schramm and Hubert 1996), and “responsible fisheries” (FAO 1995) all represent searches for alternatives to prevailing management practices. Co-management is closely linked with these alternatives. “Ecosystem-based management” as developed for fisheries and for marine conservation more broadly includes two key underlying principles: (1) increased collaboration among government agencies and, when multiple jurisdictions are involved, between governments (Christensen 1996) and (2) participation of stakeholders representing the relevant interests (Pomeroy and Douvere 2003). Responsible fisheries brings even more clearly into the foreground the role of key stakeholders, the fishers, in taking initiatives for stewardship, and
adaptive management, borne of the need to act in situations of uncertainty, needs the cooperation of resource users and other stakeholders in reducing uncertainties and evaluating and carrying out changes in management. The co-management component is the idea that in many cases of environmental decision making, stakeholders, or interested and affected parties (National Research Council 1996) should be involved in the management process, that they participate in problem identification, knowledge production, and regulatory decision making, and perhaps even implementation and enforcement. There are three lines of argument in support of this participatory view, which is a general one in environmental decision making (Dietz and Stern 2008): the normative argument of the consent of the governed; the substantive one of creating another source of knowledge, insight, and wisdom; and the instrumental one of reducing conflict and increasing trust and legitimacy (National Research Council 1996). The first goes without saying, except that people may be willing to grant decision-making power to their elected representatives and authorities of the state, and thus some decision making involves only the policy-making and scientific or technical elite. To the second argument, although environmental decision making requires technical expertise, public engagement is a source of what Freudenberg (1988) calls “prudence,” especially in deciding when it does and when it does not make
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sense to rely mainly on experts to guide public policy. The argument for participatory knowledge creation and decision making is particularly strong where knowledge is scarce and unreliable and yet the stakes are high, the condition that is said to call for “post-normal science” (Ravetz 2004) and hence greater participation of the wider community in knowledge production and decision making. This would seem the case for efforts at ecosystem-based fisheries management, which involves going beyond single-species population dynamics to incorporate predator–prey, competitive, and other ecological relationships as well as environmental factors such as pollution and climate change. Increasingly, fisheries problems are seen as major and urgently in need of action, but data on all these factors and their linkages over space and time are rarely adequate and certain enough to stand on their own, raising the value of the knowledge of fishers and others whose experiences help them gain knowledge and understanding (Dyer and McGoodwin 1994). Third, the participation of key stakeholders such as resource users enhances the legitimacy of the regulatory regime, reducing conflict and improving compliance. As Hall (1972) argues, “Compliance and involvement are interrelated phenomena . . . [and] participation . . . contributes to compliance through the process of involvement.” Compliance is also enhanced because users are likely to become more knowledgeable of, committed to, and supportive of regulations if they have had a say in the process. Therefore, so the argument goes, a more bottom-up approach is called for, some aspects of the management system must be decentralized, and users should be granted decision-making rights through delegation of management authority. They may also be granted more responsibility. As a report on a review of fisheries stock assessment in the U.S. Northeast suggested, “[g]iving stakeholders more say in formulating and implementing policy might mitigate some of the existing tensions between NMFS [National Marine Fisheries Service] and harvesters, as well as transfer some of the responsibility for the consequences of policy to those involved directly with exploit the fishery” (National Research Council 1998). Co-management is a term increasingly used in fisheries for the participatory approach. With respect to the “ladder of participation” (Arnstein 1969), with government power at one end and citizen power at the other, co-management is somewhere in the middle rungs, where advice is sought
by government with the intent of truly taking it into account, and/or there is a formal public– private partnership, where resources are pooled, responsibilities shared, and actions coordinated. Increasingly other stakeholder groups, such as environmental nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), are joining such arrangements, as in the regional advisory councils of the European Union (Gray and Hatchard 2003), in which case an emerging term is “cooperative management” rather than “co-management.” In this chapter we include such arrangements in our definition of co-management, recognizing that resource users no longer have a privileged claim over other stakeholders in many situations. Such partnerships can assume different organizational forms; there is no specific formula, only some organizational principles to build on. Co-management in fisheries is now gaining popularity in many parts of the world, partly because it is also seen as a tool in fighting poverty in fisheries communities (Wilson et al. 2005) as well as the only feasible form of management where governments lack resources. Co-management is thought to do away with what is seen as the distant, impersonal, insensitive bureaucratic approach now characterizing the role of government in fisheries management. Instead, responsibility for management functions is decentralized and delegated to user organizations at national, regional, and/or local levels. This implies autonomy of users within an overall institutional framework. It also calls for a system of interactive governance and cooperative democracy (Kooiman 1993), whether through direct participation or through representation at levels that transcend local community boundaries. Informal and formal institutional arrangements that fit some or all of these criteria have existed in fisheries in different parts of the world for decades and in some instances for centuries (Harkes 2006; Jentoft and McCay 1995; McGoodwin 1990; Pinkerton and Weinstein 1995). Co-management is not a question so much of reinvention as of rediscovery and renewed commitment to the “meso-level” of governance, involving civil society and voluntary associations (Dubbink and van Vliet 1996). Skeptics tend to regard co-management practices as remnants of the past, ideal but nevertheless special cases not generally applicable in modern settings. Moreover, critics may argue that successful co-management requires a particular cultural foundation, with cooperative and communal values, that has become rare in the context of an industrialized,
Improving Fisheries Governance through Stakeholder Participation high-tech, and increasingly globalized fishery. Thus, it seems to be naive to assume that co-management will transform what has become an extremely competitive and often antagonistic relationship into a cooperative and more responsible one. The problem of “free-riding” is assumed to remain because it is as much in the interest of the individual user to defect after as it is before a deal has been struck. Therefore, user organizations will not be able to encourage or discipline members to cooperate. Even at a collective level, co-management will suffer from the opportunism captured by the “fox in the henhouse” metaphor (McCay 1995). In other words, user organizations with a formal position within the management system will be tempted to misuse the trust they have been granted as guardians of the resource. Negative perceptions of co-management follow this line of thought: if comanagement is weak in theory, it must be poor in practice. Yet another line of critical thinking about co-management comes from broader critiques of neoliberalism in policy and practice, where governments devolve responsibilities onto local units or citizens groups in ways that increase their burdens without helping achieve social or ecological goals (Harvey 2005; Mansfield 2004). These critical expectations cannot be ignored. We argue, however, that some of the skepticism about co-management is excessively pessimistic. In our judgment, this pessimism stems from an overly narrow social theory about the role and nature of institutions. In what follows, we discuss alternative perspectives on institutions that support a more positive view of the prospects of co-management. In addition, building upon our earlier work on issues of institutional design that contribute to the success or failure of co-management regimes (Harkes 2006; Jentoft 2004; Kooiman 1993), we address questions about community and co-management.
53.2. INSTITUTIONAL PERSPECTIVES ON CO-MANAGEMENT Expectations of the possibility of institutional change, such as introducing co-management within fisheries, reflect one’s views of institutions. Rational choice perspectives found in economic and public choice schools of thought see institutions basically as constraints, as “the rules of the game” (North 1990) that restrict human behavior in the collective interest. This perspective dominates fisheries
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management policy. Institutional change means changing the rules. The privatization model for fisheries (individual transferable quotas) proposed by resource economists is based on a similar notion of institutions to the extent that it calls for changes in the rules, especially property rights, to allow market mechanisms to work more effectively. Co-management, however, is not so much about the rules per se as it is about the communicative and collaborative process through which these rules are formed: who participates, how debates are structured, how knowledge is employed, how conflicts of interest are addressed, and how agreements are reached. Schlager and Ostrom (1992) make a related and useful distinction between operational rules and collective-choice rules in natural resource management. The former are mainly what we refer to as rules. The latter specify who may participate, and how, in changing operational rules, and at a highly level might include constitutional principles. Note that from their legalistic perspective, even comanagement arrangements are rule driven. However, by stressing only the restraining elements of institutions, one misses the extent to which institutions such as co-management also enable and empower, provide licenses, establish mandates, and create opportunities (Giddens 1984b; Jentoft and McCay 1995; Scott 1995). For this we need a broader definition of institutions, such as the one suggested by Scott (1995: 33): “Institutions consist of cognitive, normative, and regulative structures and activities that provide stability and meaning to social behavior.” From another perspective, institutions are observed in behavior patterns that persist over time (Berger and Luckmann 1967). Institutions are shared understandings that are continually recreated through a process of people behaving in ways that depend on how they understand the institution and being seen by others who interpret the behavior in light of the institution. Then the others repeat the process, with each cycle reproducing and at the same time marginally changing the institution as interpretations change. To this point in environmental and marine fisheries policy, the focus has mainly been on what Scott (1995) calls the regulative “pillar” of institutions, the “rules of the game” discussed above, giving little weight to the normative and cognitive dimensions. The regulative pillar focuses on the content of the behavioral patterns, which when they persist can all be described as rules; that is, in situation X, Y is done. This pillar focuses our attention on which rules exist and how they are established and
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enforced. This pillar is obviously critical, but its importance should, according to Scott, not obscure the equal importance of the normative and cognitive dimensions. The normative pillar reflects the prescriptive, evaluative, and obligatory dimensions of institutions that are required to pattern behaviors. Here the emphasis is on behavioral standards and values, on prescriptions about how things should be done, and on what means are legitimate in the pursuit of valued goals. If an institution is to actually reproduce behavior patterns, it must be understood by participants as “normal behavior,” which implies both that the behavior is seen as legitimate and that its violation is expected to be punished. This normative pillar directs our attention to the moral basis of institutions and how they are justified according to ethical principles and perceptions, as well as questions about who makes “collective-action” decisions and how they do so. Related to the normative “pillar” of institutions is the argument that co-management is expected to improve legitimacy and compliance because users tend to support management schemes that they have worked out themselves (Hall 1972). Beyond the normative and regulative pillars, institutions also define and very often actually create the cognitive understandings that people use to interpret behavior. For example, the very idea of “brother” is both integral to and defined by the institution of the family. The cognitive aspect is of particular relevance to co-management which challenges the way institutional roles are traditionally defined in management. One area the cognitive dimension makes more prominent is the respective roles in building the knowledge base played by fishers with their local, experience-gained user knowledge, and scientists mobilizing research-based knowledge. Involving users in regulatory decision making broadens the basis of information that informs regulatory systems, and is a step toward more ecologically and socially sound management. As Pinkerton (1994) argues, “when folk knowledge and local perspectives are incorporated into a larger management system as co-management, they may make the difference between the system’s having local legitimacy or not, having local relevance or not, and in general operating more rather than less effectively.” We find Scott’s (1995) understanding of institutions to be much closer to the essentials of co-management than other definitions that emphasize only their rule
character. Scott’s view of institutions as embodiments of culture, social structures, and routines within various levels of jurisdiction is in line with the embeddedness perspective in social theory (Granovetter and Swedberg 1992). It is very likely that success or failure of fisheries co-management hinges upon the links that bind one level of jurisdiction to the other, for example, between an agency of the nation state, a user organization, and a local community. Management reforms face the problem that institutions come to be perceived as “objective reality” rather than a social creation (Berger and Luckmann 1967). When an institution has come to be regarded as legitimate, it sets new standards and norms for evaluating behavior. It becomes a tool that people use to predict the behavior of others and so guide their own. When this happens, the behavior that is both prescribed and proscribed comes to be viewed as “human nature” and becomes a background assumption to intersubjective interpretations of social reality. For this reason, one cannot simply assume that institutions exist only as long as actors find them to be in their interest. Rather, they become a fact of life. Institutions are often characterized by inertia. Instead of changing institutions to meet the challenge, aspirations are reduced to fit what is being accomplished. This is a central problem for fisheries management where resource fluctuations and crises are endemic. Thus, a necessary condition for co-management is that institutions must first be understood as the socially constructed and changeable reality they are. Co-management is not a fixed unitary entity; rather, it is a set of principles for institutional design that can assume various organizational forms depending on particular circumstances. It is possible to be supportive of co-management as such but skeptical about some of its practical designs. One may even be in favor of some of its principles but not necessarily the whole package. Instead of discarding co-management as utopian, not fit for modern fisheries, one should try to learn from experience to see what has worked and not and why. One should also be open to the possibility that co-management may fail (or succeed) for reasons that have nothing to do with the model itself but the institutional and social framework surrounding it. We have dealt with some of these design variables elsewhere (Harkes 2006; Jentoft 2004; Kooiman 1993). In what follows we discuss one important design issue in greater length than
Improving Fisheries Governance through Stakeholder Participation we have done before: how co-management is related to communities.
53.3. CO-MANAGEMENT, COMMUNITY, AND INSTITUTIONAL DESIGN The lessons of co-management suggest that, from a community perspective, several institutional variables are important. The first is how “community” is defined. The second is the locus and scale of the community. Third is how the various groups within the affected community are represented. The fourth to be discussed here is property rights. These issues are not technical and as such cannot be regarded from a purely instrumental point of view. They are highly political; they affect social relationships, interests in conflict, and the distribution of power among those that are involved in, and affected by, the management decisions. The sociological construct of community, emphasized already in our discussion of the embeddedness perspective, is helpful in thinking through these institutional issues.
53.3.1. Definitions of Community “Fishermen do not fish only from individual boats; it is fair to say that they also fish from communities”(Matthews 1993). This truism has important implications for the design of fishery comanagement. It implies a territorial notion of community. Most approaches to co-management in the global South are based in geographical communities where a village or group of villages will work with the government to manage small-scale fisheries resources. These efforts are often linked “acrossscale” (Hall 1972) with NGOs or donors who have more focused interests that address specific aspects of many communities. Increasingly in the North, territorial or “local” community can be contrasted with a functional notion of community (Jentoft and Mikalsen 1994), which in turn is based on shared activities over larger geographical scales. Conceptually, these activities can be related to notions of “virtual” and “epistemic” community. Co-management rights and responsibilities may be assigned to representatives of fishing industry organizations or otherwise-defined groups of harvesters (and potentially processors). These groups may be defined in functional terms, such as shared reliance on particular gear types (i.e., mobile gear
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vs. fixed gear), in terms of certain species, such as herring (Stephenson et al. 1993), or in terms of fishing grounds used, for example, the Lofoten Islands (Jentoft and Kristoffersen 1989). Where individual transferable quotas (ITQs) or enterprise allocations are in place, the quota holders may constitute the relevant groups for co-management purposes as in Atlantic Canada’s inshore dragger fishery and the U.S. surf clam and ocean quahog fishery (McCay et al. 1995). In this context, the phrase “virtual community” (Munro et al. 1998) expresses the idea that such communities need have no particular geographic or social focus beyond shared participation in a fishery. However, one should not forget the more traditional notion of community as webs of social interaction tied to place, history, and identity, indicated by the term “local community.” Co-management is gaining increased recognition, but most often based on functional and “virtual” constructs of community. These constructs carry the risk of marginalizing large segments of populations dependent on viable fisheries if their use in management means that the fates of “local communities” are ignored. Accordingly, two important questions remain: whether and how co-management authority can be vested in or assigned to local communities. The well-known coastal fisheries management regimes of Japan, centered in local cooperatives, have elements of this kind of co-management insofar as the cooperatives are deeply embedded in and represent many of the interests of the larger community (Lim et al. 1995; Pinkerton and Weinstein 1995; Ruddle 1989), which of course are not always conflict-free (Barrett and Okudaira 1995; Takahashi et al. 2006). Moreover, some groups that are defined functionally, such as the “fixed gear” sector in Nova Scotia, Canada, may also have bases in particular regions and local communities. Indeed, for that reason, in Nova Scotia many of those involved in fixed gear (e.g., gill-net and longline) fishing use the language of “community-based co-management.” Nova Scotians using that language argue that making the community the home of co-management offers “an exciting and innovative way to address issues such as reducing conflict between various competing gear sectors, ensuring equitable allocation of fishing opportunism . . . and helping to promote community economic development” (Anonymous 1996). “Functional groups” differ from “territorial groups” in many ways, some of which are relevant to their potentials for co-management. For one
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thing, the relationships among people in functional groups (i.e., gear-based groups) are more contractual and single-stranded than relationships within a local community. Sharing a technology or even, at times, a fishing ground is not the same as sharing the history and future of a local community. Community members typically have bonds of kinship and friendship. The homogeneity, equality, and stability characteristic of local communities are conducive to cooperation (Ostrom 1990, Singleton and Taylor 1992). Fishers shift between gears faster than they shift residency. Accordingly, commitment and continuity are likely to be greater for local community-based co-management regimes than for systems relying on functional communities. As Singleton and Taylor (1992) argue, this may also lower the transaction costs of resource management, that is, the costs of negotiation, implementation, enforcement, and monitoring of regulatory schemes. However, social bonds and identities also shift, and kinship and friendship can also be “virtual” in this sense. Each fishery involves a unique interplay between environmental realities and social relations, both contractual and identity based. One should not hold too fast to any a priori definition of community. Community is an emergent property of social relationships that people create by taking advantage of cultural understandings and existing identities, geographical or otherwise. Some policy communities are good examples that may characterize future co-management regimes in fisheries. Haas (1992) has traced the development of a number of such coherent policy communities led by scientists who have come to an agreement about both the nature of environmental threats and appropriate responses, but co-management does not rely solely on scientific consensus. Centered on specific management issues or managing bodies, co-management groups can be made up of industry members, lobbyists, bureaucrats, journalists, scientists, and others who come to know each other well, to learn whether and how much to trust each other, and to share common conceptions of problem and solution even as they may differ on specifics. The “IQ Group” created by Canada’s Ministry of Fisheries in 1990 to design and implement a new management regime appears to have taken on some of these features, enabling communication among scientists, bureaucrats, and fishers and the development of innovations and experiments in conservation that might not otherwise have taken place (Apostle et al. 2003).
53.3.2. The Locus and Scale of Community The ecology and geography of fish stocks and deployment of fishing effort pose major questions for the design of co-management. Local community-based co-management may not be appropriate for very mobile, far-ranging species of fish or of fishing fleets, in contrast with, for example, sedentary shellfish stocks or relatively localized migratory lobster stocks. The decentralization involved will face boundary and aggregation problems, and such localized management can create externalities for other areas, not to mention conflicts when management powers are used to exclude other users. Clearly, structures for coordination and conflict resolution are required, whether they be vertical or horizontal, and it is easy to imagine pressures mounting in some cases to replace localized co-management with more regional or even centralized co-management regimes as the costs of coordination mount. However, there are also costs of centralization, for instance, pertaining to communication, enforcement and control. These costs tend to grow with organizational scale. Therefore, one should adopt the principle of subsidiarity: management should be done at the lowest feasible level (Kooiman 1993). Typically, the management of total allowable catches is better suited for nonlocal community management than is the management of space and gear. Co-management, in the broader sense of collaborative planning and implementation between users, government officials, and scientists, may take place at all geographic scales and levels of decision making (Harkes 2006). User organizations frequently exist at the national level and have an administrative capacity comparable to that of government management agencies. Thus, cooperation on regulatory tasks may take place without decentralization. However, the distance from the organization leadership to the fishers may be as great as with the government bureaucracy. A risk is that comanagement may entrench the power of an administrative elite and be as impersonal, insensitive, and indifferent to local concerns as management by government. Consequently, the legitimacy problem may be unchanged, if not enhanced, because of the disappointment that users feel when expectations are still not fulfilled. For communities, conflict and scale are intertwined (Wilson 2003). Motivations of participants
Improving Fisheries Governance through Stakeholder Participation in co-management arrangements are often driven by conflicts over the allocation of fishing resources. The community’s need for the government is often rooted in needing help dealing with conflicts that are being played out over greater than local levels. Scale is also central to why the government wants to work with the communities. Scale is also a critical part of the attraction that co-management holds for governments. Bureaucratic management agencies have to be able to gather and make use of the kind of rich information that allows adaptive management; this includes local ecological knowledge about the resource, the local economic and social conditions, and information needed for monitoring, surveillance, and control. All of this information is bound up in complex local meanings that often require extended communications and even face-to-face conversations. Co-management is an institutional form that can make such information available and facilitate interactive learning essential for adaptation (Armitage et al. 2007). For governments, however, conflict and scale are also intertwined (Wilson 2003) because conflicts give governments their entrée into the community. Approached correctly, co-management gives governments the opportunity to use their authority to contain and channel fisheries conflicts in creative ways and try to maintain an equitable balance among the user groups who must negotiate outcomes because of clashing objectives if management is to be effective. This creative channeling of conflict, however, requires the state to use its authority for this purpose rather than attempting to manage the fishery directly in a top-down style (Hall 1972; Wilson 2003).
53.4. REPRESENTATION OF USER GROUPS AND STAKEHOLDERS Creating co-management does not take place within a social and institutional vacuum. New institutions, such as co-management, emerge through a “bargaining” process in which groups with varying power and diverse and conflicting interests seek to control how the institution will be defined, legitimated, and enforced. Existing institutions, or “lords of the past,” will affect the formation of new ones, even if they are out of touch with the new conditions that exist (Wilkinson 1992). Co-management is likely to be contested because it affects the distribution of both economic and administrative
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resources among user groups and stakeholders. An inescapable tension exists between the desire of parties to maximize their own advantages and/ or seek a cooperative solution to mutual problems. These two goals can contradict one another when cooperative solutions require more open communications that make protecting individual interests more difficult (Walton and McKersie 1965). This tension is most evident in the basic problem of who will get a “seat at the table” of comanagement. The communities involved in fisheries co-management, as we discussed above, are defined by both territorial and functional considerations. Some communities are also formed around issues and ideologies, such as environmental groups, thus representing a cause rather than an interest of a particular constituency. The community dynamic we seek to enlist in the co-management effort is an emergent property of the engagement in management of such communities. A central question is how the members of these communities are represented, whether they are elected or appointed to represent one or the other type of community. Moreover, “fishers” is itself a large category. It includes owners, skippers and crew that may have very different interests. Fish processors, fish workers, fish consumers, and fisher families are all affected by management decisions and are stakeholders with a legitimate demand for a voice in the process. There is also a public interest in fisheries management, particularly where the fishing industry is important for the economy as a whole. How this interest should be heard is an increasingly important issue. Direct public participation through political appointees is an option but certainly not the only one. The problem, however, is that the more other groups become involved in the process, the more difficult it is to maintain the qualities and benefits of community described above, and the higher the risk of alienating some of the user groups who have power to veto or sabotage co-management decisions. For instance, fishers control the effectiveness of the rules and regulations because there is always a limit to how effective enforcement can be at sea. Therefore, it hardly matters for the efficacy of the co-management system if other user groups and stakeholders are satisfied with their representation and the decisions made but the fishers are not. It is difficult to strike a balance that all parties can live with. The U.S. regional management councils are good illustrations of this problem (Cloutier 1996).
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Thus, any co-management system is confronted with at least four design questions pertaining to representation (Jentoft et al. 2003). First, who can legitimately claim to be recognized as a user or stakeholder and, hence, demand to have a seat at the table? Some users may have more at stake than others. How should this then be accounted for? Second, in what capacity should users and stakeholders be represented? Should they be represented as member of an interest group, a local community, or simply as concerned citizens? The third question pertains to how much involvement. Co-management comes with alternative costs. Some issues may lend themselves more efficiently for representation than direct participation. Fourth, how should representation be done? The act of representation requires certain skills and capabilities that can be learned but should somehow also be regulated to avoid tension and conflict. The issue here is not so much who participates—directly or indirectly, but how they communicate. Co-management systems must be designed in order to facilitate deliberation among participants and allow participants to be convinced by the better argument.
53.5. CO-MANAGEMENT AND PROPERTY RIGHTS Property rights constitute an important set of institutions influencing the nature of a resource regime. Property rights institutions are often strongly embedded in fishing communities. They can be very complex, with both formal and informal elements involving both social and ecological dimensions (Vandergeest 1997). Expanding commercialization of fisheries, however, brings with it a secular tendency toward greater formality and a “disembedding” (Giddens 1984a; Kooiman 1993) of these regimes. This has been attributed to economic pressure to reduce the transaction costs that arise from having to deal with complex and contextually specific property rights (Lim et al. 1995). This increased formality means a loss of ecological flexibility that co-management regimes can potentially mitigate. This effect of co-management is reported in the Dutch case reported by Dubbink and Van Vliet (1996) and in the Lofoten co-management system of Norway (Jentoft et al. 2003). Co-management means that those that have a hands-on experience of how management schemes work in practice also are in position to change them without having
to have the consent of a government agency or a national assembly. The form of all fisheries management institutions, including co-management, will be strongly influenced by the prevailing regime of property rights. In the rudimentary “tragedy of the commons” model, open access is the root problem. The way to avoid the destruction of the resource is to institute some set of rights, which can attach to individuals, groups, communities, or the state, that does away with open access. Most resource economists are in favor of private property solutions. Yet these solutions may accelerate the formalization of the forms of property, further disembedding the resource from its social and cultural context, and further reducing the social capital and ecological flexibility needed for effective management. The argument for co-management is part of an attempt to recognize and build upon a larger set of property options for managing natural resources, including various forms of community-based jurisdiction over natural resources, or at least rights to use and manage them. Co-management involves the authority to determine use patterns, to take action to enhance stocks, and to challenge other activities affecting the conditions of the resources (Rieser 1997). Co-management does not require any particular ownership system. Thus, there are examples of co-management working within many different property rights regimes. For example, in Norway co-management works within the principle that fish and waters are no one’s property, while in Japan property rights are exclusive to the fishing community, and in parts of Canada and New Zealand, comanagement may be found in systems where rights to shares in quotas are privatized. Although co-management does not pertain to resource ownership, but rather to ownership of rights to make certain kinds of decisions about resources, differing property rights systems may have different implications for its functioning. Open access is more equitable and, as such, less divisive than other systems. This is an aid for cooperative decision making. However, open access often contributes to competition, overexploitation and the need for fisheries management initiatives. Open access also makes it more difficult to enforce cooperation and agreed upon rules because of the freerider problem. Obviously, such a property rights system has one less weapon to fight with, perhaps its most effective one, as it loses the ability to sanction by exclusion.
Improving Fisheries Governance through Stakeholder Participation Co-management may also work when based on private property. Privatized property rights give clearer definition of who the users are than under open access, and private property owners may have a larger incentive to “invest” their efforts in the sustenance of the resource (Rose 1994). Moreover, having a clearly defined set of holders of exclusive property rights makes it easier to assign responsibility for a self-governing or co-management regime (Scott 1993). However, the nature of the property right is a critical variable. Where it is fully privatized with a guaranteed right of access, as in the Dutch case (Dubbink and van Vliet 1996), the co-management system has fewer sanctions at its disposal if rules are violated among property owners. Such a co-management system would have little leverage and would need a third party to legitimize, monitor, and enforce the regulatory decisions. If, however, the rights are contingent and revokable, then sanctions for noncooperative behavior may be strengthened. One successful approach that has mobilized many of the benefits of ITQs without incurring all of the costs is the Shelburne Community Management Board in Nova Scotia, which controls a portion of the fixed-gear quota and uses an informal ITQ system to distribute the quota among its members. They are able to exclude fishers who are violating rules. While they cannot revoke their quotas, they can deny them management services and force them to pool their quota outside of the community board in an essentially unmanaged and much less economically rational quote pool. This has proven an effective sanctioning tool (Rescan and Wilson 2009). It may be easier to create co-management institutions where there is some element of communal property, whether in the resource itself or in rights to use or manage the resource and its habitat. The rights to manage are strengthened if backed up by the rights of ownership. This works not only in the relation between the management authority and the individual user but also among users. Their shared dependency on the resource promotes discipline and “mutual vulnerability” (Singleton and Taylor 1992). Resources held by users in common can be withheld by other members through a group decision and can thus be employed as a sanction against users who break the rules. In Japan an individual has to become member of the fishing cooperative and follow its statutory charters to be allowed to catch and sell fish, and membership can be withdrawn if rules are violated. This is
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also much of the reason for the unique success of fisheries cooperatives in that country. A promising new example of community-based co-management is the “community development quota” program in Alaska (Ginter 1995). Recognizing the special needs of communities as distinct from those of individuals or business firms, community organizations are allocated a quota for them to distribute and manage in accordance with a community development plan that must be submitted to, reviewed, and finally approved by the State of Alaska. When rights of management and property go together, property is not only a right but also a responsibility for the collective as well as the individual. Without that responsibility, there is no guarantee that property rights may institute sustainable resource use. Also, when violations of rules can be handled effectively at the local level, the costs of enforcement and litigation are reduced. This does not exclude the opportunity to appeal to higher levels of governance if users feel that they have been unfairly treated at the lower level.
53.6. CONCLUSION Co-management does not change the fundamental fact that regulatory systems impose restrictions on users. Unavoidably, fishers will sacrifice and suffer as their traditional liberty to act as they choose will be restrained. Fishing assumes a new meaning. The rewards of being independent, of being your own boss, are vital reasons why people feel attracted to this occupation in the first place (Gatewood and McCay 1990; Pollnac and Poggie 1988). These benefits explain why fishers have been willing to endure the hard work, the long hours, and the physical danger. While income is important, the dignity and esteem that come from the fishing occupation also matter a great deal. Regulatory decisions are controversial, conflicts arise, and management schemes fail. As Ostrom (1990: 14) argues, “getting the institutions right is a difficult, time-consuming, conflict-evoking process.” Management systems, such as quota arrangements, alter the nature of fishing, the hunt transforms into harvest, predictability is obtained, and fishers’ skills come to mean less. The “skipper effect” (Pálsson and Durrenberger 1982), that is, the contribution of the skipper, loses its potency. Fishers do not easily accept the command and control that the intrusion of government brings.
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This lack of acceptance is exacerbated when what they are being told does not make sense in terms of their experience. This is the problem that comanagement is uniquely suited to address. Co-management is one of many alternative management strategies. The quest for reinventing fisheries management grows out of an extensive and well-substantiated critique of the outcomes experienced to date. In this chapter and others, we have pointed out the conditions that we believe are critical in determining success or failure of comanagement. Co-management involves real dilemmas that require hard choices. These choices are more difficult when they are made with careful cognizance of the institutional, social, and cultural context. We believe pragmatism and cautiousness should characterize new institution building. Many of the problems and opportunities created by comanagement must be discovered and addressed in the process. The management system must be allowed to adapt and be flexible, bearing in mind that institutions can create the illusion of naturalness and inevitability. It should encourage the ability to learn and a readiness for change. For this same reason some of the criticisms of co-management are premature. Co-management is not a fixed thing. It is an evolving process guided by a set of institutional principles. Some of the doubts and criticisms should be put to test through bold management initiatives and experiments. We have argued that co-management as an institution is not only about rules. It is also about creating opportunities. It is a process of social creation through which knowledge is gained, values articulated, culture reexpressed, and community created. Without this broad perspective on co-management, the problems of fisheries may have a paralyzing effect on fisheries managers: There is nothing one can do, world’s fisheries are doomed, and there is no way we can escape our dismal destiny. Such an attitude to fisheries management is neither necessary nor something we can afford.
Acknowledgments An earlier version of this chapter was published in 1998 (“Social Theory and Fisheries Co-management,” Marine Policy 22[4–5]: 423–436). For this book, it has gone through substantial revision, with sections both deleted and added. Since 1999, considerable research on
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Jentoft, S., K. Mikalsen, and H.K. Hernes (2003). Representation in fisheries co-management. In Wilson, D.C., J.R. Nielsen, and P. Degnbol (eds). The Fisheries Co-management Experience: Accomplishments, Challenges and Prospects. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Kooiman, J. (ed) (1993). Modern Governance: New Government-Society Interactions. London: Sage. Lim, C.P., Y. Matsuda, and Y. Shigemi (1995). Comanagement in marine fisheries: The Japanese experience. Coastal Management 23: 195–221. Mansfield, B. (2004). Neoliberalism in the oceans: “Rationalization,” property rights, and the commons question. Geoforum 35: 313–326. Marchak, P., N. Guppy, and J. McMullan (1987). Uncommon Property: The Fishing and FishProcessing Industries in British Columbia. Toronto: Methuen Publications. Matthews, D.R. (1993). Controlling Common Property: Regulating Canada’s East Coast Fishery. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. McCay, B.J. (1995). Foxes and others in the henhouse? Environmentalists and the fishing industry in the U.S. regional council system. Pp. 380–390 in Meyer, R.M., C. Zhang, M.L. Windsor, B.J. McCay, L. Hushak, and R. Muth (eds). Fisheries Resource Utilization and Policy; Proceedings of the World Fisheries Congress, Theme 2. New Delhi: Oxford and IBH Publishing. McCay, B.J., R. Apostle, C. Creed, A.C. Finlayson, and K. Mikalsen (1995). Individual transferable quotas (ITQs) in Canadian and US fisheries. Ocean and Coastal Management 28: 85–116. McGoodwin, J.R. (1990). Crisis in the World’s Fisheries: People, Problems, and Policies. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Munro, G., N. Bingham, and E. Pikitch (1998). Individual transferable quotas, communitybased fisheries management system, and “virtual” communities. Fisheries 23(3): 12–15. National Research Council (1996). Understanding Risk: Informing Decisions in a Democratic Society. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. National Research Council (1998). Review of Northeast Fishery Stock Assessments. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. North, D.C. (1990). Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ostrom, E. (1990). Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pálsson, G., and P.E. Durrenberger (1982). The dream of fish: The causes of Icelandic skippers’ fishing success. Journal of Anthropological Research 38: 227–242.
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Pinkerton, E. (1994). Summary and conclusions. In Dyer, C., and J.R. McGoodwin (eds). Folk Management in the World’s Fisheries. Niwot: University of Colorado Press. Pinkerton, E., and M. Weinstein (1995). Fisheries That Work: Sustainability through Community-Based Management. Vancouver: David Suzuki Foundation. Pitcher, T.J., D. Pauly, and P.J.B. Hart (eds) (1998). Reinventing Fisheries Management. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Pollnac, R.B., and J.J.J. Poggie (1988). The structure of job satisfaction among New England fishermen and its application to fisheries management policy. American Anthropologist 90: 888–901. Pomeroy, R., and F. Douvere (2003). The engagement of stakeholders in the marine spatial planning process. Marine Policy 32: 816–822. Ravetz, J. (2004). The post-normal science of precaution. Futures 36(3): 347–357. Rescan, C.U., and D.C. Wilson (2009). Rightsbased management and participatory governance in southwest Nova Scotia. Chapter 3 in Hauge, K.H., and D.C. Wilson (eds.), Comparative Evaluations of Innovative Fisheries Management: Global Experiences and European Prospects. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer. Rieser, A. (1997). Property rights and ecosystem management in U.S. fisheries: Contracting for the commons? Paper presented at the Ecology Law Symposium, 21–22 February, University of California, Berkeley. Rose, C.M. (1994). Property and Persuasion: Essays on the History, Theory, and Rhetoric of Ownership. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. Ruddle, K. (1989). Solving the common-property dilemma: Village fisheries rights in Japanese coastal waters. Pp. 168–198 in Berkes, F. (ed). Common Property Resources. London: Belhaven Press. Schlager, E., and E. Ostrom (1992). Property-rights regimes and natural resources: A conceptual analysis. Land Economics 68: 249–262.
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54 Stakeholder Involvement in Fisheries Management in Australia and New Zealand ALISTAIR MCILGORM DARYL R. SYKES
54.1. INTRODUCTION The level of stakeholder involvement in fisheries management regimes differs among fisheries and reflects multiple historical, governance, and management decisions; it is more than participation in a government-led co-management regime. In this chapter, we give stakeholder perspectives that reflect the difference in the rights management regimes in the Australia and New Zealand that have lessons for fisheries management regimes internationally.
54.2. BACKGROUND Scott (1988) describes the “parade of fishing regimes” where government intervenes in openaccess harvesting with regulation, such as limitedentry licensing, and then further restrictions are put on fishing effort via input control regimes, until they have to consider a leap into output controls, such as individual transferable quotas (ITQs). Both New Zealand and Australia have moved along the rights management pathways with degrees of stakeholder involvement. The experiences from this front line could be informative for many nations where only some rights development has taken place. Australia in 1997–1998 had 105 managed fisheries, all of which had limited-entry licenses (McIlgorm and Tsamenyi 2000). Of these, 61 percent were licenses with some gear regulations, 14 percent were
licenses with special tradable fishing effort, and only 25 percent had progressed to ITQs replacing the license. In contrast, New Zealand moved most of its important commercial fisheries to the quota management system (QMS) in 1986 and completed the process for the remainder of fish stocks from 1990 through 2006. These backgrounds make the accounts of stakeholder issues in fisheries management in Australia and New Zealand significantly different from each other. Stakeholder participation in Australian fisheries with limited-entry licensing regimes took the form of government/industry port meetings. Various forms of co-management across a range of different fisheries were gradually introduced in the early 1990s. In contrast, the New Zealand stakeholder study focuses on the expectations given to stakeholders from the implementation of the rights-based QMS in 1986 and the issues for commercial stakeholders since. The stakeholder issues observed in the diverse range of rights-based management approaches in both countries have relevance internationally. In each country, some issues keep reoccurring: What are the roles of government and industry in fisheries management? What involvement in management can stakeholders expect? There is no simple answer because research and management planning and implementation are long and timeconsuming processes often overlaid with political interventions. There are inevitably difficulties
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incorporating stakeholders into management roles in a meaningful and enduring way. In the 1980s, both countries had the intention of forming fishery management plans under legislation. The New Zealand QMS in 1986 confirmed all quota owners as commercial stakeholders, and allocation within the sector was to be by the market. The years following saw significant economic fleet rationalization and the aggregation of quota ownership (Grafton 1996; Kerr et al. 2003). The notion of commercial rights holders being devolved greater management responsibility was explored and for a time encouraged by the New Zealand government. By the end of the 1990s the Ministry of Fisheries revised its operational policies in order to promote a framework in which noncommercial stakeholders, such as recreational fishers and Maori customary rights holders, are provided opportunities and greater influence to direct fisheries management interventions. In New Zealand, there are unresolved tensions between industry and government over the apparent failure of government to fully complete the fishing rights self-governance framework after the quota system was installed. There are differing views over who should drive the research and management planning processes, and confusion as to how noncommercial interests, including both extractive and nonextractive, should be placed within this rightsbased management framework. In contrast, Australia could not pursue a quota system nationally, due to its diverse fisheries and the duplicative federal and state system, which impedes unified national approaches on fisheries management. By the early 1990s, Australia accepted that the involvement of stakeholders to advise government managers was critical and that ITQs were one of a suite of fishery management instruments. By the late 1990s, rights development in Australia fisheries was thought to have stalled (McIlgorm and Tsamenyi 2000). In the 1990s in Australia, each state and federal jurisdiction moved to establish management advisory committees (MACs) to advise the Minister of Fisheries. The committee membership expanded from commercial fishers only, to include other community and nongovernment stakeholders (Wilson et al. 2003). Most MACs have been able to develop management plans with government facilitators in recent years, but the fishing industry still has profitability and sustainability concerns. Rights-based industry self-management has been less of an issue in Australia in the past decade.
Most Australian fisheries chose to be part of “co-management” arrangements and generally had unrealistically high expectations. Leadership skills and MAC course training were promoted in the 1990s through the Commonwealth government’s Fisheries Research and Development Corporation (McIlgorm 2002).
54.3. AUSTRALIA 54.3.1. The Context to Stakeholder Involvement Stakeholder involvement in Australian fishery usually starts after government intervention in open access fisheries to halt overexploitation. The relevant fisheries management legislation defines a fishery under the control of the minister in each state, assisted by an administering government fisheries department, which often appoints a fishery committee for consultation. Following the introduction of limitedentry licensing in Western Australia in the 1960s, a regime of port visits commenced and fishery committees were established. More of these fishery committee arrangements developed in the 1980s, and in the 1990s there was a simultaneous expansion in the stakeholder consultation systems across Australia due to the adoption of co-management. In Australia, limited entry defines the commercial stakeholders in the fishery. This definition has subsequently widened to include recreational fishers and community representatives.
54.3.2. Stakeholders, Governance, and Co-management The term “co-management” is used generically for a range of devolved management models in different states of Australia (McIlgorm 2002). In co-management theory, there are degrees of involvement, with a continuum going from government management, which is highly instructive, to consultation, cooperative, and advisory and informative, where the government has delegated authority to the stakeholders (Jentoft et al. 1998; Sen and Nielson 1996; Wilson et al. 2003). The continuum is seen in the titles of management committee (MC) and management advisory committee (MAC). The MAC process provides advice to the legislatively empowered minister, whereas a fishery legislated MC has fuller power
Stakeholder Involvement in Fisheries Management and responsibility on members. Most committees are at the advisory end of the MC–MAC continuum and some low-value fisheries have a consultative committee only. The nature of the stakeholder involvement is related to the fishing rights regime in the fishery and the intention of governance to administer or to develop self-management among fishers.
54.3.3. What Limits the Extent of Devolution in Stakeholder Fishery Governance? Often governments are slow to intervene in openaccess fisheries, but subsequently become overinvolved, like a colonial occupation. Is occupation to be long term? Is there a plan to withdraw and leave a functioning local autonomous governance structure? Has training been provided for a new leadership regime? Doubts are also raised about the future well-being of the country under a new fledgling government. Transitions to independence often require either civil disturbance, agitation, or a fight for freedom. In the analogy, fishery governance has been able to occupy the open access fishery, and address overfishing. Fishery stakeholders are analogous to the occupied population desiring more selfdetermination, but have no legitimate pathway forward. Under government fishery regulations managers can become waterlogged by distribution and legal problems. Managing without stakeholder involvement has a limited future and needs ongoing regulation and enforcement to maintain fishery sustainability. Often fishery agencies do not have a clear picture of what a successfully managed fishery may look like. Stakeholders may have no incentive to speak out directly to government due to the inherent power imbalance and fear, given there is no obvious way forward. In Australia, fisheries departments are often caught up in allocation disputes and legal challenges. It is preferable that the energies of stakeholders are channeled to engage in building a more fully self-managed future under the watchful eye of government, which will have the auditing function in a new self-managed arrangement. The last decade of co-management has enabled industry and government to communicate, but there is little evidence of an increase in devolution of management responsibility to stakeholders.
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54.3.4. The Structure of the MAC System The structure of the MAC system comes from the minister asking the fishery department to develop a consultative system.
54.3.4.1. Legal Responsibility If committee members are individually or collectively liable for decisions, then they are a management committee and are managers. All other nonliable forms of committee are advisory, and the department makes the decisions. The responsibilities of the MAC can be increased by involvement in the fishery management plan, which is usually supported by legislation.
54.3.4.2. Committee Officers and Resourcing A typical state fishery MAC becomes discontent with government staff and wants an independent executive officer to support the MAC meetings, and an independent chairperson to direct the MAC and to communicate directly with the minister. Under cost recovery policy, industry is charged for both positions. Subsequently, lone independent executive officers have limited effectiveness, unless they are administratively resourced like the fishery department. An independent chairperson for a MAC may have a mix of fishery, corporate governance, and industry experience.
54.3.4.3. Fishing Rights Stakeholder involvement is also set within the context of fishing rights development. Fishing licenses are encouraged by government. Government fishery managers have not pushed to open up new rights regimes where the government’s control is reduced. There is a test for determining the extent of fishing rights in a fishery seen in Scott’s riddle (Scott 1988). He asks the question “When is a right not a right?” The answer is “when it’s a means of administration.” Put another way, if you give someone a right you loose control; if you still have control, it’s not a true right. After hundreds of fisheries worldwide have been depleted under the administrative watch of government, are we to delay advancing rights and stakeholder consultation? What wealth are
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we forgoing by not trying alternative governance regimes? (Grafton et al. 2007).
54.3.4.4. Cost Recovery: Stakeholders Paying for Management The policy for cost recovery of fishery management costs was adopted in Australia in the 1990s. Large and profitable fisheries can request services through the MAC system and can also be involved in selecting the service purchased (research, administration, additional enforcement). Sustainable fishery criteria in most fishery Acts means the government has to manage and protect small uneconomic fisheries. In Australia, the government charges stakeholders for a set of management services as they enjoy the benefits of being a limited-entry license holder. Stakeholders examine what they are being charged for and try and reduce the services consumed. Stakeholders realize they should clarify which services they should pay for. Generally, central management and enforcement are the preserve of supply by government only, whereas some administration and research may be provided by service providers outside of government. Stakeholders can pay for additional services if persuaded they will improve the value of their right. Cost recovery increases the costs of operation for stakeholders in a struggling fishery where the choice was to pay the annual cost recovery fee for one year of fishing, or give up the fishing license. For example, in introducing cost recovery in Victoria, up to 50 percent of the license holders in several small marginal fisheries did not renew their license, which led to a doubling of fees per remaining stakeholder. Cost recovery may lead to a downward revision of the administrative services provided by government, including staff losses.
54.3.4.5. Unity in Stakeholder Representation With the MAC, in place it does not necessarily follow that the fishery is united. The government agency holds the mantle of management and speaks like the captain on the poop deck: “Yes . . . all is on course!” A duality comes in when one appraises the crew to be partially on deck, some between decks, and some down in the dark bilges doing illegal, unregistered, and unreported fishing. For policy to be functional, even in a command-and-
control model, the stakeholders need to be on deck to talk with managers. Unity is inhibited as many stakeholders think they could do better than the latest 26-year-old “captain” supplied by the fisheries department. The united fishery is one where the stakeholders and officers are on deck and a majority decision is made on a future path for the good of the fishery. There is a large power imbalance between the department and the MAC members. Departments cannot, on the one hand, set and enforce the rules and wield the enforcement stick and then, on the other hand, ask stakeholder fishers to come and talk about “moving to self-management.” A third party is required to broker change and enable the department to let go.
54.3.4.6. Consultation with Stakeholders Consultation and communication with stakeholders are an important area (Kaplan and McCay 2004). When MAC members are ushered into the new committee, they expect to be directly involved in running the fishery. The term “advisory” means giving advice on fishery issues. Stakeholders wonder if they are the representatives of their constituency or are there on an expertise basis. The fishers presume the former and the fishery department the latter. The record of consultation is captured in the minutes of the committee usually taken by a department employee or an independent executive officer. The minutes can then go to the minister, with or without department approval, though the unedited views of the committee can make the fishery department look poor in the eyes of the minister. A tussle will develop when the department retains the statutory right to management and the MAC members are relegated to an advisory capacity. Lack of real management involvement by stakeholders leads to MAC members withdrawing into a world of silence, where information given “is just used against us.” A political commentator in Western Australia suggested that advisory committees established by ministers are a standard political technique to ensure quasi consultation. “In Australia, when mum and dad want to talk home business on a hot sunny Sunday afternoon, dad puts the hose and lawn sprinkler under the trampoline and tells the kids to enjoy bouncing up and down in the spray. . . . What are advisory committees? The Minister keeping
Stakeholder Involvement in Fisheries Management stakeholders occupied, while he and management get on with the serious decisions.” While cynical, this has been the experience of many MACs in the state and federal fisheries scene in Australia. Fishers refer to it as “putting the con into consultation.”
54.3.5. Conclusion: Australia The past 20 years have seen stakeholders as part of the fishery management process in Australia. These committees help communication but may not necessarily save declining fisheries without rights development. There is insufficient planning to equip stakeholders for the steps required to move to fuller self-management. Capacity development of multiskilled managers with the best attributes of a government and a commercial manager is required. Until this stage of fuller devolution to stakeholders is reached, the attempts of government to “co-manage” while constricting rights development lead to failure. This struggle may be part of the process of devolution and, with each rejuvenation of co-management, reflects fishers “marching round the wilderness” in the transition between domination and the self-rule (McIlgorm 2000). This process may take a generation and calls for stakeholders who wish to work together, rather than carrying a competitive mentality (Jentoft and McCay 1995). It will take time and repeated failures of the stakeholder involvement and co-management processes until government will give out rights with self-management incentives and structures. Stakeholders will have to be more organized and have a structure capable of managing any rights given. This evolution to fuller self-management by stakeholders is making slow progress due to many of the reasons identified above. Government needs to make trials of fuller devolution of management to stakeholders a priority, if we are to achieve improved sustainable fishery outcomes.
54.4. NEW ZEALAND 54.4.1. Introduction This account could be titled “When expectations exceed outcomes,” as this is the perspective of many stakeholders under the umbrella of the New Zealand QMS. The QMS is one that for more than twenty years has been often studied and externally reviewed and is quoted as a “model” for
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fisheries elsewhere (Grafton 1996; Kerr et al. 2003). New Zealand practitioners have long held that the QMS should be studied only as a lesson. To the outsider, the all too simplistic macroeconomic and socioeconomic overviews of property rights, output controls, and sustainable catch limits may well satisfy some academic curiosity. For those who have made the commitment to be in the business of fishing, “the devil is truly in the detail” of any rights-based regime (McClurg 1997). The intention of the QMS system as seen by commercial fishing interests was to usher in a set of better defined fishing rights that would enable market forces to allocate efficiently within sustainable limits recommended by biological experts (Grafton 1996). After 20 years, there is considerable concern that a rights-based regime has not enabled commercial rights holders into more complete management roles and authority. The failure of successive governments since 1986 to incentivize all stakeholders to individual and collective stewardship of fisheries resources relegates the QMS to being allocative only to commercial participants. The lack of progress toward self-management then allows a fisheries management administration system to consolidate a command and control authority, fraught with all the problems associated with open access, limited entry, and the oft-quoted tragedy of the commons (McClurg 1997). The experiences and achievements of one commercial stakeholder cluster in New Zealand are used to illustrate the challenges that confront both stakeholders and government agencies if the theoretical outcomes of rights-based fisheries management regimes (Lock and Leslie 2007) are to be properly realized.
54.4.2. Responsibility: Taking and Giving The New Zealand QMS was implemented in October 1986 for key finfish and selected shellfish stocks. Rock lobster stocks did not enter the QMS until April 1990, after sufficient time had passed (some intentional, the rest a consequence of unresolved high-level government policy issues) for lobster industry participants to critically review the initial QMS implementation period for finfish and shellfish. When the transition from limited entry to output controls and ITQs for lobster fisheries was completed, those commercial stakeholders adapted quickly to the QMS disciplines—admittedly less
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challenging in any single-species management setting than, for example, in a diversified inshore trawl fishery. The central themes of the commercial stakeholders’ management initiatives in New Zealand lobster fisheries are organization, cooperation, and collaboration. The industry participants have generally operated in a demonstration of collective and cooperative management responsibility that was anticipated as a consequence of the transition to a rights-based management framework. The lobster industry was proactive with its fisheries and business management aspirations throughout the open-access and limited-entry regimes prior to that transition. The allocation of apparently more secure access and utilization rights ITQs made the lobster industry more ambitious to secure greater self-management and/or comanagement. They were motivated by the belief that quota rights were more robust in terms of security and certainty.
54.4.3. Stakeholder Lessons Learned Experiences to date in New Zealand show that the implementation of a rights-based management regime must be carefully planned, properly promoted, have political patronage, and be supported by a participatory bureaucracy. Unlike New Zealand currently the rights-based framework should be completed and include all extractive use sectors. A proper alignment between the research on stock management and business decision-making timetables and processes is required. Those decision-making processes must also be timely and, importantly, adaptable and flexible. The roles and responsibilities of government agencies and sector groups must be agreed in advance and adhered to, with sufficient flexibility accorded to those arrangements to allow for the limitations on collective responsibility within sectors. Among the lessons to be learned by the commercial stakeholders in New Zealand rock lobster fisheries since 1990, the following are most relevant to stakeholders and agencies in other jurisdictions contemplating transition to rights-based management arrangements: • Sufficient attention needs to be paid to the design of a rights-based regime, particularly the design of the underlying rights framework
and its capacity to realize management objectives through correct linkages to science and operational policy inputs. • Both the public and private sector must show ongoing commitment to the rights-based regime. In New Zealand, government has progressively denied the integrity of commercial property rights and avoided using market instruments to adjust for changing societal values and political preferences. • The right relationships within the commercial sector are essential—rights holders must recognize, accept, and initiate the potential of collective and collaborative endeavor. • The system requires political champions or, at very least, some political patronage. Without these key ingredients, the growth, innovation, and entrepreneurial activities anticipated by proponents of rights-based management and expected by commercial rights holders will be stifled. So, too, will the cultural elements of fishing communities that add color, romance, and aesthetics to society. Likewise, the efficient and profitable delivery of healthy and sustainably harvested food products and economic growth locally, regionally, and nationally is compromised. The failure of successive governments to utilize the fundamental characteristics of the QMS—which are property rights—other than for their own convenience is progressively turning the New Zealand system into merely an allocative process for commercial fishing (McClurg 1997). Industry confidence in the QMS has weakened as a result. ITQs have been used to facilitate an important treaty settlement for indigenous stakeholders. There are no similar facilitated arrangements for commercial rights holders with respect to changing societal values on marine protection and/or recreational and cultural values. These changes have to date been at the expense of mainly commercial fishing, because the QMS is not seen by politicians or the community as a conservation mechanism, and no serious consideration is given to market-based adjustments and/or reallocations across sectors. Both the government and commercial rights holders did not adequately promote the intention and potential of the QMS from its inception in 1986 (Bess and Harte 2000). In fact, the rights framework has never been completed, absolving the recreational fishing sector from any management responsibility or accountability for their
Stakeholder Involvement in Fisheries Management sectoral catch. A bias against commercial fishing pervades the media and state agencies. Neither will recognize, and endorse the QMS as a stewardship tool and state agencies increasingly implement command-and-control approaches to most fisheries issues. The recreational fishing community and the businesses that supply and are therefore dependent on it have considerable political influence. Government policy and agency operational policies since 1999 have instituted a de facto priority and/or preference for recreational fishing that conspires to undermine the confidence that commercial rights holders might otherwise have in the QMS. Notions of effort and reward that are embodied in them adopting a custodial nature toward the resource in which they have implicit shares and substantial economic investment are being routinely violated. Consequently, the true potential of the QMS is being confounded. It need not be, but in New Zealand at least it seems that many decisions relevant to the QMS will remain politicized, and commercial rights holders will be increasingly marginalized in terms of their ability and authority to be managers/co-managers of fisheries resources and/or to improve either or both productivity and profitability while ensuring sustainability of fisheries.
54.4.4. Limitations of Rights Holders: Problems within the Commercial Sector and with Other Sectors Experience in New Zealand lobster fisheries has also demonstrated that there are natural limitations on the ability of commercial rights holders to achieve optimal outcomes in terms of stock status and economic performance. Even now, not all rock lobster commercial rights holders recognize the value of cooperative behavior, which is their right. A legacy of pre- and post-QMS government control and intervention has conditioned many commercial rights holders to believe (incorrectly) that no new initiatives are possible unless initiated by government and implemented by regulation. One expectation of the QMS was that the “race for fish” would be halted by the allocation of individual catch limits. The theory held that fishermen would no longer be in a race to fish and would take the opportunity to maximize the value (to them) of a quota-limited fishing opportunity.
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In rock lobster fisheries, the theory has been rigorously tested as price incentives exist within the season as windows of opportunity open in the live lobster markets of Asia and promote a race for fish during certain periods, even though individual catch limits are rigorously monitored and enforced. Gear and spatial conflicts, and tensions between commercial fishermen and between them and noncommercial fisher folk, have not markedly diminished as a consequence, although they may be of shorter duration. The tensions between commercial fishermen are not generally conducive to collective and cooperative endeavors and therefore conspire against their own commercial stakeholder organizations (CSOs) being able to achieve full potential in self-management or co-management roles. Useful voluntary initiatives such as vessel logbook programs, spatial-mapping and fine-scale data collection, or voluntary area or temporal closures are generally not fully subscribed. Essential initiatives such as voluntary reductions to commercial catch limits in response to declining stock abundance are invariably hard won within the relevant CSO. Given that commercial operators are in a unique position to monitor fisheries performance, are alert to seasonal declines and other status indicators, and understand the need for constraint—whether it is by way of effort and/or catch reduction—they have been slow to respond unanimously to obvious signals. The reliance on voluntary initiatives by commercial rights holders is demanding of them in many respects and the debates within the sector that precede the more significant fisherywide initiatives such as voluntary catch reductions can create even greater tensions between them. Because of the inflexibility of the regulatory framework, free-riders cannot be reigned in and thereby profit from the sacrifices of the majority. Individually and collectively, the incumbent commercial rights holders are failing to halt the decline of the QMS. Their efforts have been less effective than if all commercial rights holders actively embraced the “duty of care” that is inherent in rights-based management philosophy. The recreational sector refuses to constrain their extractive use because of an erroneous belief in a birthright to sea fisheries that ensures priority and preference for recreational fishing. Successive governments have not fully incorporated
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noncommercial fishing rights into the QMS. The recreational sector is not directly accountable for its impacts on fish stocks and directly benefits from any increases in stock abundance that arise from voluntary initiatives by commercial rights holders, thereby distancing the potential cooperation between sectors.
54.4.5. Theory Translated: Seven Attributes of Success Despite the inadequacies of the New Zealand QMS as described here, there are several examples in rock lobster fisheries of commercial rights holders being able to grasp the potential and be proactive in a collective and collaborative manner. For example, some rock lobster CSOs—CRAMACs—have initiated research and management programs that have been beneficial both to the fisheries in which they have an interest and to commercial rights holders in terms of increased security and certainty, at least for a period. Industry-funded stock monitoring programs supplement mandatory catch and effort reporting that informs stock assessments (Kendrick and Bentley 2003). In the Wellington/Hawkes Bay rock lobster fishery, industry stakeholder organization commissioned a management procedure and has so far implemented two successive voluntary catch reductions—40 percent in 2007 and 60 percent in 2008—in support of an agreed five-year stock rebuilding strategy. The New Zealand Rock Lobster Industry Council (NZRLIC) has been the primary research provider to the New Zealand Ministry of Fisheries since 1997 and delivers research services to the Ministry of Fisheries by way of contractual collaborations with a range of domestic and international science providers and consultants. Seven factors contribute to the success of these initiatives. The first is the existence of commercial property rights and their underlying incentive for rights holders to act responsibly in order to consolidate the value of their asset—being a defined share of the available yield from a fish stock. The second is the custodial attitude demonstrated by a core, and often small, group of individual rights holders who have understood their roles and responsibilities and who have been influential in changing behavior and attitudes within their sector. Third, the hallmark of several successful industry initiatives has been an absence of bureaucratic intervention by government and their agents.
Commercial rights holders are more alert to the need for adjustments to fishing behavior and have a shorter response time. In New Zealand, the legislative and regulatory system is often slow, and government interventions are often attempted too late to be effective in halting observed stock declines. Fourth, a greatly improved relationship between commercial rights holders and stock assessment scientists has led to improvements in fisheries data collection and greater trust in the development and operation of management procedures to guide decisions on commercial catch limits. It is important to have the right people with the right attitudes guiding the processes that inform decision making. Since 1996 the quality of rock lobster stock assessment science in New Zealand has been world class, consistently satisfying independent peer reviews, and the science team has continued to refine and improve assessment models and management procedures incorporating decision rules. The scientists themselves have proved to be excellent communicators; the commercial rights holders have been a willing audience and generally reliable and consistent contributors to the various research data bases. Fifth, commercial rights holders after taking advice from scientists have been innovative in developing additional voluntary arrangements to rebuild stocks, or to hold them at high levels of abundance. Accepting the ministerial decisions relating to total allowable catches (TACs) and total allowable commercial catches (TACCs), commercial rights holders in some areas have instituted voluntary catch reductions, using civil contracts between quota owners to reduce the amount of annual catch entitlement available to the fleet in any one season. These voluntary arrangements require high thresholds of industry support—in all cases, no less than 95 percent of the quota owned for a stock— but were successfully implemented in rock lobster fisheries three times between 2004 and 2008 (twice in the Gisborne/East Coast fishery and twice in the Wellington/Hawkes Bay fishery). The irony of these voluntary initiatives is that the same management procedure approach has guided ministerial TAC/TACC decisions for the two southern rock lobster stocks (CRA 7 and CRA 8) since 1997–1998. It is significant that commercial participants in other than those two lobster fisheries do not have confidence in commercial catch reductions being reinstated in future ministerial decisions and have chosen to preempt the need for government
Stakeholder Involvement in Fisheries Management intervention by taking voluntary collective action. The politics of preference for resource protection and for recreational fishing that are evident in a series of relatively recent ministerial sustainability decisions for finfish stocks and marine mammal protection are the principal reasons. Sixth, in New Zealand rock lobster fisheries, the industry organizational structure provides a coordinating role through a national “peak body”— the New Zealand Rock Lobster Industry Council (NZRLIC)—which has recourse to science and policy expertise in the New Zealand Seafood Industry Council (SeaFIC), a national stakeholder-owned seafood industry organization. The SeaFIC science and policy personnel and independent legal advisers can match their counterparts in government agencies. SeaFIC makes those agencies far more accountable for their performance and “braces” the rights-based framework to enable commercial rights holders to achieve agreed outcomes consistent with the purposes and principles of the Fisheries Act. Finally, SeaFIC also enables funding of commercial rights holders’ initiatives. CRAMACs and other CSOs have recourse to a statutory funding base—the Seafood commodity levy—which is reviewed and updated annually. The regional work plans agreed by rights holders are presented as business plans for the endorsement of SeaFIC directors, and a component of a generic seafood levy payable to SeaFIC is then made available to the relevant CSO.
54.4.6. Conclusion: New Zealand Seven factors are seen to be important to the success of commercial stakeholder initiatives in the context of a rights-based management framework. The overall policy and operational policy setting within which these initiatives are undertaken are of equal importance. It is not enough to have commercial rights holders acting in accordance with the conceptual elements of a rights regime while politicians and bureaucrats act differently. Whether the disconnect being experienced in New Zealand fisheries is one borne of willful disregard or lack of institutional commitment to an innovative natural resource management approach is hard to determine. What is obvious is that the resulting tension is depriving the industry and the wider community of a range of benefits that might otherwise be realized if the principles of property
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rights and market mechanisms were properly upheld and applied. There are sufficient manifestations of rightsbased theory to support the contention that better fisheries management outcomes can be derived from the implementation of rights-based regimes. In New Zealand those outcomes are less than they might have been because of the failure to complete the rights framework and to institute market-based mechanisms to resolve competing interests and changing societal values. The apparent decline of the QMS to an allocative system for commercial fishing is a deterioration that should have been averted. It has been lack of attention to detail on the part of both governments and commercial interests that has contributed to that decline. It cannot be easily reversed unless both parties revisit the intended purposes and principles of the New Zealand QMS and agree to cooperatively implement corrective action.
54.5. OVERALL DISCUSSION This chapter has investigated fishery stakeholder involvement in Australian and New Zealand and found the key issue is one of rights development and the capacity of government to facilitate stakeholder involvement in fisheries management. In the Australian case, many fisheries are not of sufficient size or value to consider fuller development of rights-based fishing. These smaller fisheries use co-management to dialogue with government. Larger fisheries are finding that co-management is not moving quickly enough, not bringing the selfmanagement expected by commercial stakeholders operating in tradable effort and ITQ regimes. Lack of unity among state and federal governments and a tapestry of different management arrangements have hindered a fuller national approach to fishing rights as taken by New Zealand. The cost of this has been a halt in the development of rights-based fishery management approaches and inefficiency in Australian fishery management. However, the Australian industry has not had a strong enough vision for developing fishing rights and has been prepared to be drawn into too many situations where co-management discussions are displacing fuller rights allocation. The unified approach to a single national rightsbased fishing system in New Zealand gave stakeholders expectations of progressively devolved
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management responsibility. In reality the commercial fishery sector was issued relatively explicit rights, and recreational and Maori fishers were not incorporated into the QMS in quite the same manner; rather, a general allowance was made for their extractive use. Market instruments have not been employed to resolve competing interests where they do exist because there has been no political action to deploy them. Changing political priorities and preferences and a lack of shared vision for an environmentally and biologically sustainable multisector fishery management framework have led to frustration in the fishing industry—not over what they have, but rather how much more effective and efficient the New Zealand QMS could be if the system was operating in a manner properly consistent with the theoretical construct of rightsbased natural resource management and not teetering in favor of political and bureaucratic command and control.
54.6. OVERALL CONCLUSIONS In both Australia and New Zealand, the contribution of government to the development of fishing rights and stakeholder involvement is considerable. However, this is not just a one-off intervention but is a continuous process involving refinements to the nature, extent, and quality of fishing rights and the consolidation of stakeholder and government roles and responsibilities and relationships within and between fishing stakeholders. A gap evident in both countries is the need for all sectors to invest in the training and development of fishery managers with a more complete government and industry skill set to ensure optimal biological, economic, and social outcomes from the sustainable utilization of fisheries resources within fishing rights-based frameworks (McIlgorm 2002). The search for sustainable governance arrangements is a complex process that involves considerable time, energy, and resources from many people in industry, government, and the community. In presenting some of the positive steps and shortcomings in both of our nations’ recent fisheries management history as seen by stakeholders, we desire to make the future much better than the past. There must be improvement if we are willing to learn from recent history and develop more creative stakeholder-based solutions to apply to the overfishing problem.
References Bess, R., and M. Harte (2000). The role of property rights in the development of New Zealand’s seafood industry. Marine Policy 24(4): 331–339. Grafton, Q.R. (1996). Individual transferable quotas: Theory and practice. Journal Reviews in Fish Biology and Fisheries 6(1): 5–20. Grafton, Q.R., T. Kompas, R. McLoughlin, and N. Rayns (2007). Benchmarking for fisheries governance. Marine Policy 31: 470–479. Jentoft, S., and B. McCay (1995). User participation in fisheries management: Lessons drawn from international experiences. Marine Policy 19(3): 227–246. Jentoft, S., B.J. McCay, and D.C. Wilson (1998). Social theory and fisheries co-management. Marine Policy 22(4–5): 423–436. Kaplan, I.M., and B.J. McCay (2004). Cooperative research: Co-management and the social dimension of fisheries science and management. Marine Policy 28: 257–258. Kendrick, T.H., and N. Bentley (2003). Movements of rock lobsters (Jasus edwardsii) tagged by commercial fishers around the coast of New Zealand from 1993. P. 48 in New Zealand Fisheries Assessment Report 2003/55. Wellington, N.Z.: Ministry of Fisheries. Kerr, S., R. Newell, and J. Sanchirico (2003). Evaluating the New Zealand Individual Transferable Quota Market for Fisheries Management. Motu Working Paper 03-02. Wellington, N.Z.: Motu Economic and Public Policy Research. Lock, K., and S. Leslie (2007). New Zealand’s Quota Management System: A History of the First 20 Years. Motu Working Paper 07-02. Wellington, N.Z.: Motu Economic and Public Policy Research. McClurg, T. (1997). Bureaucratic management versus private property: ITQs in New Zealand after ten years. In Jones, L., and Walker, M. (eds), Fish or Cut Bait! The Case for Individual Transferable Quotas in the Salmon Fishery of British Columbia. Vancouver: Fraser Institute. McIlgorm, A. (2000). Towards an eco-theology of fisheries management? Paper presented at the 14th biennial International Institute of Fisheries Economics and Trade IIFET conference, Corvallis, Oregon, July. McIlgorm, A. (2002). Fisheries management training for sustainable governance. Paper presented at the 15th biennial International Institute of Fisheries Economics and Trade IIFET conference, Wellington, New Zealand, August. McIlgorm, A., and M. Tsamenyi (2000). Rights based fisheries development in Australia: Has it stalled? Pp. 148–154 in R. Shotton (ed), Use of Property Rights in Fisheries Management.
Stakeholder Involvement in Fisheries Management Proceedings of the FishRights99 Conference, Fremantle, Western Australia, 11–19 November 1999. FAO Fisheries Technical Paper 404/2. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Scott, A. (1988). Development of property in the fishery. Marine Resource Economics 5(4): 289–331.
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Sen, S., and J.R. Nielsen (1996). Fisheries co-management: A comparative analysis. Marine Policy 20: 405–418. Wilson, D.C., J.R. Nielsen, and P. Degnbol (eds) (2003). The Fisheries Co-management Experience Accomplishments, Challenges and Prospects. Fish and Fisheries Series 26. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
55 Managing World Tuna Fisheries with Emphasis on Rights-Based Management ROBIN ALLEN JAMES JOSEPH DALE SQUIRES
55.1. INTRODUCTION World catch of the principal market species of tuna comprises about 5 percent of the world catch of all marine fish, and is even higher in value terms. Steadily increasing demand led to increasing fishing effort. Most tuna stocks are fully exploited, and some are overexploited. About 40 percent of the world’s tuna are captured on the high seas beyond exclusive economic zones (EEZ). International law affords every nation’s citizens the right to pursue fisheries on the high seas, and accompanying law dictates certain norms for fishing on the high seas, but these laws provide a stimulus in many respects for investing in high seas tuna fisheries that may already be fully utilized. Similarly, coastal states, which can control access to their resources, may provide more licenses to tuna vessels than needed to take the available harvest. Allowing the resources to be treated as common-property, open-access, or controlled open-access fisheries has led to excess fishing capacity, which has led to overexploitation. Unlimited entry into tuna fisheries must now change. Failing this, the inevitable outcome will be overexploitation of the world’s tuna stocks. Rightsbased management, wherein catches are allocated to participants and fleets are limited in numbers, can bring this change and provide incentives to fishers to maintain fleets at optimal levels. To accomplish this requires a change in mind set and political will of many nations whose citizens participate in
world tuna fisheries, both on the high seas and in coastal zones. Such measures have been successfully used in a number of national fisheries within EEZs, and for tunas some initial steps have been taken within some of the regional management organizations (RFMOs). This chapter reviews the world tuna fisheries, the status of the stocks, current management and its shortcomings, and rights-based management addressing these shortcomings. The fishery in the eastern Pacific Ocean (EPO) is used to discuss how rights-based management systems can work for tuna.
55.2. TUNA CATCHES AND STOCK STATUS Before 1950, world catches of tuna were less than 350,000 tons annually, but then grew until around 1998, when catch reached nearly 4 million tons (Miyake 2005). Between 2003 and 2007, catches averaged about 4.4 million tons. Purse seine vessels take about 60 percent of the catch, with about 12 percent by pole-and-line vessels, 15 percent by longliners, and the remainder by other gear types. With the exception of skipjack in some oceans, almost all of the principal market species of tunas are either fully exploited or overexploited (Majkowski 2007). The increased fishing mortality will not result in sustained increases in catch, with growing
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Managing World Tuna Fisheries concern over recruitment failure. Bluefin tunas are the most heavily exploited, with southern bluefin catches declining from a high of 80,000 in the early 1960s to about 15,000 tons. Atlantic bluefin faces a similar situation. The western Atlantic stock is heavily overexploited, and the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean stock is below average maximum sustainable yield (AMSY). North Pacific bluefin are probably fully exploited, but catches vary considerably due to natural fluctuations in abundance. Current harvests of the three species of bluefin recently averaged about 68,000 tons: 16,000 for southern, 32,000 for Atlantic, and 20,000 for North Pacific bluefins. There are six stocks of albacore: two in the Pacific, two in the Atlantic, and one each in the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean. One is overfished, three are fully exploited, one is not fully exploited, and the status of one is unknown. Recent catches average about 225,000 tons, 143,000 from the Pacific, 57,000 from the Atlantic and Mediterranean, and the rest from the Indian Ocean. Before 1980, longline gear captured most bigeye, taking mostly large fish near the size producing maximum yield per recruit. With widespread use of fish-aggregating devices (FADs) by purse seine vessels after the 1980s, large quantities of small bigeye have been caught, reducing the availability of large bigeye for longline vessels. FAD catches also reduced the overall yield per recruit and threatens growth overfishing of most of bigeye stocks in the three oceans, with Pacific Ocean bigeye overfished and full exploitation in the other oceans. World catches during 2003–2007 average about 448,000 tons: 247,000 from the Pacific, 79,000 tons from the Atlantic, and 122,000 from the Indian Ocean. All yellowfin stocks are fully exploited, and increased fishing effort will not result in sustained increases in catch. World catches from 2003 to 2007 averaged about 1.2 million tons: about 694,000 tons from the Pacific, 427,000 tons from the Indian Ocean, and 109,000 tons from the Atlantic. Skipjack comprise about 55 percent of the world catch of the principal market species of tuna. Catches during 2003–2007 averaged about 2.4 million tons per year: about 1.8 million from the Pacific, about 498,000 from the Indian Ocean, and about 147,000 from the Atlantic. Skipjack in the eastern Atlantic Ocean may be fully exploited, but the stocks in other areas are probably not yet fully exploited, particularly in the western and central Pacific Ocean.
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In summary, with the exception of skipjack tuna, particularly in the Pacific, most stocks of tunas are fully exploited, and two stocks of bluefin are clearly overexploited. Increased fishing effort for most of these stocks will not result in sustained increases in catch, but would probably lead to reduced catches over the long term. Controls on fishing mortality are needed.
55.3. CURRENT INTERNATIONAL MANAGEMENT Effective management of tunas and billfishes is complicated by their travel through waters under jurisdiction of many different nations, which distinguishes tuna management and requires cooperation among nations. In the negotiations to draft a law of the sea convention, nations recognized tuna’s migratory nature. Because tunas traveled from one coastal zone to another, and onto the high seas, no nation could unilaterally manage tuna effectively. Article 64 of the U.N. Convention of the Law of the Sea mandates that states cooperate directly or through appropriate international organizations to ensure the conservation of highly migratory species. Five international conventions establishing Article 64-type tuna bodies exist in the world. Two of these bodies, the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission (IATTC), for the eastern Pacific Ocean (EPO) east of 150° west longitude, and the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), for the Atlantic Ocean and adjacent seas, were created before Article 64 existed and provided case studies in formulating Article 64 and subsequent instruments. The remaining three bodies were created more recently: the Commission for the Conservation of Southern Bluefin Tuna (CCSBT), which is responsible for this species throughout its entire range; the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC), for the Indian Ocean; and the Commission for the Conservation and Management of Highly Migratory Fish Stocks in the Central and Western Pacific Ocean, referred to as the WesternCentral Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC), for the Pacific Ocean generally west of the IATTC area. All five tuna RFMOs (TRFMOs) maintain the stocks of tuna and tunalike fishes for which they are responsible at or above abundance levels that can support AMSY. These bodies are empowered to coordinate and/or conduct research, with the
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results used as a basis for measures to maintain populations at desired abundance levels. The mechanisms for reaching agreement on management measures differ among the TRFMOs. The IATTC and CCSBT require unanimity among all members for all decisions. This provides veto power for any member and can cause long and arduous delays in decision making, which can lead to the development of excess capacity and overfishing. At the other extreme, ICCAT and IOTC do not require unanimity and provide “opt out” clauses wherein a party objecting to a recommendation of the commission is not bound by that recommendation. This can sink a conservation program. WCPFC decisions are generally made by consensus (the absence of any formal objection made at the time the decision was taken), where consensus is lacking, decisions on questions of substance shall be taken by a qualified majority of the members present and voting. No state will agree to be bound by any decisions they consider detrimental to national interests. There lies the rub: how to get those recalcitrant nations to comply with the majority on conservation and management measures. Decision making is critical. The use of consensus for decisions impairs reaching agreement; the process of implementing effective conservation measures would work better if decisions were based on a qualified majority and opt out clauses were eliminated. Diplomatic persuasion is one such option, but such measures are not always effective. Unilateral trade measures are another option, but most governments abhor them, and they can create serious international problems. Joint measures taken by parties to an RFMO have the highest probability of success in terms of securing compliance of recalcitrant parties. Such joint actions can include a variety of measures such as diplomatic persuasion, attempting to “shame” the nation into complying by publicizing the situation, or attacking their markets through trade sanctions. This latter approach seems to offer the most promise for bringing nations around (Barrett 2003; DeSombre in press). Such measures are increasing in TRFMOs and have been used by ICCAT and IOTC. Because of these difficulties in reaching agreement, fishing mortality in many cases exceeds the level needed to maintain tuna populations above AMSY. These high rates of fishing mortality are mostly the result of too many vessels. Even when management measures are in effect, excessive vessel
numbers for the available catch creates difficulty in reaching agreement. For example, with a total allowable catch (TAC) but no control on capacity, each increment in capacity reduces the individual shares to each participant. As individual catches decline, pressure grows on governments to not agree to further controls, or to even abandon current controls. As profits decline, governments tend to subsidize their vessels to keep them operating, and the situation deteriorates. More purse seine fishing capacity exists in every ocean than is needed to take current harvest levels (Reid et al. 2005). Excess capacity also exists in world longline fisheries (Miyake 2005). The longline overcapacity problem has been so severe that the industry initiated a program through their organization, the Organization for the Promotion of Responsible Tuna Fishing (OPRT), reducing longline vessels by 20 percent. The degree to which TRFMOS have been successful in achieving their objectives has varied. The IATTC first initiated conservation catch quotas in 1966 and subsequently used a variety of management techniques. Most recently, periods of no fishing and TACs have been used to reduce fishing mortality. Individual quotas, with an overall cap, have been used to manage dolphin mortality associated with tuna fishing. A regional vessel register (RVR) limiting the number of vessels authorized to fish in the area has been in effect for several years, but capacity continues to grow and is at the highest point in the fishery’s history. This enormous capacity created difficulty for nations to agree to continue conservation measures during 2008. Four commission plenary meetings failed to resolve this problem. The next plenary meeting is scheduled for 8–12 June 2009, but a single opposing nation can block acceptance of the scientific recommendations. The WCPFC has implemented several management measures, but these do not substantively address bigeye and yellowfin overfishing. The WCPFC scientific staff recommended a 25 percent reduction in fishing effort for bigeye and a 10 percent reduction for yellowfin, but a consensus failed, the fishery remains unregulated, and overfishing continues. ICCAT implemented management measures on both bigeye and yellowfin tuna fisheries, including minimum size limits, limitations on fishing capacity, and country allocations for bigeye. Catch quotas and capacity limitations on albacore have also been implemented. Bluefin tuna in the Atlantic and
Managing World Tuna Fisheries Mediterranean has been the object of a number of management measures by ICCAT. Currently there is a major confrontation going on among members whose fleets fish bluefin in the Mediterranean. The Standing Committee on Research and Statistics has recommended drastic reductions in catch, but there is so much fishing capacity and tuna farming capacity in the area that the nations cannot accept the recommendations of the scientists. Agreement has been reached on catch limits, but these exceed the recommendations of the scientists and overfishing continues. IOTC recommended that fishing capacity for yellowfin and bigeye should not increase over 2003 levels, and bigeye catches should not exceed recent levels. Such measures are not too effective in controlling fishing mortality, but member states have been reluctant to implement more stringent measures for controlling capacity. The CCSBT allocates catches among its members. Within these allocations, some members have applied individual quotas. TRFMOs are not providing the protection to tuna stocks needed to maintain them at levels that can support AMSY. Although most stocks are not currently overfished, most suffer overfishing, due most critically to excess fishing capacity, which itself is largely due to incomplete property rights. As long as capacity is allowed to increase, the stocks will be in jeopardy of overfishing, even with other controls such as TACs and closed seasons. Capacity must be controlled, and the most effective way to do this is rights-based fisheries management. Management is achieved by restricting fishing in some way. In “command-and-control” techniques, an authority sets catch limits, or restricts fishing effort, or limits the characteristics (normally size or breeding status) of individual fish that may be taken legally. These measures apply to all fishers and to those who wish to enter the fishery. As an alternative to command and control, rights-based fishery management techniques allocate rights in the fishery to entities (individual fishers, companies, or communities) in such a way that the sum of the fishing rights ensures that no more than the optimum catch may be taken in accordance with those rights. The stronger the participants’ rights, the more the incentives of those rights holders are aligned toward the long-term conservation of the fishery. Entrenched positions of fishing states and the problem of overcapacity of the world’s fishing fleets have slowed progress in satisfying that
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growing international interest in fisheries. Fisheries management is more difficult when it requires cooperation among states, and rights-based approaches have been slower to develop in the international arena than within national jurisdictions.
55.4. RIGHTS-BASED MANAGEMENT Rights-based fishery management within national jurisdictions allows participants to rationalize their capital investment and, equally important, enjoy valuable property rights that strengthen their interests in the conservation of the stocks. Scott (2000) discusses important characteristics of property rights highlighting exclusivity, duration, security, and transferability. The individual transferable quotas or individual fishery quotas in New Zealand, Australia, Iceland, Canada, and the United States provide examples of rights-based management systems with well-developed characteristics of the rights. Individual quotas with exclusivity, security, and a long duration foster a collective interest of rights holders in conservation. An investment in reduction of quotas provides real benefits for the quota holders who made the investment. Transferability allows the quotas to be used by those to whom the quotas are most valuable, leading to economic efficiency. Territorial use rights systems for individuals or communities can also have well-developed property rights characteristics (Christy 1982). Examples include prefectural management systems in Japan, the Challenger scallop fishery in New Zealand, and small communities that exclusively control local fisheries. When fisheries in the areas of each territorial use holder do not affect those of others, the territorial use holders benefit from conservation investments. Transferability increases the right’s value and allows efficient operators to purchase rights from less efficient operators. Limited entry, which provides a weak user right, is a simple rights-based system that, provided the rights are guaranteed for a long time, gives those with the right an interest in conservation, but on its own does not promote economic rationalization. The examples above are all from a national context, within which a fishery can be managed by a single government authority. Stocks of tunas generally occupy areas that encompass more than one zone of national
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jurisdiction, and also the high seas, and are exploited by vessels of many nations. Thus, international agreement is necessary to conserve tuna stocks. Extensive tuna movements mean that territorial use rights cannot control tuna catches and make limited entry and quota management systems the most likely rights-based systems. This chapter considers only those as candidates for rights-based management of tunas. While most tuna fisheries are not yet overexploited, the problem of excess fishing capacity seems to be common to all. In addition to the issues facing all fisheries management systems (e.g., compliance, enforcement and illegal, unregulated, and unreported fishing), the use of rights-based systems in internationally managed fisheries raises additional difficult questions. These include ownership of rights to fish, how would the rights be allocated, who would be responsible for recording the rights, and who would be responsible for ensuring that an individuals’ fishing does not exceed the allocated rights and how that would be achieved. Typically, more extensive systems for monitoring and compliance are needed for rights-based management systems than for command-and-control systems. Serdy (2007) examined legal issues surrounding transferability of quotas among members of RFMOs and found that rudimentary systems for quota trading among states are allowed in some RFMOs, and that any such systems depend on decisions of the RFMO concerned, rather than on the development of new international law. While RFMOs commonly make allocations of quota or fleet capacity among their members, there is little precedent for allocations being made either directly or indirectly to individuals. However, there are two such examples in the eastern Pacific Ocean (EPO): the allocation of annual dolphin mortality limits (DMLs) and the limited-entry system used by the IATTC, which maintains a closed RVR to record the rights of individual purse seine vessels to fish for tunas in the EPO. The allocation of quotas directly to individuals, for example, by an RFMO, has not been analyzed legally, but, of course, national quotas may be allocated to individuals. Some examples are the Australian quota for southern bluefin tuna, Chinese Taipei’s bigeye tuna quotas, and Pacific halibut quotas allocated to fishers of Canada and the United States. The closest example of allocation of quotas to individuals by an international agreement is
provided by the Agreement on the International Dolphin Conservation Program (AIDCP) DMLs for individual vessels since 1992. The DML is a relatively weak right because it does not provide full exclusivity (there are national mortality limits that, if reached, would curtail individual rights), their duration is for only one year (or a shorter period), and their security is subject to the ability of the various governments to renounce their DMLs or to reallocate them among vessels of their fleets. With respect to transferability, the agreement provides that a vessel that changes flags retains its DML and its record of dolphin mortality during the year to date, and that its obligations under the AIDCP be enforced by its new flag. The AIDCP also provides some limited transferability of the limits among vessels,1 in that limits from vessels that renounce or forfeit their assigned limits are redistributed among other vessels. In practice, however, the parties to the AIDCP have also allowed ad hoc transfers (IATTC 2006) among vessels. The limited-entry system of the IATTC is also a relatively weak rights-based system because, while the system provides exclusivity (the place of a vessel on the RVR2 is not affected by other vessels moving off and on the RVR), and the duration of the right is permanent, the security and transferability are subject to government decisions, as all changes to the RVR are made at the request of the governments under whose jurisdictions the vessels operate. The two examples discussed above also provide answers to the questions noted earlier in this section. For both DMLs and places on the RVR, the ability to exercise the rights belongs to the vessels. In other words, a vessel with a DML is entitled to fish for yellowfin tuna associated with dolphins, and a vessel that is included on the RVR is entitled to fish for tunas in the EPO. DMLs are allocated to all qualified vessels that seek them. The original places on the RVR were allocated in June 2002 to vessels that were fishing (or had recently been fishing) at that time, with some additional space provided for five coastal states that were in the process of developing their tuna industries. The staff of the IATTC is responsible for recording which vessels have DMLs and also for maintaining the tally of dolphins killed against each DML. The staff also maintains the RVR. Finally, subsidiary bodies of the AIDCP and the IATTC, the International Review Panel and the Working Group on Compliance, respectively, maintain the oversight of compliance with the allocated right.
Managing World Tuna Fisheries
55.5. MECHANICS OF MANAGEMENT, MONITORING, CONTROL, AND SURVEILLANCE FOR RIGHTS-BASED MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS All fisheries management systems require systems for monitoring, control, and surveillance to ensure compliance with the system. This section discusses mechanisms that are required, particularly for limited-entry and quota-based systems. In both cases, the required mechanisms are much more complicated if the rights include transferability than if they do not include transferability.
55.5.1. Limited Entry Limited entry can be directed at vessels or at participants. Because the effectiveness of vessels can be increased by investing in equipment or increasing their size, additional controls on investment that increases fishing capacity are usually necessary to make limited entry effective. However, these additional controls can limit only certain attributes of vessels, and over time normal investments will increase the fishing power of the vessels. Limited entry requires relatively simple mechanisms that include a list of all those entitled to fish, and, if there are controls on investments that increase fishing capacity, mechanisms to ensure they are complied with. For example, the IATTC limited-entry system has an RVR (IATTC 2002) of purse seine vessels that have the right to fish in the EPO. In addition to not allowing new vessels to be introduced except as replacements for vessels leaving the fishery, there is a rule that prohibits increases in well volumes of vessels unless equal well volumes are removed by other vessels leaving the fishery or decreasing their well volumes.3 This provision envisages the transferability allowed by the resolution establishing the limited-entry system (IATTC 2002). Because the fisheries authorities responsible for compliance with the rules of the RFMOs do not always have adequate communication with the maritime authorities responsible for registration and flagging of vessels, states do not always have the mechanisms in place to monitor compliance with vessel changes that may include increased capacity. Thus, systems maintained by the commission itself, including information collected by at-sea
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observers and inspections by staff members, have been used to monitor compliance with that aspect of the resolution. A formal register must be maintained to preserve the integrity of the system. The register must be easily accessible to participating governments and, preferably, to others with interest in the fishery. If transferability were not allowed among participating governments, it would be possible for each state to maintain its own register. However, if, as is the case for the IATTC, transferability of vessels across participating governments is allowed, it is essential that a central register be maintained and that there be a centralized system to ensure that any controls on investments that increase capacity are complied with. (Even if each state maintained its own register, these would have to be accessible to participating governments, as otherwise nationals of the various states might suspect that other states were not complying with the agreement for limiting fishing capacity.) In the IATTC’s limited-entry system, transferability is allowed in several ways. First, a vessel that is included in the RVR may change flag from one participating state to that of another without affecting the status of the vessel on the RVR. Vessels may also be replaced on the RVR by other vessels, providing the well volume of the new vessel is no greater than that of the vessel or vessels being replaced. The well volume of a vessel may be increased only if an equivalent amount of well volume is removed from the RVR. In 2004, the commission agreed that when a vessel is removed from the RVR and its well volume is not replaced completely, the state concerned would retain the residual well volume (IATTC 2004). Thus, in addition to maintaining the list of vessels on the RVR, the staff of the IATTC maintains a record of the residual well volume for each participating state. Between 30 June 2002 and 31 December 2007, 317 such transactions were recorded. The question of flag changes of vessels on the RVR has been one of the key difficulties in the administration of the RVR. The IATTC considers the flag of a vessel as being the sole determinant of the government with authority over the vessel. It has been troubled by the complex situations of bare boat charters in which the registration in one country is temporarily suspended and the vessel is allowed to fly another flag during the duration of the charter. Also, the resolution does not explicitly require approval from any government to
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retain a vessel on the RVR when its flag is changed. A government does, however, have the ability to remove a vessel from the RVR before it changes its flag. Some IATTC member governments would prefer that the rights to places on the RVR belong to the governments, rather than to the vessels, and have sought to achieve this with an explanatory note in the minutes of the 73rd meeting4 (IATTC 2005) of the IATTC or via an instruction to the director that he remove any of their vessels from the RVR if they change their flag.
55.5.2. Quota-Based Systems Monitoring compliance with quotas requires systems that are more complex than those discussed above for limited entry. In this case, it is necessary to have registers of quotas (possibly for multiple species and areas) and records of catches against those quotas. At the minimum, a register of quotas would require a system similar to a register of vessels permitted to fish in a limited-entry system, but it may be considerably larger if there are quotas maintained for more than one fish stock, area, or time period. While owners of vessels will maintain their own records of catches against quotas, it will also be necessary for those records to be verified by authorities, requiring a near real-time data recording system that now could rely on reports by atsea observers or estimates reported electronically from sea, and verification at the time of unloading. In practice, balancing of catches (Sanchirico et al. 2006; Squires et al. 1998) against quotas in the fisheries managed with the aid of such systems has led to some creative and rather complex balancing systems, including banking quotas from one year to another, the imposition of deemed values for catches in excess of quotas, and, for multispecies fisheries, substitution of a quota of one species for a quota for another. The problems associated with quota balancing are far more serious in multispecies fisheries than in single-species fisheries, because it is common for such fisheries to include stocks whose productivities are different from their representation in normal catch. The use of these balancing systems greatly complicates the basic system for recording quotas and catches against them. If there is no transferability across participating flags, each could maintain its own quota register and record catches against the quotas of its own vessels. If transferability is allowed, of course, a
central register of quota holding and reporting of catch against quota would be required. Transferability includes several possibilities. It might involve sale or leasing for determined periods of quota. It could also be used to address over- and undercatching referred to above. The combination of provisions for over- and undercatching and of transferability requires a complex and carefully defined system for recording quotas and for counting catches against them. The basic system for registering DMLs under the AIDCP is relatively simple. There is only one limit for each vessel, the total number of mortalities of dolphins in the EPO allocated to that vessel in a given calendar year. If a vessel kills more than its limit of dolphins in any year, the excess, plus an additional 50 percent of its limit, is deducted from its DML for the following year. However, in addition to this basic system, there are complex rules that relate the vessel’s performance in achieving a low mortality rate and in compliance that affect the vessel’s DML in the next year. In addition, the DML system operates under, and may be constrained by, a wider quota system that provides global limits for each stock of dolphins involved in the fishery, for the total number of dolphins that may be killed and for the number that may be killed by vessels of any participating state.
55.5.3. Registers For most limited-entry and all quota systems, it is essential that there be a register of rights that is maintained by an agency that is trusted by all states and participants in the fishery. This might be operated by the RFMO concerned, as is the case for the IATTC limited-entry system, or by an independent agency, such as the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Even in the relatively simple IATTC system the operation of the register is a sensitive issue that has led to controversies, which, in several cases, are still unresolved (IATTC 2007a). Some vessels are recorded on the register under two flags or two names, indicating a difference of views of governments about the probity of particular flag transfers. This highlights the importance of ensuring that rules concerning transfers are unambiguous so that the administrator of the system is not subject to differing interpretations of participating governments. It is also desirable that those operating the register be as far removed as practical from the influence
Managing World Tuna Fisheries of governments or individuals whose interests are recorded in the register.
55.6. THE TUNA FISHERIES IN THE EASTERN PACIFIC OCEAN AS A CAPACITY MANAGEMENT EXAMPLE The IATTC is the RFMO responsible for the management of the fisheries for tunas in the EPO. The IATTC has 16 members: Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, France, Guatemala, Japan, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, the Republic of Korea, Spain, the United States, Vanuatu, and Venezuela. In addition, an additional 10 states, regional economic cooperation organizations, and fishing entities are involved in the fishery: five cooperate formally with the IATTC and the others informally. The agreement area for the IATTC is
FIGURE
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the EPO, generally taken to be from the coastline of the Americas to 150° W longitude (figure 55.1), and is so defined in the new “Antigua Convention” (which has not yet entered into force). The retained catches of the principal market species of tuna in the EPO from 1986 through 2006 are shown in figure 55.2. The catches in the EPO constitute between 10 and 20 percent of the world’s total catch of tunas. The catches of yellowfin tuna, by fishing method, and bigeye tuna, by gear, in the EPO, are shown in figures 55.3 and 55.4, respectively. Most purse seine fishing on schools associated with floating objects is carried out using fish-aggregating devices (FADs) deployed by fishers. FADs have been used in the EPO since 1993, and are particularly effective at attracting skipjack and small bigeye tunas. Sets on schools of tuna associated with dolphins seldom take anything but medium to large yellowfin tuna. Purse seine vessels are specialized with equipment to make them
55.1 IATTC agreement area. (From www.iattc.org/EPOmapENG.htm)
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suitable to fish for either tuna schools associated with dolphins or schools associated with FADs, but not both. However, any vessel will take advantage of an unassociated school that it comes across. Longline vessels generally direct their effort at bigeye tuna and take smaller amounts of yellowfin tuna (and other species of tunas and billfishes). This method catches the largest tunas and has the least impact on the populations. The catches by pole-andline fishing, which used to be the predominant form
of fishing prior to about 1960, has now practically disappeared from the EPO. The greatest catches of yellowfin are taken in schools associated with dolphins, followed by sets on unassociated schools and sets on schools associated with floating objects (figure 55.3). Only small amounts of bigeye are taken in purse seine sets other than those of fish associated with FADs, so the catches of bigeye by purse seines are combined in figure 55.4. Previous to 1994, an overwhelming
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FIGURE
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55.2 Catches of the principal market species of tuna in the EPO,
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FIGURE
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55.3 Catches of yellowfin tuna by fishing method, 1975–2006
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Managing World Tuna Fisheries 160 000 Longline Purse seine
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55.4 Catches of bigeye tuna by gear, 1975–2006
majority of the catch was taken by longline. Bigeye tunas associated with FADs tend to be quite small, and it would take these fish several years to become available to the longline fishery. The purse seine fishery is growing at the expense of diminishing longline catches. At the same time, because bigeye caught with purse seines are smaller than those caught with longlines, purse seine fishing is causing a reduction in the total yield from the fishery in the EPO.
55.6.1. Capacity Issues in the EPO The major management issue in the fishery today is that there is too much fishing effort for the productive capacities of yellowfin and bigeye tuna. The situation is complicated by small bigeye and, to a lesser extent, yellowfin taken while purse seine
fishing for skipjack tuna, a valuable species for which there are currently no conservation concerns. The aggregate well volume of tuna fleet in the EPO has been increasing since 1991. Figure 55.5 shows the changes in the well volumes of the purse seine and pole-and-line fleets and the numbers of hooks deployed by the longline fleet. Controlling the size of fishing fleets is not on its own an ideal method to manage the fishery. Every effort at controlling the numbers and sizes of fishing vessels can be met by investment to increase the ability of vessels to catch fish by focusing on some uncontrolled aspect. Nevertheless, keeping the fleet size near that which can take the optimum catch will make other management measures easier to implement and more effective. Between 1988 and 1998, the fleet was not large enough to require restrictive management measures.
(b)
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FIGURE 55.5 Aggregate well volume of purse seine and pole-and-line vessels in the EPO (a), and numbers of hooks deployed by longline vessels in the EPO (b)
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However, since 1998 the IATTC has agreed on closures for the purse seine fishery and quotas for bigeye tuna to maintain the yellowfin and bigeye stocks at levels that would produce the AMSYs of those species. Currently, the IATTC faces great difficulty in agreeing on appropriate measures, as demonstrated by the need for it to hold two special meetings addressing conservation measures following the 75th meeting of the IATTC in June 2007. The size of the fishing fleet in relation to the productive capacity of the resources has been assessed in a number of ways. In 2005, in its capacity management plan, the IATTC adopted a target level for the capacity of the purse seine fleet of 158,000 m3 of well volume.5 This was based on the fleet size that would normally be able to fish through the year without requiring management intervention to maintain the yellowfin tuna stock at the level that would produce the MSY. At that time (June 2005), the actual capacity of the purse seine fleet was 209,000 m3. Thus, the actual capacity was 32 percent greater than this measure of optimum capacity. Since then, the purse seine fleet has continued to grow, and at the end of 2007 its capacity was more than 230,000 m3, 46 percent greater than that target capacity. Another indication of overcapacity is the recommended closure of the purse seine fishery, which is used because the actual closure chosen by the IATTC takes account of factors other than the capacity of the fleet to take the MSY. Overcapacity6 could be measured by the percentages of the year during which the yellowfin fishery would be open, according to the recommendation. Between 2003 and 2007 the recommended closure for yellowfin varied from 2 months to 74 days, equivalent to overcapacity of between 20 and 25 percent. The FAO has defined capacity of a fishing fleet as its capacity to catch fish. Whereas the two previous examples were based on the previous average utilization of the available fleet, the FAO definition takes account of potential of the fleet to catch fish. Reid et al. (2005) assessed the capacity of the purse seine fleet in the EPO (and other areas), using the technique of data envelopment analysis, which accounts for increases in capacity if all vessels were used as effectively as the most efficient vessel. That analysis provided an estimate of average excess capacity divided by capacity output during 1998– 2002 for yellowfin and bigeye tuna of 39 percent. Of course, it is necessary to take into account longline fishing, at least, in addition to purse seining
when considering fleet capacity. An approach to this is outlined in the next section.
55.6.2. Buybacks to Reduce Capacity of the EPO Tuna Fleet to an Optimum Level Effective buybacks are discussed in chapter 37. In the EPO, the Resolution on the Capacity of the Tuna Fleet Operating in the Eastern Pacific Ocean (Resolution C-02-03), adopted in June 2002, potentially ensures that bought-out purse seine capacity cannot be replaced, but compliance is incomplete (IATTC 2007b, 2007c).7 Dissatisfied members (IATTC 2007d, 2007a) seek to increase their fleet capacities. A vessel buyback would be expected to be successful only if there is a consensus among IATTC members that the RVR allocation is fair to all and compliance is full. Fleet well volume is not necessarily proportional to FAO’s definition of fishing capacity. Even with limited well volume, owners can invest to increase the overall capacity of the fleet to catch fish. This issue may be of less concern than compliance and the general acceptance of the limits on entry referred to above, given that a buyback program to reduce capacity is intended to facilitate management using other measures, rather than to be the only management tool for the commission. However, the effort creep that is likely to occur following a buyback must eventually be addressed, most effectively by specifying the rights of the remaining fishers more completely (Fox et al. 2003). For longline fishing, the second most important method of fishing in the EPO, there is no IATTC control system similar to that used for purse seine vessels. A successful buyback requires limited entry. The Organization for the Promotion of Responsible Tuna Fishing (OPRT), founded in Japan in 2000 and joined by organizations in China, Chinese Taipei, Ecuador, Indonesia, the Philippines, the Republic of Korea, and the Seychelles, bought back about 43 Japanese and Taiwanese flag of convenience (FOC) longliners (Joseph 2005).8 Combinations of longline and purse seine fishing effort compared to 2004–2006 levels that will produce the bigeye AMSY are shown by the dashed curve in figure 55.6; the solid curve shows the MSY for the whole fishery with average recruitment for a given purse seine effort when longline effort is adjusted appropriately to produce the MSY. The actual 2004–2006 effort in relative terms was at
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Managing World Tuna Fisheries the point marked by the cross. If fleet capacity is approximated by fishing effort, figure 55.6 can be used to show reductions in the purse seine and longline fleets. For example, a reduction to 83 percent of existing levels of both purse seine and longline capacity would bring the fishing effort to about the level corresponding to the AMSY. Because the two fishing methods are mostly associated with different flags, discussions about the appropriate reduction required in each method to reach MSY levels inevitably involves competition between groups of countries, which are difficult to resolve. Instead of negotiating reductions for each fishing method, a buyback could be structured to allow that decision to be made as a consequence of owners selling their interest in the fishery, such as asking all owners to bid at the price at which they would be prepared to quit the fishery, and to accept the set of bids that moved the effort toward the dashed curve in figure 55.6 at the minimum cost. This process could be elaborated in various ways. For example, a system to ensure that all those bought out would receive the same amount of money per unit of capacity could be adopted, or the commission could set constraints on how far the relative composition of purse seining and longlining might be allowed to move from the current fleet composition.
55.7. DESIGNING AND FINANCING A BUYBACK Vessel buybacks can be designed in a number of ways to achieve particular ends, with the key issues discussed in chapter 37 (Squires et al. 2006; Groves and Squires 2007). In a fishery such as the EPO tuna fishery, there are many owners, some with large fleets and some owning individual vessels, and decisions about which vessels to retire are more difficult. An owner with only one vessel can permanently affect capacity only by withdrawing his vessel and then receiving no benefit in the form of increased catches per unit of effort from the reduction he contributed, creating a free-rider problem in which the remaining owners gain. However, in aggregate, if fleet capacity can be reduced to the lowest level that can take the available catch, total costs would fall and total profitability increase. Given that, all owners could contribute to a buyback fund in proportion to their own capacity, and the fund could be used to buy out those willing to leave. Again, total profitability will increase. The buyback results in a transfer of funds among the pool of owners. If all participants act in an economically rational way, those who sell their right to fish should do so at a price that at least reflects their 200 000 180 000
5
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55.6 Combinations of longline and purse seine fishing effort (compared to 2004–2006 levels) that will produce AMSY of bigeye tuna (dashed curve). The cross shows fishing effort in 2004–2006. The solid curve shows the relationship between the MSY for the whole fishery and purse seine effort when longline effort is adjusted appropriately to produce the AMSY. (From IATTC-75-07b Conservation Recommendations, www.iattc. org/IATTCandAIDCPMeetingsJune07ENG.htm)
FIGURE
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Policy Instruments and Perspectives
expectations of future profits if they had remained in the fishery, and those who remain should be prepared to pay up to their expectations of the increase in their future postbuyback profits. Owners may collectively face difficulty agreeing on their contribution to a buyback, and such a scheme could likely proceed only with initial funding by an external agency with the expectation of being repaid over time by the remaining owners, for example, via the use of a landings tax. Assuming the RVR measure for purse seine vessels in the EPO permits a vessel to transfer to another flag without replacement by the current flag state, fishery participants could implement a buyback program that reduces fleet size. Such a buyback would not work unless governments agreed with transferable capacity quota, and with nonreplacement when a vessel transferred to another flag or was bought out of the fishery. Costs of an EPO purse seine buyback under this specification entails two components: values of the vessel and a place on the RVR, giving the right to bring a vessel into the fishery, inclusion on the register, and participation in the fishery. The value of a vessel, or the right of inclusion on the register, varies with the success of fishing and the price of fish. The well capacity of the purse seine fleet operating in the EPO is about 229,000 m3, and the optimum fleet size is about 158,000 m3. This suggests there is about 70,000 m3 excess capacity in the fleet, which represents about 59 vessels of about 1,200 m3 each (the average size of a vessel in the fleet). With recent prices for a 1,200 m3 vessel ranging between $5,000,000 and $8,500,000, the cost to buy back the 59 vessels would range from $290,000,000 to $470,000,000. To put this into perspective, the annual landed value of the catch of tunas by the purse seine fleet fishing in the EPO averaged over 2005–2008 was about $600,000,000. In addition to the existing purse seine fleet, many participating countries have rights to add additional capacity to the fleet, either as a result of vessels that have been withdrawn after June 2002 when limited-entry was established, or through an initial allocation to coastal states whose fisheries were developing. The aggregate of this unutilized capacity is 54,000 m3. Prices for register places ranged from $150,000 to $300,000. Some of this unutilized capacity is associated with a right of an individual to replace a vessel, but the bulk of it is a national right that is not currently allocated to an individual. If all of it had to be purchased at
between $150,000 and $300,000 per vessel, this unused capacity would be worth between $6.2 and $13.5 million. However, more than half of it could simply be written off by governments that do not currently intend to further develop their fleets or are willing to forgo further expansion of their fleets in the EPO. A complete buyback would have to remove the combination of the 70,000 m3 in the existing fleet and the unfilled 54,000 m3. The cost of buying back the 59 vessels and some part of the options for countries allocated quota but that have no vessels is substantial. The preferable way to finance such a program might be through the industry, but because there is currently so much excess capacity, the catch per vessel may not provide large enough profits for the vessel owners to finance the buybacks. If loans and grants sufficient to cover the buyback of the 59 vessels were made available, the buyback could be immediate. Per-vessel catches and profitability would increase, allowing industry repayment. Alternatively, if loans and grants sufficient to buy back a portion of the 59 vessels were made available, per-vessel earnings would be expected to increase somewhat, thereby placing the vessel owners in a position to fund the buyback of the remaining capacity. International financial assistance or national government assistance, or both, would be needed to initiate a buyback, but once the program was operating responsibility for maintaining it should fall to the industry.
55.8. CONCLUSIONS The world’s stocks of the principle market species of tuna are heavily exploited; some are overexploited, and overfishing is taking place on others. The TRFMOs have implemented a number of measures to prevent overexploitation, but in many cases they have been only marginally effective, and in other cases ineffective. This is due to the difficulties of achieving consensus among member states to implement restrictive measures, and these difficulties stem from the fact that there is too much fishing capacity. It has been shown that such excess capacity exists in all oceans, and as long as the concept of open-access and common-property management prevails, this problem of overcapacity will not be corrected. It seems clear that nations and TRFMOs must move toward rights-based fishery management, wherein vessels and catches are allocated to
Managing World Tuna Fisheries individual operators, thereby providing an incentive to maintain fleets at optimal sizes. Fisheries management is most effective when the interests of all the participants are aligned to produce the same results. It is particularly important for the fishers to have an economic incentive to ensure the conservation of the resources they exploit. This can be achieved by providing them secure and exclusive rights to the fishery that extend into the future. This arrangement has been achieved within some national systems for fisheries management, but will be much more difficult to achieve for internationally managed fisheries, where the management participants are fishers, states, and an RFMO, and even nations not currently participating. The overcapacity in tuna fisheries, and those of the EPO in particular, should be addressed by the establishment of a rights-based management frame work with well-defined fishing rights that could be preceded by a buyback of existing fishing rights. An advantage of an initial buyback is that it could sidestep the very difficult negotiation of shares in a fishery among competing states. Notes 1. Annex IV(III) 2 of the Agreement for the AIDCP. 2. The IATTC’s RVR is the definitive list of purse seine vessels authorized by the commission to fish in the EPO (IATTC 2000). 3. Purse seine vessels store their catches in brine contained in spaces known as wells. 4. Minutes of the 73rd meeting of the IATTC (2005: 8): “A change of flag by a vessel from one CPC [party, cooperating non-party, or fishing entity] to another, and the vessel’s status on the RVR, shall not be considered effective until the Director has received official notification of the change from both governments involved.” The commission endorsed this statement, and noted the importance of each government establishing adequate internal procedures to ensure the necessary coordination between the various domestic agencies involved in the process of flag transfers. 5. The IATTC has used well volume as its measure of purse seine fleet capacity. 6. Overcapacity here refers the difference between the actual capacity and a measure of optimum capacity. 7. The 2007 IATTC Compliance Report (IATTC 2007c) noted that four purse seine vessels fished in the EPO while not being included in the RVR, and that three vessels used wells that were not authorized under the resolution.
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8. Longline vessels less than 24 m in overall length are subject to less regulation than are larger vessels, and in recent years highly efficient longline vessels slightly less than 24 m in overall length have been constructed for the purpose of fishing without restriction.
References Barrett, S. (2003). Environment and Statecraft: The Strategy of Environmental Treaty-Making. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Christy, F.T., Jr. (1982). Territorial Use Rights in Marine Fisheries: Definitions and Conditions. Technical Paper 227. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. DeSombre, E. (in press). Flags of convenience and property rights on the high seas. In Allen, R., Joseph, J., and Squires, D. (eds), Conservation and Management of Transnational Tuna Fisheries. Ames, Iowa: Blackwell. Fox, K.J., R.Q. Grafton, T. Kompas, and T.N. Che (2003). Productivity and capacity reduction: The case of a fishery. International and Development Economics Working Paper IDEC 03-2. Canberra: Australian National University. www.crawford.anu.edu.au/degrees/idec/working_papers/IDEC03-2.pdf Groves, T., and D. Squires (2007). Lessons from fisheries buybacks. In Curtiss, R., and Squires, D. (eds), Fisheries Buybacks. Ames, Iowa: Blackwell. www.iattc.org/Meetings2004ENG.htm IATTC (2000). Vessel Database—Active PurseSeine. www.iattc.org/VesselRegister/VesselList. aspx?List=AcPS&Lang=ENG IATTC (2002). Resolution on the Capacity of the Tuna Fleet Operating in the EPO. IATTC Resolution Document C-02-03 www.iattc.org/ ResolutionsActiveENG.htm IATTC (2004). Minutes of the 7th meeting of the IATTC Permanent Working Group on Fleet Capacity. 20–21 February. La Jolla, Calif.: Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission. IATTC (2005). Minutes of the 73rd Meeting (Revised). 20–27 June, Lanzarote, Spain. www.iattc.org/PDFFiles2/IATTC-73MinutesJun05-REV.pdf IATTC (2006). Minutes of the 15th Meeting of the Parties to the AIDCP: Agenda Item 11, 21 June, Busan, Korea. www.iattc.org/ PDFFiles2/MOP-15-MinutesREV.pdf IATTC (2007a). Ninth Meeting of the Permanent Working Group on Fleet Capacity. Document IATTC-75 PROP F1 VEN Capacity. 25–29 June, Cancun, Mexico. www.iattc.org/IATTCandAIDCPMeetingsOct07ENG.htm IATTC (2007b). Permanent Working Group on Compliance 8th Meeting. Document
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COM-8-04. 21 June, Cancun, Mexico. www. iattc.org/PDFFiles2/COM-8-04-Compliancereport-2006.pdf IATTC (2007c). IATTC Permanent Working Group on Compliance 8th Meeting. Document COM-8-04. 21 June, Cancun, Mexico. www. iattc.org/PDFFiles2/COM-8-04-Compliancereport-2006.pdf IATTC (2007d). Ninth Meeting of the Permanent Working Group on Fleet Capacity. Document IATTC-75-PROP F2 PER Capacity. 25–29 June, Cancun, Mexico. www.iattc.org/IATTCandAIDCPMeetingsOct07ENG.htm Joseph, J. (2005). Past developments and future options for managing tuna fishing capacity, with special emphasis on purse-seine fleets. FAO Fisheries Proceedings 2: 281–323. Majkowski, J. (2007). Global Fishery Resources of Tuna and Tuna-like Species. FAO Fisheries Technical Paper 483. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, p. 54. Miyake, P.M. (2005). A brief history of the tuna fisheries of the world. In: Bayliff, W.H., Leiva Moreno, J.I., Majkowski, J. (eds), Second Meeting of the Technical Advisory Committee of the FAO Project “Management of Tuna Fishing Capacity: Conservation and Socio-
economics.” 15–18 March, Madrid, Spain. FAO Fisheries Proceedings No. 2. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, p. 336. Reid, C., J.E. Kirkley, D. Squires, and J. Ye (2005). An analysis of the fishing capacity of the global tuna purse-seine fleet. FAO Fisheries Proceedings 2: 117–156. Sanchirico, J.N., D. Holland, K. Quigley, and M. Fina (2006). Catch-quota balancing in multispecies individual fishing quota. Marine Policy 30(6): 767–785. Scott, A. (2000). Introducing Property in Fisheries Management. FAO Fisheries Technical Paper 404/1. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 1–13. Serdy, A. (2007). Trading of Fishery Commission quota under international law. Ocean Yearbook 21: 265–288. Squires, D., H. Campbell, S. Cunningham, C. Dewees, Q.R. Grafton, S.F. Herrick, J. Kirkley, S. Pascoe, S. Kjell, B. Shallard, B. Turris, and N. Vestergaard (1998). Individual transferable quotas in multispecies fisheries. Marine Policy 22(2): 135–159. Squires, D., J. Joseph, and T. Groves (2006). Buybacks in transnational fisheries. Pacific Economic Bulletin 21(3): 63–74.
56 Research Priorities for Marine Fisheries Conservation and Management JOHN ANNALA STEVE EAYRS
• Determination of the impacts of fishing on ecosystem structure and function • Development of ecosystem approaches to managing fisheries
56.1. INTRODUCTION This chapter covers natural science research priorities that address fisheries conservation and management needs for wild fish stocks currently and in the future. It does not address research topics that do not directly pertain to fisheries conservation and management, or approaches or topics that are covered in other chapters (e.g., marine reserves, aquaculture, policy instruments, and social science research needs). The ultimate goal of fisheries research is to collect, analyze, and synthesize the data required to evaluate alternative management policies and strategies for fish populations. This information is essential for understanding the underlying dynamics of the stock or population of fish, and subsequently for modeling the population dynamics and formulating advice for the conservation and management of the stock. A core set of basic information and approaches are required to move forward in fisheries conservation and management:
56.2. FISH BIOLOGY 56.2.1. Introduction Why is the knowledge of basic fish biology important to the conservation and management of fisheries? We need to know the dynamics of populations of fish to estimate what can be removed from the fished population on a sustainable basis. The sustainable yield for a stock of a species is determined by the biological characteristics of stock structure, age, growth rate, mortality or survival rate, reproductive output, recruitment, and immigration/ emigration. Other factors also determine the level of sustainable yield, which are covered in later sections. Put simply:
• Knowledge of the biology of the species • Estimates of abundance and trends in abundance • Development of data synthesis and assessment methods • Determination of ecosystem structure and function • Information on fish behavior and conservation engineering
Future biomass = current biomass + somatic growth + recruitment − natural deaths − fish catch
56.2.2. Stock Structure Determining stock structure or the unit stock lies at the heart of the information required for successful fisheries conservation and management (Hilborn 713
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and Walters 1992). However, it is important to realize that in reality a unit stock is not static and fixed but is dynamic. Species of marine fish often have far-ranging distributions and highly dispersive life history stages that make determination of stock structure challenging. Hilborn and Walters (1992) define a unit stock as “an arbitrary collection of populations of fish that are large enough to be essentially self-reproducing (abundance changes are not dominated by immigration and emigration), with members of the collection showing similar patterns of growth, migration, and dispersal.” Identification of fish stocks is necessary for a number of reasons, including allocation of catch among competing fisheries, management of highly migratory stocks, recognition of nursery and spawning areas, and development of optimal harvest and monitoring strategies (Cadrin 2005). Most quantitative stock assessment models assume that the biological (growth, mortality, recruitment, etc.) and fisheries (catch, landings, etc.) input data originate from a single unit stock. A limited number of more complex assessments have been developed that incorporate movements between two or more stocks. If the unit stock assumption is violated in a mixed stock fishery, then the less productive stocks run the risk of being overexploited while the more productive stocks may be underharvested. A recent excellent review of the application of stock identification methods to fisheries has been edited by Cadrin et al. (2005). The authors present the key issues in determining stock structure, including the various data requirements and data analysis approaches, for example, • Determination of life history and biological traits • Use of environmental marks (e.g., parasites) • Various genetic analysis techniques • Use of applied marks such as tags • Use of various stock identification data analysis approaches
56.2.3. Age and Growth, Including Longevity and Mortality Estimation of age, growth, and natural mortality is important for understanding the dynamics of fish populations. The goal of most studies on age, growth, and mortality of fish has been to determine the yield from the stock at different levels of fishing effort and age and/or size at recruitment to the
fishery using the various kinds of fisheries models described in later sections. Variation in growth rates is also important for understanding the dynamics of the stock. Information on age, growth, and size structure is used to determine increases in population biomass through growth of individuals as well as decreases in biomass through the effects of natural and fishing mortality, to monitor changes in the population age structure through time caused by natural variation and fishing, and to estimate population abundance and other parameters used in modeling studies to estimate sustainable yields. Natural mortality is a key parameter in the determination of fish population dynamics. It is also notoriously difficult to determine because it is usually estimated indirectly and is typically confounded with fishing mortality and recruitment. Data collected on length, weight, and age are typically used to estimate age, growth, and natural mortality. These data can be obtained from samples collected from research surveys, and commercial and recreational fisheries. Various techniques are typically used to determine the age and growth of fish and include analysis of length frequency distributions, tagging experiments, and counting rings on hard parts (e.g., otoliths, scales, opercular bones, vertebrae, and fin rays).
56.2.4. Reproductive Output and Recruitment, Including Fecundity, Egg Production, and Age/Size at Maturity Recruitment is usually defined as the age and/ or size at which fish enter the commercial fishery. Fisheries biologists and scientists have long recognized the need to improve estimates of recruitment, what determines recruitment, the importance of age structure of the parental spawning stock on recruitment, and the relationship between spawning stock size or biomass and recruitment. The relationship between spawning stock biomass and recruitment is an important driver of the results of fishery assessment models, and the subsequent formulation of policy advice, but is unknown for most fish populations, and must be assumed. It is often assumed that recruitment will not decrease until stock size is reduced to very low levels and that above these low levels recruitment will vary around some average figure that is independent of stock size. This has led to the relationship between stock and recruitment often being ignored or to
Research Priorities for Marine Fisheries Conservation and Management the assumption that recruitment is independent of spawning stock size. However, there are now a number of examples in the fisheries literature of recruitment to a stock decreasing as stock size is reduced by heavy fishing. Fecundity, or the number of eggs produced per female, is typically linked to body size, with large and older females producing a larger number of eggs. Increasingly, information is emerging for a number of fish species that the eggs produced by larger and older females are “fitter”; that is, they have a greater chance of survival than do eggs produced by younger and smaller individuals. Average age and size at maturity are linked to exploitation rate, with higher exploitation rates typically reducing the mean size and age of fish in the population as well as reducing the average age at maturity. The combination of (1) a reduction of the mean size and age of fish in a population, (2) lower fecundity at smaller size, and (3) a reduction in the mean size and age at maturity at high exploitation rates often results in a reduction in the number of larger, older, and more fecund fish and total egg production in the population. The relationship between spawning stock size and subsequent recruitment is determined by the combined influences of environmental and other physical and biological factors and the effects of exploitation on the various life history stages that lead up to a year class attaining the age at recruitment to the fishery—egg, larval, and juvenile stages. For example, eggs and larvae may be advected away from areas conducive to their growth and development, there may be a mismatch between the appearance of larvae and the availability of their favored prey, or there may be an unexpectedly large abundance of predators appearing in nursery areas. In the future, climate change is likely to have a strong impact on many stocks, and further biological research is required to understand the relationship between environment and recruitment and to determine if we have entered a different recruitment regime.
56.2.5. Movements and Migrations Information on movements is important for determining stock structure (see above). Incorporation of data on movements and migrations formally into stock assessment models is not frequently done as data on the detailed movement dynamics is most
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commonly lacking. Instead, incorporating a range of assumed movement rates into assessment models has been used successfully for some stocks to evaluate the sensitivity of model results to a range of plausible rates. The main method for estimating movement or migration rates is by using capture-recapture or tag recovery studies. Tags are often taken by commercial and recreational fishers, and recovery and return rates are seldom equal in all reporting locations, because of differences in the distribution of fishing effort between areas and differences in the willingness to return tags. Therefore, simple analysis techniques are not appropriate and much more sophisticated techniques have been developed.
56.3. ESTIMATION OF ABUNDANCE Abundance is estimated either as absolute abundance or as relative abundance and is usually reported as the biomass or weight of fish. Absolute abundance is a census of the actual number of fish in a given area at any one time. Relative abundance is an estimate of the number of fish in a given area at a given time relative to an estimate of the number of fish in that area at another time. Relative abundance indices are sometimes scaled up to estimates of the absolute number, either directly by making various assumptions (see below) or indirectly through the output from assessment models. Estimates of abundance have typically been made using one of two approaches: (1) fisheryindependent methods or (2) fishery-dependent methods. Fishery-independent methods employ various research survey techniques that usually incorporate random sampling approaches to yield unbiased estimates of abundance. Some fisheryindependent methods are used to estimate absolute abundance, but are more typically used to estimate relative abundance. Fishery-dependent methods usually consist of analysis of commercial catch per unit effort (CPUE) data. Fishery-dependent methods are used to estimate relative abundance. Whichever approach is used to estimate and monitor the abundance of a fish stock, the most important principle is that a consistent method is applied over time. This allows the researcher to build up a time series of abundance estimates that will provide data to assist in separating out the impacts of fishing from environmental impacts on population size.
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56.3.1. Fishery-Independent Estimates 56.3.1.1. Surveys Using Fishing Gear, Including Trawls, Traps, and Lines Abundance estimates for fish stocks are often obtained from research surveys using commercial fishing gear such as trawls, traps, and lines and are usually relative indices. The relative indices are sometimes directly scaled up to absolute estimates by making various assumptions about catchability, availability, and vulnerability. Catchability is usually defined as “the fraction of a fish stock which is caught by a defined unit of fishing effort” (Ricker 1975) and is made up of its components, vulnerability and availability. Vulnerability is the proportion of fish that encounter the sampling gear that are retained by the gear. Availability has two aspects: (1) the proportion of fish in the total population that are found in the survey area, and (2) the proportion of fish in the water column that are available to the sampling gear (Hurst 1988).
56.3.1.2. Acoustic Surveys Acoustic surveys utilize either scientific or commercial fishing echosounders to count the number of fish in the water column in a given area at a given time. Survey designs used include transect (fixed or random), grid, or star-shaped surveys. The results from acoustic surveys can be used as either relative or absolute estimates. By making assumptions about species composition, fish size, target strength, and so forth, the acoustic returns can be scaled up to estimates of absolute numbers and biomass.
56.3.1.3. Aerial Surveys Aerial surveys using spotter aircraft are sometimes made for pelagic species that spend some part of their time at or just below the surface. Aerial surveys are usually made using either random or fixed transects or grids. They are subject to the usual issues of changes in catchability (the ability of the spotter to detect the fish if they are there), availability (are the fish in the area at the time of the survey?), and vulnerability (are the fish able to be detected if they are in the area at the time of the survey due to wind, sea state, cloud cover, etc.?). These estimates are usually taken as relative estimates.
56.3.1.4. Egg Production Surveys Estimates of egg production have been used to estimate the absolute size of a population primarily for pelagic species (e.g., anchovies and sardines). Eggs are sampled from the plankton in a given area and at a time known to contain a large fraction of the spawning population of fish. By using estimates or assumptions about various parameters such as developmental times, egg mortality rates, horizontal and vertical distribution of eggs in the survey area, and adult fecundity, maturity, and sex ratios, the absolute abundance estimates of the spawning population can be obtained.
56.3.1.5. Mark-Recapture Techniques Absolute abundance estimates have also been obtained from mark-recapture studies that have employed primarily two different tagging methods—conventional external tags such as dart tags or disk tags that rely primarily on detection and reporting by fishermen, or internal tags such as coded wire or passive integrated transponder (PIT) tags that rely on detection by trained sampling staff. Both methods rely on unbiased estimates of the distribution of tagged fish in the population relative to the true distribution of the population, the distribution of fishing effort in relation to the distribution of tagged and untagged fish in the population, and tag detection and reporting rates.
56.3.1.6. Genetics A newly developing technique is the use of closekin genetics to estimate the absolute spawning stock size of a population of fish. The technique is based on the genetic identification of parent-offspring matches in samples from both spawning and juvenile grounds and is based on mark-recapture principles. Genetic signatures are used as a “mark” in the juveniles that can then be “recaptured” in a sample of the spawning adults.
56.3.2. Fishery-Dependent Estimates Often the only information available to monitor changes in the abundance of fish stocks are changes in commercial CPUE. However, CPUE changes not only in response to changes in the abundance of
Research Priorities for Marine Fisheries Conservation and Management fish but also in response to changes in other factors such as time of the year, area fished, target species fished, vessel and gear characteristics, and changes in management regulations. Numerous models have been developed to analyze these various factors and “standardize” the CPUE trends in an effort to monitor relative trends in the “true” underlying population size.
56.4. DATA SYNTHESIS AND ASSESSMENT METHODS The point of collecting and analyzing data on abundance and the biology of fish species is to inform the management of the species through the results of data synthesis and assessment. Hilborn and Walters (1992) define stock assessment thus: “Stock assessment involves the use of various statistical and mathematical calculations to make quantitative predictions about the reactions of fish populations to alternative management choices.” Data synthesis and assessment methods can be grouped into three broad categories: single-species models, multispecies models, and management strategy evaluation.
56.4.1. Single-Species Models Models in this category, in generally increasing complexity, include the following: • • • •
Per-recruit models Biomass dynamic models Age and/or length-structured models Spatially explicit models
Generally, the simpler models outperform the correct (biologically more complex and realistic) models with a larger number of parameters in situations where limited information is available on changes in biological and fishery parameters over time, which is the case in many if not most fisheries.
56.4.2. Multispecies Models A relatively small number of multispecies models have been developed that incorporate species interactions and trophic linkages. These models tend to be very complex and data intensive. As of yet they have been of limited utility for the assessment of stock status and the provision of pragmatic fisheries
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management advice. It has proven very difficult to obtain reliable estimates of many of the model input parameters and to determine the significance of many of the species interactions. These models are currently most useful as exploration tools to design future research programs to plug gaps in our knowledge of marine ecosystems.
56.4.3. Management Strategy Evaluation Management strategy evaluation (MSE) approaches (a.k.a. management procedures, harvest control rules, decision rules) have been under development since at least the mid-1990s and implemented and used in a handful of jurisdictions and are gaining increased acceptance as a way to move forward in providing advice for fisheries management. MSE uses simulation modeling to assess the consequences of a range of management strategies or options and to report the results so that the trade-offs between key management objectives are explicit using a preagreed analytical approach. The following are typically regarded as the key components of the MSE framework: • The operating model that represents hypotheses about the “true” underlying dynamics of the system against which performance of the management procedure will be evaluated. • The observation error model that is used to generate data on the fishery and stock(s) and that provides an interface between the “true” world of the operating model and the “perceived” world of the management procedure. • The management procedure that is used to assess the status of the stock and evaluate management options based on the observed status of the stock. The management procedure typically includes simulations of the observation or monitoring process, the data analysis and assessment, the use of the results of the data analysis and assessment for management purposes, and the implementation of management decisions. • Performance statistics that are used to evaluate performance of management procedures against the management objectives. MSE approaches have been most commonly used in the management of single-species target fisheries, but can be applied to achieve fishery ecosystem objectives as well. Perhaps the most important
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aspects of the MSE approaches are (1) their ability to explicitly incorporate uncertainty into the models, and (2) their ability to project forward and forecast future states of nature.
56.5. ECOSYSTEM STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION Information on ecosystem structure and function is important as we move toward an ecosystem approach to management (EAM) of fisheries resources. Gavaris et al. (2005) argue that a tacit consensus is emerging that recognizes three principal objectives for ecosystem-based management: maintaining productivity, preserving biodiversity, and protecting habitat. They further elaborated these objectives as follows: • Ensure that the activity does not cause unacceptable reduction in productivity of each component (primary, community, and population) so that it can play its historical role in the functioning of the ecosystem • Ensure that the activity does not cause unacceptable reduction in biodiversity by maintaining enough components (biotopes/seascapes, species, and populations) to preserve the structure and natural resilience of the ecosystem • Ensure that the activity does not cause unacceptable modification to habitat that is difficult or impossible to reverse in order to safeguard the “container” (both physical and chemical properties) of the ecosystem Habitat and biodiversity are the key components of ecosystem structure and underpin the productivity of the ecosystem, which is the key component of ecosystem function. An important piece of information in the move toward EAM is the definition and location of the various types of seabed and pelagic habitats that are important to the different life history stages of marine organisms. Seabed habitats provide areas on the bottom where marine organisms live. Habitats that are structurally complex usually support more highly diverse and productive biological communities than simpler habitats. Specific types of habitat provide important spawning and nursery grounds for various marine species and can strongly influence the carrying capacity of the ecosystem.
Seabed habitats can also provide important feeding grounds for species that live higher in the water column and provide an important link in the energy flow between the bottom and the water column (sometimes referred to as benthic-pelagic coupling). Protection of important bottom habitats has become an important component in the move to EAM. However, the importance of pelagic habitats such as oceanographic fronts, eddies, and gyres for most species is largely unknown. Why is knowledge of biodiversity important in the move toward EAM? It can be argued that the protection of biodiversity is important in its own right to guard against the extinction of species and the disruption of communities. Additionally, the authors of a recent review (Worm et al. 2006) have argued that restoration of biodiversity increased productivity and decreased variability in the marine systems that they studied. Understanding the productivity of an ecosystem and its components that include food web interactions, trophic ecology, energy flows, predator–prey relationships, and so forth, is essential for gaining insights into how an ecosystem functions. Energy flow through an ecosystem is mediated by the interactions between predators and their prey. It is important to gain an understanding of the total system production capacity so that total removals can be constrained to remain within that capacity in an EAM. Information is also required on the demands of the various trophic levels so that removals of prey species are limited to remain within the demands of their predators. Knowledge of diets and how diets change through time is critical to supplying these two information needs. Improved knowledge is also required on the impacts of climate change and climate variability on marine ecosystems through the interaction between climate and oceanographic conditions and its impacts on the growth, reproduction, and survival of marine species. Information on these factors is essential if we are to begin to separate out the impacts of climate and other environmental changes from the effects of fishing in an EAM context. An important tool in the collection of the information to support the move to EAM will be the further development and spread of integrated ocean observing systems. These integrated systems will link together observations, data communications and management, and data analysis and modeling. Measurements will be collected
Research Priorities for Marine Fisheries Conservation and Management on various biological, chemical, geological, and physical variables on an ongoing basis. These systems will use fixed and mobile sensors and sampling devices deployed on a combination of fixed buoys, platforms, underwater sensors, research and commercial vessels, drifters, floats, autonomous underwater vehicles, aircraft, and satellites. As we move down the path toward implementing EAM, we will need to further our development and use of multidisciplinary, integrated models both to explore the relationships between various biological, physical, and socioeconomic factors and to forecast the effects of various changes to environmental conditions and management practices. A number of scientific tools and analytical approaches have been developed and used over the most recent 5–10 years to support the move to EAM, particularly in Australia (Smith et al. 2007). These have included the extension of the MSE approach previously described to evaluate broader EAM strategies using the Atlantis modeling framework, development of new approaches to ecological risk assessment to evaluate the ecological impacts of fishing, and the development of a harvest strategy framework and policy to form the basis for a broader EAM strategy. The predictive ability of ecosystem models has been limited thus far, mostly by the lack of the necessary data, and their greatest value to date has been to help shift the focus to ecosystem thinking.
56.6. FISHING TECHNOLOGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT In recent decades, fishing technologists worldwide have been heavily focused on modifying fishing gear to reduce the deleterious impacts of fishing activity, including the capture of nontarget animals (bycatch), modification of seabed habitats, and ghost fishing. Dominating this focus has been the issue of bycatch and the need for improvements in fishing gear selectivity and operating practice. In some instances these improvements have been highly successful and bycatch has been almost totally eliminated, including the escape of dolphins in tuna purse seine operations in the tropical eastern Pacific ocean, the exclusion of turtles using turtle excluder devices (TEDs) in tropical shrimp-trawl fisheries, and the reduction of cod bycatch using the so-called eliminator trawl in New England’s groundfish fishery. In contrast to these
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successes, a host of examples exist where success has been elusive, including the exclusion of small fish using bycatch reduction devices (BRDs) in tropical shrimp-trawl fisheries and the prevention of shark capture in pelagic longline fisheries. A review of the successful improvements in fishing gear selectivity and operating practice indicate that most exploit size or morphological differences between target and nontarget animals or are based on an understanding of behavioral differences between these animals. The rigid grid of a TED, for example, has a bar spacing that is designed to prevent the retention of turtles by shrimp trawls while allowing the capture of shrimp and other small animals (see Eayrs 2007 for details). The grid is also inclined to guide turtles toward a large escape opening in the net through which they can swim and escape. The escape of dolphins from a tuna purse seine is successful because dolphins swim near the sea surface while the tuna swim deeper in the water column. Using this knowledge fishermen use the backdown method to skillfully drag the float line of the purse seine underwater so dolphins can swim over the float line and escape (see Ben-Yami 1994 for details). The deeper swimming tuna meanwhile remain safely enclosed within the purse seine. Despite these successes, fishing technologists are yet to engineer similar success in fisheries where the target and nontarget animals are similar in size or morphology, or where there is insufficient knowledge of their behavior, including response to fishing gear stimuli. In these fisheries, it is likely that exploiting differences in behavior is the key to the successful development and application of selective fishing gears, but until this knowledge is acquired, bycatch in these fisheries will remain an issue.
56.6.1. Fish Behavior Generalized models of fish behavior have been in existence for decades, including Wardle’s (1989) model describing fish response to a demersal fish trawl, and that by Løkkeborg et al. (1989) describing fish response to a demersal longline. Many of these models have originated in Europe and are focused on local species such as cod, haddock, saithe, mackerel, tusk, and ling. With few exceptions, the behavior of fish in other regions of the world is substantially less well described and understood. Many fisheries in tropical regions are located in developing countries where socioeconomic
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circumstances and limited human capacity hampers efforts to study fish behavior and develop selective fishing gears. Moreover, in some of these fisheries the catch may comprise several hundred species, many of which are similar in size and morphology, and separating target fish from nontarget fish using existing BRDs has achieved only limited success. Several steps need to be taken to improve knowledge of fish behavior and fishing gear selectivity. Fishermen are an excellent but widely underutilized source of fish behavior information. On a daily basis they make decisions regarding where, when, and how to fish; these decisions are based on knowledge and experience collected over many years or even generations. Knowledge of fish movement and migration, both spatially and temporally, and the influence of periodicity on this behavior are of paramount importance to successful fishermen. Collecting this information and using it as a foundation to better understand how and why fish behave as they do is an essential beginning to improving the selectivity of fishing gear. The use of underwater camera equipment is a relatively common method used to observe fish behavior and response to fishing gear, particularly in temperate-water fisheries where water clarity is relatively good. In tropical fisheries, however, camera use is limited because high water turbidity limits their effective visual range, and useful observations are often not possible. At night or in deep water fisheries, artificial lighting may be required for effective camera observations, although the effect of lighting on fish behavior and their response to fishing gear is largely unknown, and the value of these observations remains a source of concern and criticism. Acoustic techniques to observe fish behavior in these conditions are currently being developed and may soon overcome the limitations of camera systems. The Didson sonar system has been tested in some trawl fisheries and found to have an effective range of 10 m or more. This system is a major step forward, however, while it is possible to identify animals that are substantially different morphologically, the ability to identify similarly shaped species remains elusive. Greater efforts are also required to understand the influence of extrinsic and intrinsic factors on fish behavior and their response to fishing gear. Extrinsic factors that dominate fish behavior are ambient light intensity, water temperature, and fish density (Winger et al. in press). Assessing how these influence fish behavior in the at-sea environment is difficult, and most studies have been restricted to
controlled experimentation with fish in tanks where translating the results to the marine environment is not always successful. While fish size is perhaps the best understood intrinsic factor influencing fish behavior, others include learning, experience, motivation, and physiological condition. How fish learn to escape from fishing gear and use this experience to avoid future interactions are not well understood. Several studies cite the altered behavior and response of heavily fished schools in a trawl fishery, or of fish that had previously encountered a baited fish hook. How long fish retain this behavior and how it is affected by motivation and physiological condition are poorly understood, primarily because the interplay between these and extrinsic factors is difficult to tease apart.
56.6.2. Seabed Impact Significant concerns exist over the impact of bottom tending fishing gear, including demersal trawls and dredges, to sensitive benthic habitats and communities. Despite documentation of these concerns for more than 200 years, solutions to this problem have been few and far between. Hampering the development of effective solutions includes difficulties accurately quantifying the impact of fishing gear and the recovery rate of benthic habitats following this impact. In some instances a response to fishing gear impact has been the introduction of marine parks with zones limiting certain types of fishing activity or outright bans on fishing activity. Options to reduce the impact of demersal trawling include the use of lightweight ground gear materials, modified ground gear, and specialized trawl rigging designed to lift the footrope of the trawl clear from the seabed. Modern, hydrodynamically efficient otter boards can also reduce seabed impact because they traverse the seabed at a low angle of attack and leave a narrower footprint on the seabed. While ground gear modification is a positive step forward, few options have been regulated or adopted by fishermen in part due to concerns over their impact on the catch, and much work remains to develop modifications that can be applied across a wider range of fisheries.
56.6.3. Fuel Reliance With dwindling oil reserves and ever increasing fuel costs eroding profitability in the world’s fisheries, there is a need to focus on new technologies to improve
Research Priorities for Marine Fisheries Conservation and Management fuel efficiency and reduce fuel consumption. Newly constructed vessels are now commonly designed with the latest fuel-saving technologies and adaptations, including sleek and streamlined hull designs, bulbous bows, Kort nozzles, and variable pitch propellers. In some instances, multihulled craft have replaced monohulls for use as longliners or trawlers because they can offer less hull resistance and fuel consumption and a stable platform for fishing operations. Efforts to increase fuel efficiency include the development of engine systems that utilize fuel more efficiently without compromising power output. Alternative fuels, such as biodiesel may be another way to reduce reliance on fossil fuels, and already there are newly constructed trawlers with engine systems designed for dedicated use of biodiesel. Of all commercial fishing methods, trawling has arguably undergone the greatest changes to reduce fuel costs, with changes not only to vessel design and propulsion systems, but also to the fishing gear. The use of multislot otter boards with cambered, high-aspect ratio foils to improve hydrodynamic performance and reduce drag are increasingly ubiquitous in most large-scale trawl fisheries. High-performance polyethylene twines, such as Spectra and Dyneema, are increasingly replacing traditional netting because their strength and durability allows the use of smaller diameter twine, with less fuel being required to tow the net through the water. These twines also allow the use of larger mesh nets, without compromising net strength, providing a further opportunity for fuel savings (and improved gear selectivity). Currently there is renewed interest in harnessing the wind to help offset the need for mechanical propulsion and reduce fuel consumption, and this interest is unlikely to wane in the immediate future. Globally, small-scale, artisanal craft dominate this scene with many traditionally designed and fitted out for sail propulsion. Efforts are now increasingly being made to adapt this technology to larger vessels, including industrial fishing fleets. There is even interest in applying large parasails or kites to trawlers to reduce fuel costs when steaming and towing the trawl net.
56.6.4. Greenhouse Gas Emissions With increasing concern over the relationship between greenhouse gas emissions and global warming, there is a need to account for the contribution
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to these emissions by commercial fishing activity. To date this has received relatively scant attention, although in the future this could change as countries respond to calls to limit or cap the emission of these gases.
56.7. IMPACTS OF FISHING ON ECOSYSTEM STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION Fishing activity can introduce a range of direct and indirect impacts on ecosystem structure and function. Direct effects include scraping and plowing of fishing gear on the seabed, the disturbance and suspension of seabed sediments, modification of seabed habitats, and the mortality of target and nontarget species. Delayed direct effects include delayed mortality after escapement or discarding from a fishing gear, and long-term gear-induced damage to the seabed. Indirect effects include changes in the structure of the food web and the relative abundance of a range of key species in the ecosystem. There is little to no information available to suggest that fishing alters or limits nutrients or their availability and therefore affects primary production. The impacts of fishing on ecosystem function therefore occur mostly via impacts on trophic energy flow. Effects include the removal of prey species from one trophic level to levels below that required to support the demands of their predators and the next higher trophic level. Generally speaking, despite widespread efforts the successful containment or mitigation of the impacts of fishing has been hampered by large information gaps, including identification and agreement on suitable remedial action, baselines, and targets. This is underpinned by current difficulties observing or quantifying the various impacts of fishing activity on the ecosystem. Overcoming these limitations will therefore require a sustained effort coupled with the development of new tools and techniques that enable improved quantification and assessment of the impacts of fishing.
56.8. ECOSYSTEM APPROACHES TO FISHERIES Globally, there are increasing moves toward an EAM that recognizes the physical, biological, economic,
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and social interactions within an ecosystem and attempts to achieve a range of societal goals and outcomes. Much has been written describing the steps to achieve EAM (for reviews, see Leslie and McLeod 2007; Marasco et al. 2007; Murawski
2007) and the importance and role of humans in the ecosystem. In contrast, relatively little has been written describing how fishermen can meet and support the demands of EAM while maintaining access to fishery resources and profitability.
EMS Outcomes & Benefits
Environment
Economy
Sea Safety
Industry
Sustainable utilization of fish stocks
Improved fishing practices & operating efficiency
Improved training and safer operating practices
Enhanced industry viability
Reduced interaction with protected and/or endangered species
Efficiency gains in fishery management
Reduced accident risk & downtime
Greater public awareness & support
Reduced mortality of non-target species
Improved product quality & value
Greater industry cohesion & selfrespect
Reduced discarding practices
Reduced fishing costs & waste
Increased collaboration with other stakeholders
Reduced impact to sensitive habitats
Improved marketing opportunities
Enhanced strength against adversity
Reduced carbon emissions & reliance upon fossil fuels
Greater financial control & safety
Crew stability, reliability & performance
Improved reporting practices & mgt. involvement
FIGURE
56.1 Benefits and outcomes from an environmental management system
Research Priorities for Marine Fisheries Conservation and Management
56.8.1. Environmental Management Systems and Third-Party Certification Schemes One way for fishermen to demonstrably contribute toward an EAM of fishery resources is to use an environmental management system (EMS). An EMS is a process of continual improvement that results in increased benefits to the environment and the fishing industry (figure 56.1). Simply put, an EMS commences when a group of fishermen coordinate their activity to achieve a common goal or outcome, including changes in fishing practice and behavior to satisfy (or exceed) government regulation, environmental guidelines, or societal demands. More commonly utilized in manufacturing or processing industries, these systems are also being used by fishermen to improve profitability in an increasingly regulated environment, while facing dwindling resource access, increasing fishing costs, and threats to traditional markets. In addition, fishermen may use an EMS to achieve and record gains in operating efficiency, seafood safety and quality, and occupational health and safety. Third-party certification schemes such as that provided by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) are a way for fishermen to demonstrate that fishing activity meets guidelines for responsible fishing and sustainable seafood production. These schemes are also being utilized by fishermen seeking market advantage, and they can easily be a component of an EMS. An EMS is therefore a tool that not only empowers fishermen to enhance their working and operating environment, and tackle issues affecting their livelihoods, but also demonstrates the application of best practices and positive environmental stewardship.
References Ben-Yami, M. (1994). Purse Seining Manual. Oxford: Fishing News Books. Cadrin, S.X. (2005). Morphometric landmarks. Pp. 153–172 in S.X. Cadrin, K.D. Friedland, and J.R. Waldman (eds), Stock Identification Methods: Applications in Fisheries Science. Boston: Elsevier Academic Press. Cadrin, S.X., K.D. Friedland, and J.R. Waldman (2005). Stock Identification Methods: Applications in Fisheries Science. Boston: Elsevier. Eayrs, S. (2007). A Guide to Bycatch Reduction in Tropical Shrimp-Trawl Fisheries. Rev. ed.
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Rome: Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations. Gavaris, S., J.M. Porter, R.L. Stephenson, G. Robert, and D.S. Pezzack (2005). Review of Management Plan Conservation Strategies for Canadian Fisheries on Georges Bank: A Test of a Practical Ecosystem-Based Framework. ICES CM 2005/BB:05. Copenhagen: International Council for the Exploration of the Sea. Hilborn, R., and C.J. Walters (1992). Quantitative Fisheries Stock Assessment: Choice, Dynamics and Uncertainty. New York: Chapman and Hall. Hurst, R.J. (1988). The Estimation of Catchability in the Interpretation of Bottom Trawl Survey Data. Fisheries Research Centre Internal Report 109. Wellington, N.Z.: Fisheries Research Centre. Leslie, H.M., and K.L. McLeod (2007). Confronting the challenges of implementing marine ecosystem-based management. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 5(10): 540–548. Løkkeborg, S., Å. Bjordal, and A. Fernö (1989). Responses of cod (Gadus morhua) and haddock (Melanogrammus aeglefinus) to baited hooks in the natural environment. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences 46: 1478–1483. Marasco, R.J, D. Goodman, C.B. Grimes, P.W. Lawson, A.E. Punt, and T.J. Quinn II (2007). Ecosystem-based fisheries management: Some practical suggestions. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences 64: 928–939. Murawski, S.A. (2007). Ten myths concerning ecosystem approaches to marine resource management. Marine Policy 31(6): 681–690. Ricker, W.E. (1975). Computation and interpretation of biological statistics of fish populations. Bulletin 191. Ottawa: Fisheries Research Board of Canada. Smith, A.D.M., E.J. Fulton, A.J. Hobday, D.C. Smith, and P. Shoulder (2007). Scientific tools to support the practical implementation of ecosystem-based fisheries management. ICES Journal of Marine Science 64: 633–639. Wardle, C. (1989). Understanding fish behaviour can lead to more selective fishing gears. Pp. 12–18 in World Symposium on Fishing Gear and Fishing Vessel Design (November 1988). St John’s, Newfoundland: Marine Institute. Winger, P., S. Eayrs, and C. Glass (in press). Fish behaviour near bottom trawls. In P. He (ed), Behavior of Marine Fishes: Capture Processes and Conservation Challenges. Ames, Iowa: Blackwell Sciences. Worm, B., E.B. Barbier, N. Beaumont, J.E. Duffy, C. Folke, B.S. Halpern, J.B.C. Jackson, H.K. Lotze, F. Micheli, S.R. Palumbi, E. Sala, K.A. Selkoe, J.J. Stachowicz, and R. Watson (2006). Impacts of biodiversity loss on ocean ecosystem services. Science. 314: 787–790.
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Contributors
Sveinn Agnarsson is senior researcher at the Institute of Economic Studies at the University of Iceland in Reykjavik. His research is mostly concerned with resource utilization and regional development. He has published scholarly articles on Icelandic fisheries management and served as secretary for the parliament-appointed Resource Committee in Iceland. Robin Allen is executive secretary of the Interim Secretariat for the International Consultations on the establishment of the proposed South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organization. During 1999–2007, Robin Allen served as Director of Investigations of the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission, the regional fishery management organization responsible for the conservation of stocks of tuna and tunalike species in the eastern Pacific Ocean. He was responsible for the research of the scientific staff and for the stock assessment and management advice provided to the commission. Managing the eastern Pacific fisheries in the face of increasing fishing capacity is the major fisheries management issue faced by the commission. James L. Anderson is chair and professor in the Department of Environmental and Natural Resources Economics at the University of Rhode Island and is involved with numerous research projects related to fisheries and aquaculture
management, seafood markets, and international trade. His recent work has focused on analysis of international salmon, tuna, and shrimp markets and seafood futures and evaluating how aquaculture development and rightsbased fisheries management are changing the global seafood sector. He is author of The International Seafood Trade (2003) and coauthor of The Great Salmon Run: Competition between Wild and Farmed Salmon (2007) with Gunnar Knapp and Cathy Roheim. He is the editor of Marine Resource Economics, the leading international journal in the field. He has served on three National Research Council committees related to aquaculture. He earned his Ph.D. in agricultural and resource economics from the University of California at Davis. John Annala, Ph.D., is the chief scientific officer and the Doherty Chair for Scientific Leadership at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute. He has more than 30 years of work experience in marine fisheries research and management in New Zealand and the United States and served as chief scientist for the New Zealand Ministry of Fisheries from 1995 to 2004. He lead or participated in New Zealand delegations to a number of international scientific meetings and meetings to negotiate international fisheries conventions convened by FAO, CITES, and APEC. Since 1997 he has chaired the scientific meetings
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of the Commission for the Conservation of Southern Bluefin Tuna. He also has worked in Australia, South America, and Africa. Frank Asche is a professor in the Department of Industrial Economics at the University of Stavanger in Norway. He received his B.A. and M.A. from the University of Bergen and his Ph.D. from the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration. He has been a visiting scholar at the University of British Columbia and the University of Rhode Island. He is a member of the science advisory board for the Worldfish Center and associate editor for Marine Resource Economics. His research interests focus on aquaculture and seafood markets, but he has also been doing work in fisheries management and energy economics. Recent research topics include international trade with seafood and the organization of the seafood supply chain as well as the impact of productivity development on aquaculture and seafood markets. He has published numerous articles in international journals, edited Primary Industries Facing Global Markets (2007), and coauthored The Economics of Aquaculture (2010) with Trond Bjørndal. He has also written a number of popular scientific articles, undertaken a number of research projects in Norway as well as for such international organizations as FAO and OECD, and served on the expert panel on a new law of the management of marine resources in Norway. Rachel Baird is a senior lecturer at the University of Southern Queensland, Australia. She specializes in international fisheries law and has a particular interest in the conduct of IUU fisheries. Her published Ph.D. thesis addresses IUU fishing in the Southern Ocean and brings together in one text the law, policy, politics, and realities of commercial fishing. Jay Barlow is a program leader at NOAA’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla, California, and is an adjunct professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. His research on human impacts on marine mammals includes studies along the U.S. West Coast and in Hawaii, Mexico, Colombia, and China. He has authored or coauthored more than 70 professional papers and 50 technical reports. He is currently a
member of IUCN’s Cetacean Specialist Group and Mexico’s vaquita recovery team. In 1996 he received the Department of Commerce Gold Medal for developing a new management paradigm for marine mammal bycatch in the United States. Trond Bjørndal is director of CEMARE at the University of Portsmouth; visiting professor at Imperial College London; distinguished research fellow at the Center for Fisheries Economics, SNF, Bergen, and chairman of the board of the WorldFish Center, with headquarters in Penang. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of British Columbia. He has been professor or visiting professor at the Norwegian School of Economics, Simon Fraser University, University of British Columbia, Humboldt University of Berlin, and University College London. He has served as research director of the Center for Fisheries Economics SNF, Bergen, and is former president of the International Institute of Fisheries Economics and Trade. He has published extensively on fisheries and aquaculture economics, including several textbooks. Over the years, he has undertaken consulting for international organizations such as the FAO and OECD and was part of the independent expert evaluation team that undertook a major evaluation of the FAO, with prime responsibility for fisheries and aquaculture. Keith Brander is a senior researcher at the Danish Institute of Aquatic Resources and coordinator of the ICES/GLOBEC program. His principal fields of research are fish population dynamics and the impacts of climate change on marine ecosystems. He has worked as a fisheries science adviser within government departments and also for the European Commission and for six years was president of the Sir Alister Hardy Foundation for Ocean Science. He has published more than 50 peer-reviewed papers in international journals and numerous book chapters, reports, and articles for newspapers and magazines. Ian Cartwright is an independent consultant advising on fisheries policy and management issues for governments and industry organizations throughout the Pacific region. He is currently on the board of the Australian Fisheries Management Authority and has been the chair for
Contributors numerous independent reviews and fisheries management committees throughout Australia. Prior to this, he worked in fisheries in the Pacific for more than twenty years, both at the national and regional level, including serving as a deputy director of the Forum Fisheries Agency from 1996 to 2000. Anthony Charles is a professor of management science and environmental studies at Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, Canada, a Pew Fellow in Marine Conservation, and author of Sustainable Fishery Systems (2001). He works regularly with fishery and aboriginal organizations on Canada’s Atlantic coast and with such international bodies as the OECD and FAO. His research focuses on socioeconomics, management, and policy for fisheries, marine conservation, and coastal management—including aspects of ecosystem-based management, community-based management, marine protected areas, and indicator frameworks for coastal socioecological systems. Tuong Nhu Che, Ph.D., is senior economist at the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and a visiting fellow at the Crawford School of Economics and Government at the Australian National University. She has published more than fifteen major professional papers and forty technical reports in economics, agricultural economics, and fisheries economics, and is the coauthor of three book chapters on economic theory and measurement and a book chapter on the use of statistics in agricultural economics. Long Chu is a Ph.D. candidate at the Crawford School of Economics and Government, Australian National University, and a research economist at the State Bank of Vietnam. He specializes in economic dynamics and is currently working on various models of marine reserves in a dynamic programming context. Colin W. Clark, F.R.S., F.R.S.C., is professor emeritus of mathematics at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. He is the author of The Worldwide Crisis in Fisheries: Economic Models and Human Behavior (2007), and Mathematical Bioeconomics: The Optimal Management of Renewable Resources (1976, 1990). He served for eight years on the
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Fisheries and Oceans Advisory Council, advising the federal minister of fisheries about research priorities. Robin Connor is currently a senior policy analyst with the New Zealand Ministry of Fisheries. Recent major project involvements have included the allocation of treaty settlement fisheries assets, policy for arbitration of conflict between aquaculture development and wild fisheries, the quota balancing regime, and reform of shared fisheries management. His interdisciplinary Ph.D. from the Australian National University in natural resource policy focused on the use of individual transferable quotas in the management of fisheries. Anthony Cox is currently head of the Environment and Economy Division in the Environment Directorate of the OECD. Formerly a senior economist in the OECD Fisheries Policies Division and at the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics, he has worked and published on a wide range of fisheries policy issues, including the costs of fisheries management; fisheries trade; fisheries subsidies; illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing; governance; and the political economy of fisheries policy reform. In recent years, he has given many talks to national and international forums on fisheries subsidies in the context of the WTO negotiations on fisheries subsidies. Rita Curtis is director of the Economics and Social Analysis Program, Office of Science and Technology, U.S. NMFS in Silver Springs, Maryland. She received a Ph.D. in agriculture and resource economics from the University of Maryland. Diane P. Dupont is a professor in the Department of Economics at Brock University and holds a Chancellor’s Chair for Research Excellence. Her research embraces both natural resource economics (particularly issues relating to governance and fisheries management on the west coast of Canada) and environmental economics (valuation of water quality). She was a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee to the Worldfish Center and previously served on the board of directors of the North American Association of Fisheries Economists. She is an associate editor for the Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics.
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Peter H. Dutton has been a zoologist with the NOAA Fisheries Southwest Fisheries Science Center since 1995. His research interests include the evolution, phylogeography, ecology, and conservation biology of marine turtles and uses genetics and satellite telemetry as tools to study their life history, migration, and habitat use. He received his bachelor’s degree in biology from Stirling University in Scotland, his master’s degree in ecology from San Diego State University, and his Ph.D. in zoology from Texas A&M University in 1995. He has published more than 60 scientific articles and book chapters related to the biology and conservation of marine organisms. Steve Eayrs is a research scientist at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute. Previously he was a commercial fisherman working in Australia, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East, before working at the Faculty of Fisheries and Marine Environment at the Australian Maritime College for sixteen years. His research includes the development of more efficient and selective fishing gears, monitoring fishing gear performance, and understanding fish behavior. He has worked for the FAO in the Middle East and Africa, and the South East Asian Fisheries Development Center, and he wrote a book on bycatch reduction devices in tropical shrimp fisheries that has now been translated into five languages. Peter Etnoyer is a doctoral fellow at Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies at Texas A&M University in Corpus Christi. He has published a dozen professional papers in ecological and oceanographic literature and serves as coeditor for the Deep-Sea News blog at Discovery Channel. He received the 2008 NOAA David Johnson Award for outstanding and innovative use of satellite data for his work tracking blue whales and sea turtles in relation to oceanographic phenomena. He is currently engaged in the taxonomy and distribution of deep-sea gorgonacea using remotely operated vehicles for his Ph.D. dissertation research. Rolf Färe is professor of economics at Oregon State University. He is the author or coauthor of twelve books and more than two hundred journal articles. He received his education at Lund University and University of California, Berkeley, where he collaborated with R.W. Shephard, known for
Shephard’s Lemma. He has done extensive work on production theory, duality, index number formulations, and data envelopment analysis. Izzat H. Feidi, fisheries consultant, worked with the FAO from 1969 to 2000. He received his B.S. and M.A. in economics from the University of Oklahoma. His last FAO post was chief of the Fish Utilization and Marketing Service (1997–2000) in Rome. He has served as project manager for the Red Sea Project (1983–1985) and for INFOSAMAK Center (1986–1990), as senior regional fisheries officer for FAO/Near East Region (1991– 1996), and as secretary to the Gulfs Committee (1992–1999). He currently serves as a consultant to the Arab Academy for Science and Technology in Cairo. He has authored more than eighty published and unpublished studies, research papers, reports, and articles on various topics dealing with fisheries development issues of concern to the Arab world and the world at large. Jan Helge Fosså, Ph.D., is a marine ecologist working as a senior scientist at the Institute of Marine Research in Bergen, Norway. He has built up and led the deep-water coral research at the institute since its inception in 1997. His research experience ranges from studies of carrying capacity of fjords to the ecology of kelp beds, plankton, and hyperbenthos. He has been a member of the steering board for the National Research Program on Biodiversity of the Research Council of Norway, and he is presently the main adviser on coral ecosystems to the Norwegian authorities. He is principal investigator in the ongoing FP6–FP7 HERMES, PROTECT, and CoralFISH projects as well as member of the steering committee of HERMES. Hans Frost is associate professor in fisheries economics at the Institute of Food and Resource Economics, University of Copenhagen. He has been working with fisheries economics since 1976 and has extensive experience in fisheries management, bioeconomic modeling, and fleet management. He has continuously been engaged in research projects within the European Union’s research programs as well as the work of the Scientific, Technical, and Economic Committee for Fisheries. He has served as consultant to the E.U. Directorate General for Fish and has been working with the development of economic impact assessment models constructed
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to assess economic repercussions of the fish stock management of the European Union.
on fisheries, and initiated the Fisheries Global Information System.
Elizabeth A. Fulton, Ph.D., is a senior research scientist with CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research. She has published fourteen papers in the scientific peer-reviewed literature as well as a number of influential reports. She has developed the Atlantis model, which has been applied to more than fifteen marine ecosystems around the world, including in Australia, the United States, Canada, and Mexico. She has active international professional engagements with PICES, EUROCEANS initiatives, the FAO, the U.S. NMFS, NCEAS, and the Norwegian Institute of Marine Research. She was the 2007 recipient of the Australian Life Scientist of the Year Award for her work in marine ecosystem modeling.
Eric Gilman, Ph.D., is the Head of Participation for the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, an international organization constructing a biodiversity informatics research infrastructure to enable open access to global biodiversity data. His research during his 17-year career has focused on fisheries science and policy. He was previously employed by the IUCN Global Marine Programme, Blue Ocean Institute, National Audubon Society, U.S. FWS, Office of the Governor of the Northern Mariana Islands, and Pohnpei Port Authority of the Federated States of Micronesia, and has been a visiting scientist at the FAO. Eric has published numerous journal articles, book chapters, technical reports, popular articles, and educational materials on fisheries bycatch and management, biodiversity informatics, coastal ecosystem responses to climate change, wetlands ecology and management, site-planning, and community-based management. He was awarded a Ph.D. from the University of Tasmania, master’s degree from Oregon State University, and bachelor’s degree from Wesleyan University.
Pramod Ganapathiraju is doing Ph.D. work on IUU fishing at the Fisheries Centre of the University of British Columbia. He obtained his M.Sc. in Marine Biology and Oceanography from the Centre of Advanced Study in Marine Biology at the Annamalai University in India, where he studied recruitment patterns and critical inshore-offshore linkages of grouper juveniles in the Vellar-Coleroon estuarine system. He completed his master’s degree in marine management at Dalhousie University (2004–2005) with research on “Trawl Fishery along the India’s Northeast Coast: An Analysis of Catches, Seasonal Changes, and Ecological Impacts.” Serge M. Garcia, Sc.D. (Doctorat in Sciences), has been successively chief of the Marine Fishery Resources Service of the FAO from 1984 to 1990 and director of its Fisheries Management Division from 1990 until his retirement in 2007. He specialized in population dynamics and management of tropical fisheries and published 154 papers, reports, and communications, including 60 journal articles, 21 invited chapters in books, 14 authored or coauthored books, and 34 FAO reports. He contributed actively to the elaboration of the FAO Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries and spearheaded the FAO efforts in the development of sustainability indicators in fisheries and the formulation of the precautionary and ecosystem approaches to fisheries. He conceived and directed the development of the U.N. Atlas of the Oceans and the FAO glossary
Heidi Gjertsen is an economist. She is currently researching cases of economic incentives in marine management areas for Conservation International, and worked for four years at the U.S. NMFS Southwest Fisheries Science Center, where she conducted research on the economics of sea turtle conservation in the Pacific. She has taught conservation economics courses at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the University of San Diego, California. She received a Ph.D. from Cornell University in 2003 in the Department of Applied Economics and Management. Her dissertation included empirical work on the design and performance of marine-protected areas in the Philippines. R. Quentin Grafton is professor of economics at the Crawford School of Economics and Government at the Australian National University. He currently serves as editor of the Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics and is a former associate editor of Marine Resource Economics. He is the author of 70 scholarly articles, 20 chapters in books, 3 edited books, and 7 coauthored books, including Economics for Fisheries Management (2006).
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Theodore Groves is a professor in the Department of Economics at the University of California, San Diego, a fellow of the Econometric Society, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He contributed widely to the economic theory of organization and planning and public economics before turning his attention to environmental and resource economics. Recent research has focused on the conservation of Pacific sea turtles, the conservation and management of transnational fisheries for highly migratory species, and voluntary agreements among fishers to manage the commons problem and protected species and other ecosystem issues. His research on cooperative agreements focuses on applying the economic theory of teams, to which he is a main contributor. His research on oceanic public goods includes mechanism design issues, of which he was one of the key contributors to its economic theory. Rögnvaldur Hannesson is professor of fisheries economics at the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration in Bergen. He was born in Iceland and grew up in a fishing village and has had hands-on experience of the fishing industry. He has published four books on fisheries and two on petroleum economics and mineral wealth, more than 60 papers in refereed journals, and several book chapters. He has been visiting professor and scholar at universities in the United States, Canada, Australia, Germany, and Iceland. His most recent book is The Privatization of the Oceans (2006). Ray Hilborn is Richard C. and Lois M. Worthington Professor of Fisheries Management in the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, University of Washington, specializing in natural resource management and conservation. He currently serves as an adviser to several international fisheries commissions and agencies and teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in conservation, fisheries stock assessment, and risk analysis. He authored Quantitative Fisheries Stock Assessment (1992) with Carl Walters and The Ecological Detective: Confronting Models with Data (1997) with Marc Mangel. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and the 2006 recipient of the World Volvo Environment Prize for developing mathematical models for assessing and managing fish stocks, for formulating improved management
procedures and approaches, and for pioneering adaptive management strategies. Daniel S. Holland, Ph.D., is a research scientist with the Gulf of Maine Research Institute and an adjunct professor at the University of Maine. He currently serves as an associate editor of Marine Resource Economics. He has worked as an economist in government, industry, and academia in the United States and New Zealand. He is the author of more than thirty scholarly articles in economics and fishery journals. Alhaji M. Jallow is a fisheries economist and currently serves as a fisheries adviser to African countries in the FAO Regional Office for Africa. He has more than 25 years of experience in artisanal fisheries management and development in the Africa region. He is also the current secretary of a 24-member fishery committee for the eastern central Atlantic. Chuck Janisse is the founder and director of the Federation of Independent Seafood Harvesters. He has participated in highly migratory fishery management in local, regional, national, and international forums since 1990. The development and implementation of alternative fishing technology and methods aimed at reduction of incidental marine mammal and sea turtle interaction have been his main focus during this time. Svein Jentoft, Ph.D., is a sociologist and professor at Center for Marine Resource Management, Norwegian College of Fishery Science, University of Tromsø. He specializes in social and institutional aspects of fisheries and coastal governance and development and how this affects indigenous communities. He has thirty years of research and teaching experience within this and other social science areas in Norway and internationally. James Joseph has been employed by the California Department of Fish and Game, the U.S. Bureau of Commercial Fisheries, and the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission (IATTC), and was a visiting scientist with the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries in New Zealand. He served as director of the IATTC from 1969 to 1999, and as an affiliate professor at the University of Washington and at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. He has served as either chairman or member on numerous advisory
Contributors committees, task forces, and consultative groups in the United States and throughout the world dealing with marine science and conservation. He retired as director of IATTC in 1999 but continues to serve as an adviser and consultant to a number of private and public institutions. His education includes a B.S. and M.S. from Humboldt State University, a Ph.D. from the University of Washington, and Docteur Honoris Causa, Université de Bretagne, Brest, France. Kieran Kelleher is the fisheries team leader in the World Bank’s Agriculture and Rural Development Department and manager of the World Bank’s Global Partnership on Fisheries, which supported the Sunken Billions study. The partnership includes developing countries, leading bilateral donors to the fisheries sector, and technical institutions such as FAO. He has spent most of his career in developing countries and worked as a fisherman, fish farmer, fisheries scientist, and economic adviser on fisheries to governments. He has authored global studies on discards (fish caught and dumped at sea), on fisheries enforcement, and on aquaculture. James Kirkley is professor of marine science at the College of William and Mary, School of Marine Science. He was formerly chief of economic investigations for the Northeast Fisheries Science Center, NOAA Fisheries. His research and publications have mostly been in the area of applied production economics in fisheries. He has also published in the areas of welfare economics, stated preference analysis, input/output analysis, and fisheries management. Tom Kompas is director of the International and Development Economics Program and professor of economics at the Crawford School of Economics and Government, Australian National University. He has published more than 60 major professional papers and technical reports and is currently editor of the Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics. In 2004 he received the Crawford Award for Research Excellence from ABARE for this work on fisheries bioeconomic models and their applications to Commonwealth fisheries. Lone Grønbæk Kronbak is associate professor at the Department of Environmental and
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Business Economics at the University of Southern Denmark. She earned her Ph.D. in economics from the University of Southern Denmark in 2004 and completed the Postgraduate Certificate Program in Agricultural and Resource Economics from the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of California at Davis in 2001. She has extensive experience in applying game theory to bioeconomic models and has written several professional articles and book chapters on the topic. Daniel E. Lane, Ph.D., is professor at the Telfer School of Administration at the University of Ottawa and focuses his research interests on decision-making processes, simulation modeling, and control of dynamic systems, especially in the area of commercial fishing and aquaculture. He is recipient of numerous research grants and since 2005 has served as chair of the Oceans Management Research Network, a joint initiative program of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada. A full professor at the University of Ottawa since 1995, he has published widely in peer-reviewed papers and international conference proceedings on fisheries management methods and evaluations. He is an active supervisor and reviewer of graduate students’ research. Gary D. Libecap is a Donald Bren Distinguished Professor of Corporate Environmental Management at the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management and professor in the Department of Economics, University of California, Santa Barbara. He also is a research associate with the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania and previously taught economics and law at the University of Arizona. He has authored or coauthored five books; edits the series Advances in the Study of Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Economic Growth published by Elsevier Scientific; has written more than 50 journal articles on property rights, natural resources, environmental, and other issues; and serves on various National Science Foundation panels. His research is on property rights institutions—how they emerge, when they emerge, their structure, and how they affect resource use.
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Marko Lindroos, Ph.D., is university lecturer at the Department of Economics and Management, University of Helsinki. He has published more than 40 articles in fisheries economics, bioeconomic modeling, and game theory. He is head of the Fisheries Research Group at the University of Helsinki. Carl Gustaf Lundin is head of the IUCN Global Marine Program. His primary responsibility is to develop the program in four areas: marine protected areas; building partnerships for conservation of ecosystems and endangered marine species; sustainable fisheries management; and climate change effects on marine resources. He is responsible for all aspects of managing the program as well as fundraising and development of public information materials. Before joining IUCN, he worked with the World Bank for more than 12 years, where his primary focus was coastal and marine management issues in several regions of the world, including the Argentina Coastal Contamination and Marine Pollution project, China Coastal Development Project, Eritrea Port Project, Indonesia Coral Reef Rehabilitation and Management Project, Mexico’s Natural Protected Areas Project 1 + 2, Mesoamerican Biological Corridor Project, Aquaculture Development Project, Seychelles Biodiversity and Marine Pollution Project, and the Uruguay Maritime Management Project. He has worked on a wide range of reports and publications in this field as well. He received a bachelor’s degree in biology from Uppsala University in his native Sweden, and a licentiate in philosophy, natural resources management, from Stockholm University. Mitsutaku Makino, M.A., M.Phil. Ph.D., is a researcher of the Fisheries Research Agency of Japan, specializing in the fisheries and ecosystem management. He has published more than forty research articles, chapters in books, and technical reports and has been involved in many international scholarly programs at such agencies as FAO, PICES, APFIC, and World Fisheries Congress. He teaches in several universities in Japan and currently serves as an editor of the Japanese Journal of Fisheries Economics. Gustavo San Martín is a marine biologist who graduated from the University of Concepcion, Chile.
He obtained his Ph.D. at the Mediterranean University, Marseilles, France, where he developed research on sea urchins and threatened species. Back in Chile he entered the Undersecretariat for Fisheries to direct the implementation of Management Areas (TURF system) and the general management of small-scale fisheries (shellfish and benthic macroalgae). At present his main interest is to develop integration policies among TURF systems and MPA networks. He also teaches coastal management at Andrés Bello University in Santiago. Thorolfur Matthiasson is professor of economics at the University of Iceland in Reykjavik. He has published scholarly articles on fishery management and fisher remuneration and has also been an active participant in the debate on how to implement the individual transferable quota system in the Icelandic context. Bonnie J. McCay is Board of Governors Distinguished Service Professor at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, where she chairs the Department of Human Ecology. She received her Ph.D. in anthropology from Columbia University in 1976. Her research and teaching have focused on challenges and policies for managing marine resources, particularly fisheries. She has done field research in Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, Canada, in New Jersey, and in Baja California, Mexico, with funding from the National Science Foundation, the New Jersey Sea Grant College Program, and the New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station. Books she has authored or coauthored include The Question of the Commons (1987), Oyster Wars and the Public Trust (1998), and Enclosing the Commons (2002). She serves on the Scientific and Statistical Committee of the Mid-Atlantic Fisheries Management Council, heads the Resource Policy Committee of the American Fisheries Society, and was appointed to the Fisheries Expert Group of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. Patrick McConney is senior lecturer in marine resource management planning at the Center for Resource Management and Environmental Studies, University of the West Indies Cave Hill Campus in Barbados. He is a former fisheries manager, and his current research and
Contributors publications focus on adaptive co-management, socioeconomics, and governance related to small-scale fisheries and marine protected areas. Alistair McIlgorm is director of the National Marine Science Center, a joint venture of the University of New England and Southern Cross University, in Coffs Harbour, New South Wales, Australia. His career in the Australian fisheries economics and management started with the Australian Maritime College, leading Fisheries Research and Development Corporation stakeholder capacity development projects for eight years in the 1990s. As managing director of Dominion Consulting Pty. Ltd., he completed more than fifty projects with marine resource agencies at state and Commonwealth levels and with such international agencies as the APEC. He has completed a dozen journal and peer-reviewed articles and many project reports. Richard McLoughlin’s career has focused on fisheries and natural resource management. Following thirteen years with the CSIRO as a fisheries scientist and then three years as principal fisheries and aquaculture manager with the Tasmanian Department of Primary Industry and Fisheries, he joined the Victorian Department of Natural Resources and Environment as Director of Fisheries in 1997 and then Executive Director Fisheries Victoria in the Victorian Department of Primary Industries. From 2004 to 2007 he served as managing director of the Australian Fisheries Management Authority, implementing a major fishing industry reform program focused on improved sustainability and profitability for the Commonwealth fleet. Following a short period working on rural water policy with the Commonwealth Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, in late 2007 he was appointed assistant secretary in the Commonwealth Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts, working on reform of Australia’s rural irrigation infrastructure in the context of climate change. He holds a B.S. (Hons) and M.S. from the University of New South Wales and is a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. Sarah Mesnick is an ecologist at NOAA’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla, California, and is a cofounder of the Center for Marine
733
Biodiversity and Conservation at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Her research on human impacts on marine mammals includes investigations of the indirect impacts of the tuna purse seine fishery on dolphins in the eastern tropical Pacific. She has worked in the Gulf of California for 20 years, studying the evolution, biodiversity, and conservation of fishes and marine mammals. She has authored or coauthored twenty scholarly articles, book chapters, and technical reports. She is interested in the role of incentives and informational networks in vaquita conservation. Kaija Metuzals, Ph.D., is adjunct professor at the University of Ottawa in the Telfer School of Management and member of C-FOAM, the Canadian Fisheries, Oceans, and Aquaculture management group. She has worked for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography, in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, on stock assessments of herring, hake, flatfish, and tuna. She is interested in fisheries governance, discards, bycatch, and impacts of IUU fishing. Elie Moussalli is the principal of QED Associates, a fishery consulting firm located in Ottawa. Since graduating from the University of British Columbia in 1984, he has undertaken successive technical assistance projects in the Middle East (specifically in the Gulf and the Red Sea), Southeast Asia, and West Africa for such donors as the USAID, the Asian Development Bank, and the World Bank. He has also worked for United Nations organizations such as FAO and UNDP. Currently, he is at FAO’s Regional Near East Office in Cairo responsible for ensuring the implementation of several fisheries projects. Erling Moxnes is professor of system dynamics at the University of Bergen, Norway, and has worked as a senior research economist at the Center for Fishery Economics at the Institute for Economics and Business Administration in Bergen. He has published about 20 scholarly articles and book chapters, about 150 research reports and conference papers, and about 20 popular articles and newspaper chronicles. In 2000 he received the Jay Wright Forrester Award for the best contribution to the field of system dynamics over the preceding five years. This award is given by the System Dynamics Society, for which Moxnes is president in 2009.
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Contributors
Carlos Muñoz-Piña received a Ph.D. in agricultural and resource economics at the University of California, Berkeley. He has worked as an economist for the government of Mexico, the World Bank, and the London Environmental Economics Center, with internships at the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation in Montreal and the Resources Renewal Institute in San Francisco. He has published papers on the economics of rural migration, environmental taxes, common property resources, poverty and the environment, economic valuation of ecosystems, water economics, and policy and the payment of environmental services. He is currently the director of Environmental Economics and Public Policy Research at the Instituto Nacional de Ecología, the research agency of the Mexican Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment. Gordon R. Munro is professor emeritus in the Department of Economics and the Fisheries Center at the University of British Columbia, and visiting professor at the University of Portsmouth, England. He has been involved in research and has published widely on the economics of fisheries management issues for more than thirty years, giving particular emphasis to those arising under the new international Law of the Seas. In 2007, the volume Advances in Fisheries Economics was published in his honor. He has done extensive consultation for international organizations, such as the FAO, APEC, OECD, and UNDP. He recently coauthored the report Recommended Best Practices for Regional Fisheries Management Organizations, published by Chatham House, London. D. Nandakumar, Ph.D., is affiliated with the Community-Based Research Lab in the Department of Geography at the University of Victoria, Canada, where he obtained his Ph.D. degree in geography in 2007. His research focus is on sustainable livelihoods and poverty, and he is actively involved in community-based research both in India and Canada. Prior to his Ph.D, he was a senior lecturer in geography at University College in Kerala, India. He is a member of the board of Protsahan, a nongovernmental organization based in India, involved in action research for and with the coastal poor. He has undertaken a national level project to map the
extent of coastal regulation zone violations for the National Fishworkers Forum in India. He has several publications to his credit. Nalini Nayak has been working in coastal communities in India for the last three decades. Through the International Collective in Support of Fishworkers, of which she is a founding member, she has worked with coastal communities in several parts of the world in an effort to strengthen local organizations in their struggle for livelihood and sustainable fisheries. She coordinated an international program on women in fisheries in six countries that was launched by the ICSF. She is based in Trivandrum, in Kerala, South India, where PROTSAHAN, the research organization she works with, is based. She has several publications to her credit. Harry W. Nelson is assistant professor in the Faculty of Forestry at the University of British Columbia. His area of research is in resource economics and policy analysis, specializing in forestry. He has studied how current institutional arrangements not only influence how we manage our forests but also affect the economic conditions under which firms operate in Canada. He has also examined policy change in fisheries, including not only how it has been implemented but also the effects of such changes. In addition to his academic research, he has provided advice to First Nations, provincial governments, the federal government, and Canadian forest product companies on a range of issues involving different aspects of Canadian forest policy and other topics. Wallace J. Nichols is a research associate at California Academy of Sciences and founder of Ocean Revolution. He currently serves as a regional vice chair for the IUCN Marine Turtle Specialists Group and is a past president of the International Sea Turtle Society. He has authored more than fifty publications on sea turtle ecology, migration, and ocean conservation, advises a dozen ocean conservation organizations, and mentors a group of creative and innovative graduate students. He wrote the bilingual children’s book Chelonia: Return of the Sea Turtle (2000) and is an active ocean communicator. J. M. (Lobo) Orensanz, a native of Argentina, is an affiliate professor with the School of Aquatic and
Contributors Fishery Sciences, the University of Washington, and a research scientist of Argentina’s National Council for Scientific and Technical Research, based at the National Patagonic Center. He is also a Pew Fellow in Marine Conservation. The main focus of his current research is the management of small-scale benthic fisheries, including geoduck, Chilean loco snail and sea urchin, Argentine scallops, and Bering Sea snow crab. Currently he is working toward the development of a general framework for the assessment and management of benthic fisheries. Ana M. Parma is an expert in fisheries modeling, assessment, and management. She earned a Ph.D. in fisheries in 1989 from the University of Washington and has worked for ten years as an assessment scientist at the International Pacific Halibut Commission. In 2000 she returned to her native Argentina to become a research scientist with the Argentina’s National Council for Scientific and Technical Research, at the Centro Nacional Patagonico. The main focus of her current work is on small-scale, sedentary reef, and shellfish fisheries, and she is involved in the evaluation of spatially explicit management approaches in several fisheries in South America. Hannah Parris is an applied policy economist and geographer who specializes in bridging the gap between economic theory and the needs of policy makers in natural resource management. She is currently completing a Ph.D. at the Australian National University on evaluating regional institutions for fisheries management of fisheries in the Pacific and the potential for allocation the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission. Prior to this she worked as a policy analyst on environmental and natural resource management issues for the Australian government. L. Scott Parsons, Ph.D., is a former scientist and senior executive in the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans and is currently an adjunct professor at the Telfer School of Management, University of Ottawa. He has represented Canada at numerous international organizations, including NASCO, ICCAT, IOC, and ICES, and has served as president of ICES. He is author of Management of Marine Fisheries in Canada (1993) and coeditor of Perspectives on Canadian Marine Fisheries Management (1993). His
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research interests include oceans and fisheries governance systems, ecosystem-based management, and the performance of regional fisheries management organizations. Sean Pascoe, Ph.D., joined CSIRO as an economist in the Marine and Atmospheric Division in 2006. Prior to this, he was professor of natural resource economics and director of the Center for the Economics and Management of Aquatic Resources (CEMARE) at the University of Portsmouth. He has published around sixty refereed articles in both economics and fisheries journals. The primary focus of his research has been applied economic analysis to support fisheries management and policy. This has included studies of productivity analysis, demand modeling, and bioeconomic modeling. His studies have involved both qualitative and quantitative analysis and the development and application of economic theory to fisheries. Bruce Phillips is an adjunct professor in the Department of Environmental Biology and Aquatic Science Research Unit, Curtin University of Technology, Perth. He has published more than 175 research papers mainly on spiny lobster biology, ecology, and management. He was the joint editor of three books on rock (spiny) lobster biology, fisheries, management, and aquaculture and contributed many of the chapters in these volumes. He has recently edited and contributed to Eco-labelling in Fisheries: What Is It All About (2003). Lobsters: Biology, Management, Aquaculture and Fisheries (2006). He is currently conducting research into the recruitment of the phyllosoma larvae and puerulus stage of Panulirus cygnus in relation to the Leeuwin Current off Western Australia, and examining prospects for aquaculture of Panulirus cygnus and other spiny lobster species in Australia. Tony Pitcher is founding director of the Fisheries Center at the University of British Columbia, after holding academic posts in Germany, Ireland, and England. He has published more than 430 items, including 15 books, and trained more than 30 Ph.D. students. He edits Fish and Fisheries, the leading journal in the field. André E. Punt, Ph.D., is a professor in the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences at the University
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Contributors
of Washington, Seattle. Prior to this he was a senior research scientist with CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research in Hobart, Australia. He has been involved in research on marine population dynamics, stock assessment methods, and harvesting theory since 1986 and has published more than 120 papers in the peer-reviewed literature, along with more than 300 technical reports. He is currently associate editor for the Journal of Applied Ecology and Population Ecology and has been a member of scientific committee of the International Whaling Commission since 1990. Nick Rayns has worked in fisheries research and management for the past twenty years. He gained his Ph.D, in aquaculture from Otago University in New Zealand. Following a brief period of employment with New Zealand Fisheries, he moved to Australia and has managed demersal and pelagic fisheries from cool temperate to tropical waters, including commercial, recreational, aquaculture, and traditional fisheries. He has been Director of Fisheries in the Northern Territory and New South Wales. He also spent three years as a nonexecutive director of the Fisheries Research and Development Corporation and is a fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. He is currently the Executive Manager for Fisheries at the Australian Fisheries Management Authority. Jake Rice is currently National Senior Adviser, Ecosystem Sciences for Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO), Ottawa. From 1996 to 2007 he was Director, Peer Review and Science Advice for DFO. Previous positions with DFO included Division Chief, Marine Fish at Pacific Biological Station (1990–1996), and Division Chief, Groundfish (1998–1990), and Section Head, Marine Ecology (1992–1998), at the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Center. He also held faculty positions at Memorial University of Newfoundland (biology) and Arizona State University (environmental studies) and was guest professor of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences from July 1996 through March 1997. Lorraine (Lori) Ridgeway is Director General of International Policy and Integration in the Ministry of Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO). She is responsible, in collaboration with others in DFO and other departments, for policy-related
international trade and business development, international fisheries policy, international oceans and ecosystems policy, and international integration, under the umbrella of the Canadian International Governance Strategy for fisheries and oceans. She was chair of the OECD Fisheries Committee (2000–2005) and chair of many ad hoc OECD processes and workshops, cochair (2006–2008) of the U.N. Informal Consultative Process on Oceans and the Law of the Sea, and chair of the APEC Fisheries Working Group. She has been a speaker at many international forums, especially with respect to the challenges in the fisheries and oceans governance and policy agenda internationally. Prior to joining DFO in 1999, she held diverse positions in policy and economics in the government of Canada. Lorenzo Rojas-Bracho, Ph.D., heads the Coordination for Marine Mammal Research and Conservation, National Institute of Ecology, in Mexico. He established and chairs the International Committee for the Recovery of Vaquita. He has authored or coauthored more than 40 scholarly articles, book chapters, and technical reports on marine mammals, and has been invited to participate in many international committees, workshops, and working groups related to the management and conservation of marine mammals, among them IUCN’s Cetacean Specialist Group, the Red List Authority, and the Committee of Scientific Advisers from the Society for Marine Mammalogy. Benedict P. Satia is an affiliate professor (institutions and governance) at the School of Marine Affairs, University of Washington, Seattle. Prior to November 2004 he was chief of the International Institutions and Liaison Service in the Fisheries and Aquaculture Department of the FAO and secretary to the FAO Committee on Fisheries and the Advisory Committee on Fisheries Research. For several years he was the director of a regional fisheries project covering twenty coastal countries in West Africa from Mauritania to Angola. He has authored more than forty professional and technical papers in fisheries and aquaculture. Carl-Christian Schmidt is the head of the Fisheries Policies Division in the Directorate for Trade and Agriculture of the OECD. Following
Contributors the years 1979–1982 when he worked for the Danish Ministry of Fisheries, he was appointed administrator at the OECD in 1982 and principal administrator in 1988. In 1997 and 1998, he was on leave of absence while setting up the Marine Stewardship Council in London. In 2001, he was promoted to the Head of the Fisheries Policy Division. Kathleen Segerson, Ph.D., is Philip E. Austin Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Connecticut. Her research focuses on the incentive effects of alternative environmental policy instruments. She was recently honored as a fellow of the American Agricultural Economics Association and of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (AERE). In addition, she is currently president of AERE. She has held several editorial positions, including coeditor of the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, associate editor for the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, and coeditor of Ashgate Studies in Environmental and Natural Resource Economics. She is currently a member of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Science Advisory Board and the Board of Agriculture and Natural Resources of the National Academy of Sciences. Her publications include more than ninety scholarly journal articles and book chapters and three edited volumes. Jeffrey A. Seminoff is an ecologist and leader of the Marine Turtle Ecology and Assessment Program for the NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla, California. He is adjunct faculty at IndianaPurdue University and University of Florida, is an active member of the IUCN Marine Turtle Specialist Group, and is deeply involved with U.S. FWS/NMFS efforts to update marine turtle status assessments for the U.S. Endangered Species Act. His current research uses innovative approaches such as stable isotope analyses, biotelemetry, animal-borne imagery, and aerial surveys to elucidate the life history of seabirds, marine turtles, and sharks. In addition to research, he is involved with numerous marine conservation initiatives in the eastern Pacific. Bruce Shallard is director of Bruce Shallard and Associates, a New Zealand–based consultancy.
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Bruce spent fifteen years with the New Zealand Ministry of Fisheries, where he held senior management positions throughout a period of major change in New Zealand. He was one of the key people involved in introducing the concept of a quota management system to the New Zealand fishing industry in 1986, based on individual transferable quotas, and played a major role in quota management. Since 1995 he has offered international consulting services in the marine sector worldwide, with particular emphasis on the Middle East. Hein Rune Skjoldal is a marine ecologist working as a senior scientist at the Institute of Marine Research in Bergen, Norway. He has served as chairman of ICES Advisory Committee on Ecosystems (2001–2003) and as chair of an advisory group for establishment of marine protected areas in Norway (2001–2005). He currently serves as the Regional Vice-Chair for Western Europe on the IUCN Commission on Ecosystem Management. He is editor of the book The Norwegian Sea Ecosystem (2004) and is currently coeditor of the book The Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries (forthcoming). Anthony D.M. Smith, Ph.D., is a senior principal research scientist with CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research and leader of the ecosystembased fisheries management stream within the Wealth from Oceans Flagship. He has published more than fifty peer-reviewed scientific publications, as well as numerous scientific reports, and has undertaken fisheries consultations in the United States, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, Namibia, Ecuador, and Chile, as well as for the FAO and for the Marine Stewardship Council. He is a former associate editor of Natural Resource Modeling and was the recipient of an Australian Centenary of Federation Medal for contributions to national and international fishery science. Massimo Spagnolo is professor at the Università di Salerno and director of IREPA, Institute for Fisheries and Aquaculture Economic Research in Salerno, Italy. He has been involved in fisheries management and economics for the last 25 years and teaches Fisheries Economics and Management at the Faculty of Economics of the University of Salerno, Italy. He has been serving
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Contributors
as director of the Institute for Fisheries and Aquaculture Research Economics since its foundation in 1982. In that position he is responsible for the E.U. rule on data collection and for the production of Italian fishery statistics. He has been responsible for the negotiation of many E.U. rules concerning the Common Fishery Policy and has represented the Italian government in various fisheries committees, including within the activities of the European Union, OCDE, and FAO. Since 1994 he has been responsible for technical assistance to the General Directorate for Fisheries and Aquaculture of the Italian Ministry of Agriculture. In this position he has also contributed to the introduction of territorial property rights in the national clam fisheries and participated in a number of programs in other countries. He has published two books on fisheries economics and management and more than forty articles and book chapters. Dale Squires is a senior scientist with the NOAA’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center, and adjunct professor of economics at the University of California, San Diego, and on the Scientific Committee of the International Sustainable Seafood Foundation. He conducts research on the economics of sea turtle conservation, technical change, and international tuna fisheries and teaches classes at the University of California, San Diego and Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Derek Staples is a New Zealander but has worked for much of his career in Australia and the Southeast Asian region. He has a Ph.D. in fisheries ecology from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, and a postdoctoral diploma in aquaculture from the Tokyo University of Fisheries. His interests include all aspects of the sustainable development of fisheries and aquaculture, particularly small-scale operators in developing countries. He is presently employed as the Senior Fishery Office with the FAO, stationed in Bangkok. Prior to taking up this post, he was a senior science adviser to ministers and policy decision makers in the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry in Australia. Stein Ivar Steinshamn is research director at the Center for Fisheries Economics at the Institute for Research in Economics and Business Administration in Bergen, Norway. He has published
about thirty peer-reviewed articles in international journals and almost eighty scientific reports and several book chapters on fisheries economics, resource management, and environmental economics. He is currently senior editor of Natural Resource Modeling. He has also been the manager of more than twenty research projects with international participation and has organized several international conferences in fisheries economics. Robert L. Stephenson, Ph.D., has been a research scientist with the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans since 1984. He has worked extensively on the ecology, assessment, and management of Atlantic herring. His current research interests include fisheries resource evaluation, fisheries management science, strategies for conservation of biodiversity, application of integrated management and the ecosystem approach, and aspects of the history of marine science and policy. He has been an active contributor to fisheries science internationally, including roles as chair of ICES Resource Management and Pelagic Fish committees and membership of the ICES Advisory Committee on Fisheries Management. U. Rashid Sumaila is associate professor and director of the Fisheries Economics Research Unit at the University of British Columbia Fisheries Center in Vancouver. His research is in the area of natural resources and environmental economics, with particular emphasis on fisheries. He has won numerous awards, including the Craigdarroch Award for Societal Contribution, the Zayed International Price for the Environment, and the Peter Wall Center Senior Early Career Scholar Award. He has given invited talks at the United Nations, the White House, the U.S. Congress, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the World Trade Organization. His work has generated significant international interest and has been cited by, among others, the Economist, the Boston Globe, the International Herald Tribune, the Financial Times, and Voice of America. Daryl R. Sykes was a full-time professional fisherman for twenty years, until 1992. As an independent fisheries consultant since then, he has completed contracts for industry groups and government agencies in New Zealand and
Contributors overseas. Since 1996 he has been the executive officer and research program manager for the New Zealand Rock Lobster Industry Council, which provides a range of policy, advocacy, technical, promotional, and administrative services to the industry, and is a stock assessment research provider to industry and to the New Zealand Ministry of Fisheries. Maree Tait is Outreach Director for the Crawford School at the Australian National University and editor of the Pacific Economic Bulletin and manages the associated large Pacific Outreach program in Australia and throughout the Pacific region. She is also a board member and manager of the journal Asian-Pacific Economic Literature, manager of the Australian node of the World Bank’s Global Development Learning Network (GDLN), and a member of the Governing Committee of GDLN Asia Pacific and the Global Steering Committee of GDLN. She was formerly managing editor of Asia Pacific Press. Diana Tingley, Ph.D., has 13 years of experience working as a fisheries economist and policy specialist as a researcher and consultant and under secondment to government. Following 8 years as a Senior Research Fellow at CEMARE (University of Portsmouth), she has recently returned to consultancy and now works for GoBe Consultants Ltd. In 2003–2004, she was seconded to the U.K. prime minister’s “Strategy Unit” to participate in a major review of the U.K. fishing industry that helped shape contemporary U.K. fisheries management and policy directions. She has both presented and published her research internationally. Her current areas of interest include commercial fisheries management and policy analysis, risk, marine recreational fisheries, and consensus building and stakeholder facilitation within the marine environment. Ralph E. Townsend, Ph.D., has been chief economist for the New Zealand Ministry of Fisheries since 2007. He was associate professor and chair of economics in the Doermer School of Business and Management Sciences, Indiana UniversityPurdue University Fort Wayne in 2006–2007 and was on the faculty of economics at the University of Maine for 25 years prior to 2006. He has been a researcher for more than 25 years on the economics of fisheries management, with
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more than 50 publications in the area. His most recent research interests focus on institutional reforms to promote self-governance of fisheries, and he has just completed the editing of a book of case studies of fisheries self-governance for the FAO. He has been involved in numerous fisheries advisory roles in the United States and abroad and was the recipient of two Fulbright fellowships to study fisheries management, in Iceland and the Philippines. He served as president of the North American Association of Fisheries Economists in 2005–2007. Sigbjørn Tveterås is professor at the Centrum Business School, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Peru. His research areas have concentrated on aquaculture and seafood markets. He has written a several articles and book chapters and conducted several research projects related to these topics. He has been a visiting scholar at Cornell University and FAO and has contributed work on seafood price indices to the FAO, as well as writing and coauthoring several popular scientific pieces. He earned his Ph.D. from the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration. Pham Van Ha, Ph.D., is deputy director of the Institute of Financial Science at the Academy of Finance, Ministry of Finance in Hanoi. He is the author of more than twenty professional papers and technical reports in finance, macroeconomic modeling, and fisheries economics. Niels Vestergaard is professor in applied microeconomics at the Department of Environmental and Business Economics, University of Southern Denmark, and head of the Center for Fisheries and Aquaculture Management and Economics, which over the last six years arranged more than twenty Ph.D. courses and workshops. He has published more than 25 peer-reviewed papers, more than 30 technical reports, and numerous working papers. He has led several research projects in fisheries and has advised governments on fisheries policies. John Walden is an economist in the Social Sciences Branch of NOAA Fisheries, Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. The Social Sciences Branch provides economic and social impact analysis and guidance to regional fishery management bodies.
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He conducts research on measuring productivity, technical efficiency, and capacity of the commercial fishing fleet and applying math programming models to solve fishery management problems. Trevor Ward, Ph.D., is on the Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences in the Institute for Regional Development at the University of Western Australia in Perth. He has published more than 140 scientific journal papers, book chapters, and research reports in marine ecology and environmental management, and in 1996 was jointly awarded the CSIRO Chairman’s Medal for excellence in marine science. He was formerly leader of CSIRO’s national marine environmental science program and currently holds adjunct teaching and research appointments at three Australian universities. He specializes in performance assessment systems for marine ecosystems and biodiversity and is highly experienced in assessing fisheries for compliance with the ecolabeling requirements of the Marine Stewardship Council for sustainable fisheries. His current research and consulting focus on decision support systems for biodiversity conservation and natural resource management. Meryl J. Williams, Ph.D., is currently a member of the Australian Aid Advisory Council, the Scientific Steering Committee of the Census of Marine Life, the High Seas Marine Protected Areas Working Group, and the Scientific Committee of DIVERSITAS. Among many noteworthy positions, she has previously served as executive officer of the Future Harvest Alliance Office, director general of WorldFish Center, and director of the Australian Institute of Marine Science. Rolf Willmann is a senior fishery planning officer in FAO’s Fisheries and Aquaculture Department dealing with policy and management issues in marine capture fisheries, especially in relation to the implementation of the Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries. He has led the
development of the FAO Ecolabeling Guidelines for Marine Capture Fisheries and undertaken many assessments of the economics of capture fisheries in developing countries with a particular focus on small-scale fisheries and poverty issues. Douglas Clyde Wilson is the research director of the Innovative Fisheries Management, a research centre at Aalborg University in Denmark. He received his Ph.D. in sociology from Michigan State University in 1996. He works as an environmental and natural resource sociologist with extensive experience in fisheries management in Africa, North America, and Europe. His research program focuses on communicative systems theory and the analysis of institutional-scale management policy and the sociology of science/ knowledge. He has a long-standing interest in the sociology of science and knowledge and has published several papers on the subject. He is qualified as a university level instructor in African studies, development sociology, economic sociology, qualitative and quantitative methods including survey research, rural sociology, and the sociology of science. He served as editor-inchief of the Common Property Resource Digest and is a member of the executive council of the International Association for the Study of the Commons. He is the current chair of the ICES Working Group on Fisheries Systems. Andrew Wright is currently the executive director of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission and a regular commentator on Pacific fisheries issues. He has more than 25 years of experience in fisheries and environmental management in the Pacific region in a wide range of senior management roles. He served as deputy director for the Forum Fisheries Agency from 1992 to 1995 and then as manager of the International Waters Project for the Pacific Regional Environmental Program.
Index
abalone illegal fishing, 168, 175 illicit markets, 174 Aboriginal peoples, 467n Maori, 350, 353–354, 358n participation in Canadian fisheries, 407–408, 461–462, 467 abundance, 140–141 catch per unit effort and, 640 effect of marine reserves, 660 estimates, 715–716 index of, 584, 586 seasonal, 11 access. See also open access allocations in Canada, 399–400 control in Chile, 332–333 cost and requirements of controlling, 666–667 securing, 451 accountability, 488 in ecolabeling programs, 616 of management organizations, 497 for policies, 499 acidification, 4, 223, 228, 639 effect on reefs, 223, 228 acoustic mapping, 219–220, 716. See also sonar Act of Accession of Denmark, Ireland, Norway, and the United Kingdom, 370 adaptive capacity, role in management, 539 adaptive management, 294 Adriatic Sea, partition of, 423 adverse selection, 232, 508–509, 515, 565, 567, 570n aerial surveys, 716 Africa effect of climate change on fisheries, 132 export, 173
fish consumption, 24 fisheries employment, 29 fisheries of West, 258–262 fishing communities, 79 illegal fishing, 266 regional fisheries management organizations, 269n traditional fisheries, 533 women in fisheries, 75, 77 age, fish estimation of, 714 at maturity, 715 structure of fish populations, 3, 128, 129 agency problems, 521 agendas, involvement of fishers in determining, 541 aggregate cost function, 661 Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures, 100 Agreement on the International Dolphin Conservation Program, 159 agricultural exports, percent as fish, 259 agricultural runoff, 51 agricultural subsidies, 110n aid. See funding airfreight, 117 Alaska community development quotas, 683 coral habitats, 216 efficiency gains, 37 Alaska pollock Bering Sea fishery, 388 market changes, 117, 118 overexploitation, 651 trawl fishery, 670 albacore tuna, exploitation of, 699 Aleutian Islands, coral habitats, 216
741
742 algae harvesting, 51 allocation, 319, 464–466, 669, 702 in Canadian fisheries, 459, 462, 463 eligibility for, 672 information problems, 573–577 international cooperation and, 485 in management organizations, 653–654 in oil and gas production, 575 path dependencies, 577–579 AMERBs. See Chile, territorial use rights American Fisheries Act, 388 anchoveta fishery, production, 123 anchovies, 260 Ancud Bay, 330, 335 Anderson, David, 404 animal protein intake, portion as fish, 3 annual catch entitlements, 302–303 in New Zealand, 350 antibiotics, use in salmon aquaculture, 69 antidumping, 251 aquaculture, 23 climate change and, 127 effect on reefs, 222 environmental issues, 67–70 feed for, 3, 21, 66–68, 251 growth of, 28, 114 history and rationale, 60–61 in India, 276, 285 in Japan, 290 market targets, 118–119 negative feedback, 69 production, 61–63, 65–66 salmon, 69, 117, 459, 464 in Saudi Arabia, 433–434 seafood consumption and, 119 in Southeast Asia, 251 within territorial use rights fisheries, 330 use of techniques in fisheries, 523 worldwide supply of fish, 3 Arabian Peninsula, 427 Arabian Seas, 426 Arafura Sea, illegal fishing, 169 aragonite, 223 arbitration, third-party, 528 artificial light, 52 artisanal fisheries, 6, 166. See also fishing communities; small-scale fisheries catch of turtles, 195, 198 in Chile, 324, 327–328 fishing methods, 465 proportion of total catch by, 168 in Red Sea area, 430, 435 vessels of, 284 in West Africa, 260 Asia aquaculture volume, 63 effect of climate change on fisheries, 132 fish demand, 24 fisheries employment, 29 numbers of vessels, 30
Index traditional fisheries, 533 wages of fishers, 30 women in fisheries, 75, 77, 80 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, 99, 245, 489 Asia-Pacific Fisheries Commission, 245 assessment error, 601–602, 604 Association of South East Asian Nations, 245 Atlantic Coastal Fisheries Cooperative Management Act (U.S.), 384 Atlantic Fisheries Adjustment Program, 406 Atlantic Fisheries Policy Review, 404 Atlantic Groundfish Advisory Committee, 403 Atlantis model, 184–185, 187–190 at-sea shipment, smuggling, 159 auctions, 319, 442n in buybacks, 511–512 Australia buybacks, 510 exclusive economic zone, 338 fisheries management, 339–340, 687 involvement of stakeholders, 688 management advisory committee system, 689–691 overfishing and, 340–345 harvest control for scalefish and sharks, 587 history of fisheries, 338–339 illegal fishing, 168, 174 priority species for regulation, 178 protected areas, 14 regulation and ecolabeling, 612 shrimp import disputes, 251 use of ecosystem modeling, 186–187, 187–190 women in fisheries, 76 Australian Fisheries Management Authority, 339–340 Bacon, Francis, 88 Bahrain, fisheries management, 436 Bali Plan of Action, 245, 502n Baltic Sea, vulnerability to climate change, 132 bans, 262, 290 import, 121 unilateral, 233 barbless hooks, 152 Barents Sea bottom trawling in, 220 fish stocks, 361 illegal fishing, 174–175, 175–176 Loophole, 363 bathymetry, 48 Bayesian methods, 584, 643 Bay of Fundy, herring fishery, 400 beach seines, 278 behavior, fish, 719–720 predicting, 596 behavior, human, 189–190, 348 buybacks and, 514 norms for, 678 strategic, 556–561 voluntary actions, 620–621 Beijing Declaration, 74 Bellagio Blueprint, 233
Index benefits, distribution of, 15–16 Benguela Current large marine ecosystem, 258 Benin fisheries employment, 260 migrant fishers, 268 Bering Sea crab fisheries, 587 pollock fishery, 388 Bering Sea Pollock Conservation Cooperative, 37 bids, in buybacks, 511–513, 515–516, 517n bigeye tuna, 444 conservation, 450 exploitation, 699 overfishing, 448 bilateral agreements, 528, 619 biodiversity, 87, 718 buyback programs and, 507 bycatch and, 141, 150 discoveries, 43 ecosystem-based management and, 485 effect of fisheries on, 140–142, 147, 187 global mapping projects, 53 maintaining, 139 policy, 143, 492 in the Red Sea, 428 of Sudanese fisheries, 438 bioeconomic models, 639–640, 664 parameters, 662 strategic behavior and, 557 biological connectivity, 334 biomass, 661, 715. See also spawning biomass definition of overfishing and, 385 harvestable, 603 maximum sustainable yield as function of, 586 modeling, 184, 584, 640 optimal equilibrium, 644 stock, 140, 568 bionomic equilibrium, 105, 640–641 biophysical models, 184 bioprospecting, 223 Biosphere Reserve, 209 Bismarck Sea, 455n blacklisting, 171–173, 654, 657n bluefin tuna, 416 exploitation, 699 management, 420, 424, 655 blue whiting, 361 stock health, 365 boat traffic, 53 Bombay duck, 278 bonga, 260 bootstrapping, 584 BORMICON model, 183 boycotts, 622 Brazil, World Trade Organization policy, 109 break-even analysis, 421 British Columbia aquaculture, 464 quota system, 402, 670 salmon fishery, 459–464, 467
743
salmon species, 458 user conflicts, 407–408 Brownian motion, 661 brush parks, 262 building construction, 52 buyback programs, 106, 190, 211, 212, 467–468n asymmetric information in, 508 in Australia, 343 benefits and uses of, 516–517 in Canada, 399 consequences of, 507–508 description and examples, 550–551 designing, 509–510, 709–710 financing, 514, 515, 709–710 fishery transitions and, 514 of fishing vessels, 13. See also decommissioning fixed prices, 511 importance of capacity estimates, 547 in Italy, 423 in New Zealand, 349 rationales for, 507 transnational, 516 in tuna fisheries, 708–709 in U.S., 387 buying guides, 609 bycatch, 5, 51, 182, 268 avoiding crab, 291 biodiversity and, 141 caps, 624, 625 economic and social issues, 150 fees for, 155 in Indian fisheries, 282 reducing, 152–153, 155, 157, 389 cost-effectiveness of, 202 incentives for, 199, 624 initiatives, 157, 159–161 voluntary programs, 160, 625 research investment to address, 161 sea turtle, 196, 198–199, 618, 623 tolerable limit, 323n in tuna fisheries, 152, 154 unsustainable, 142 bycatch reduction devices, 719 caletas, 327 California, drift gillnet regulations, 201, 233, 235 Cambodia, wages of fishers, 30 Canada, 323n. See also British Columbia; Nova Scotia Aboriginal participation fisheries, 407–408 Atlantic groundfish stocks, 394–396 conservation policy, 402–403 fisheries characteristics and trends, 393–394 fisheries management, 398–399, 405–406, 411, 524 contractual, 528 ecosystem-based, 407–408 northern cod fishery, 10 oil rights, 574 Canadian Atlantic Fisheries Scientific Advisory Committee, recommendations on target mortality rate, 588
744 Canadian Fisheries Adjustment and Restructuring Program, 461 Canadian Fisheries Assistance and Restructuring Program, 406 Canary Current large marine ecosystem, 258 Canary Islands, 173 canneries, investment in, 450 canning, 116 capacity. See fishing capacity; overcapacity capacity building, 498–499, 501, 539 capacity utilization, 553n capelin, 361 stock models, 366 capital, 284 costs, 26 effect of subsidies on, 361 excessive and rent, 367 inflow in Red Sea region, 431 versus labor, 532–533 removal of redundant, 514 caps bycatch, 624, 625 on quota holdings, 318 cargo culture, 197 Caribbean tuna longline fisheries, 533 women in fisheries, 76 carrying capacity, 640, 661 caste hierarchy, of Indian fishing communities, 276 catch. See also total allowable catch in Australian fisheries, 338, 345 composition, 371, 394, 523 constant, 585 in coral habitats, 216 country rankings, 171, 382 data, 35, 172, 319, 420, 704 estimates, 133, 463 fees, 303–304 global stagnation, 21 in Icelandic fisheries, 299, 306 in Japanese World Heritage Site, 296 limits, 173, 591 methods to ensure optimum, 701 outside economic exclusive zones, 668 redistribution, 367 in Red Sea region, 429 reporting, 168, 173, 568–569 of straddling stocks, 651 target, 162 in West African fisheries, 261 catchability, 716 catchability coefficient, 640 catch-effort equation, 640 catch per unit effort, 170, 638, 715, 716–717 as index of stock abundance, 640 cause-effect relationships, nonlinear, 89 Center for Marketing Information and Advisory Services for Fishery Products in the Arab Region, 433
Index Central Pacific Fisheries Commission, 245 cephalopods, overexploitation, 261 certification. See environmental certification; product certification cetaceans. See also common names of cetaceans bycatch and gear, 154, 156 conservation and exploitation, 8–10 gillnet entanglement, 208 protection, 53 chakara, 11 Challenger Scallop Enhancement Company, 351 Chatham House, 171, 502n chemical industry, voluntary regulation in, 624 chemicals, prohibition against use, 262 Chesapeake Bay, 190 children, employed in fishing, 77 Chile administrative regions, 325 industry reaction to transferable quotas, 670 institutional stakeholders, 327–328 salmon exports, 117 territorial use rights, 324, 328–330, 365–327 Chilka Lake, 275 China aquaculture, 62, 63, 70n disruption of markets, 523 extinction of river dolphin, 210 fish demand, 24 fisheries production, 23 fleets, 31 food expenditures, 121 mafia in South Africa, 175 misreporting of catch, 173–174 seafood processing, 120 women in fisheries, 75 World Trade Organization policy, 109 chinook salmon, 397, 404 chlorofluorcarbons, 201 chlorophyll fronts, 48 chutes, underwater setting, 153 CITES. See Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species civil sanctions, 377 clams, stocks and management, 422–423 Clean Development Mechanism, 199, 231 climate, effect on production and food chain, 127–128 climate change, 4, 22, 123–125, 190, 718 direct and indirect effects, 127 increased sensitivity to, 128 research on, 126 vulnerability to, 132 closures of fisheries, 236–237, 249, 262, 290, 618 Canadian, 403 Icelandic, 300 as incentives, 624 seasonal in U.S., 387 tuna, 708 U.K., 376 Coalition of Legal Toothfish Operators, 176
Index coastal communities. See also fishing communities of the Red Sea region, 429–430 coastal development, 51–52, 195 in India, 276 in Red Sea area, 428 coastal fisheries, 49, 146, 287 in Chile, 327 choice of economic instruments, 318 in India, 283 in Italy, 417 local knowledge, 541 management of U.S., 384 regulation of U.K., 374 sea turtles and, 196, 198, 233 in Southeast Asia, 252 threatened, 44 coastal states, 656n shared resource management, 649 cod effect of climate on, 130–131 fisheries in Iceland, 299–301 illegal fishing, 174–175 quotas, 362–363 status of stocks, 173, 299, 365, 393, 394, 410 stock models, 366 in U.K. fisheries, 371 Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries, 12–13, 74, 87, 143, 167, 249, 268, 495, 501 Codex Alimentarius, 245 cognitive conflict, 597, 598 coherence, 501 in policy, 494 in priority setting, 492 coho salmon, 397, 404 fishing restrictions, 464 colonialism, 197 Colorado River, 208 co-management, 536, 675–677 acceptance by fishers, 683–684 assignment of responsibilities, 679 in Australia, 339, 344, 688–689 benefits of, 689 in buyback programs, 515 compared to corporate governance, 522 conflict and competition in, 681 property rights and, 682–683 scale of community, 680–681 of small-scale fisheries, 542 in U.S., 382 command-and-control approach, 535, 550 commercial fishing, bias against, 693 commercialization, effect on co-management, 682 Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, 166, 183 illegal fishing initiatives, 172 Commission for the Conservation of Southern Bluefin Tuna, 245, 699–701 seabird conservation policies, 159 Common Fisheries Policy (E.U.), 108, 370, 374, 415
common property, 7–8, 249, 303, 310, 313, 400, 405, 411, 647, 666–667 effect of subsidies on, 105 theory, 247 Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (Australia), 340 communication, 537 expertise, 488 importance in buyback programs, 509 of policy, 597 in small-scale fisheries management, 541 with stakeholders, 690–691 community. See also coastal communities; fishing communities characteristics of, 679 definitions, 679–680 locus and scale, 680–681 rights, 667, 682 community-based management, 247, 542 in India, 283 in Southeast Asia, 247–248 community-based quotas, 314–315, 317, 321, 642 community organizations, 285 compensatory mitigation, 155 competition, 6, 105 among fishers, 641 in aquaculture, 70 loss of competitiveness, 318 models of, 183 complex adaptive systems, 535 complexity managing, 634 role in learning, 596 understanding implications of, 603 compliance, 160 capacity, 449 certificates of, 609 cooperative management and, 650 incentives, 634 networking and, 291 problems in Pacific tuna fisheries, 448 in Red Sea fisheries, 436 relation to biodiversity, 499 stakeholder participation and, 676 to voluntary regulation, 620, 624 conflict management, 541 resolution, 11, 334 scale and, 680–681 consensus building, 355, 574 conservation, 12, 632 advice in Canada, 402–403 blocking, 498 buyback programs and, 507 cooperative, 237–238 cost-effectiveness, 201–202, 232 direct payments, 197, 238 economic advantages for opposing, 450
745
746
Index
conservation (continued) funding, 15, 198, 235–236 holistic view, 14 incentives for, 200, 334 in Indian fisheries, 283 information needed for successful, 713 investments, 231, 232 in Japan, 293–297 of nontarget species, 160 north-south divide, 500 practices and scientific data, 448 in Red Sea fisheries, 434, 440 rights approaches and, 319, 642 single-species, 448 standards, 498 in U.K., 377 use of voluntary approaches, 624 conservation-based strategy, 189 Conservation Law Foundation, 387 Conservation Program for Endangered Species, 209 Conservation Reserve Program (U.S.), 622 consortia, for clam fisheries, 423 constant catch, 585 consultants, 333 consultation, with stakeholders, 690–691 consumer demand for ecolabeled products, 609, 611 environmental protection and, 619 for sustainability, 160–161 voluntary regulation and, 622 consumer guides, 161, 609 consumers preferences, 118 role in curbing illegal fishing, 176 continental shelves, cold-water reefs on, 228 contracts, 565 relative payment, 566–567 share, 566–567 contractual management, 527–528 control. See also command-and-control approaches in aquaculture, 62, 70 fallacy of, 92 problems of, 639 convening power, 488 Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, 143 Convention on Biological Diversity, 87, 143, 144, 231, 489, 494, 498–499 lack of involvement of fishers, 146 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), 146, 489 lack of coherence, 494 Convention on the Conservation and Management of Highly Migratory Fish Stocks in the Western and Central Pacific Ocean, 443–444 Convention on the Law of the Sea, 5, 87, 142, 289, 444, 646 guidelines on cooperative management, 649
guidelines on management of straddling stocks, 651 illegal fishing regulations, 167 protection of high seas stocks, 656 ratification in Southeast Asia, 245 Convention on the Regulation of Whaling, 9 cooperation, 319, 464 among regional fisheries, 253–254 benefits, as incentives, 620, 623 buybacks and, 514 communities and, 680 conservation of high-seas stocks and, 656 in game theory models, 558–559 illegal fishing and, 176 versus noncooperation, 652 in regional fisheries management organizations, 497 in self-governance, 525 cooperative games, 649–650 cooperative management, 650 versus co-management, 676 unequal power, 451 cooperatives, 388 Indian, 11 in Japan, 679, 683 unintended consequences of, 623 in Yemen, 436 coordination, 495 among government agencies, 348 coral reefs, 43–44, 49, 215–216 cold-water, 216–218, 227 effect of trawling, 220–221 evaluating damage to, 219 mapping, 218–220 principles of protection, 223–224 in the Red Sea, 428 in Southeast Asia, 252 zones, 216, 218 coral remains, identifying, 220 Coral Triangle Initiative, 494 corporate governance, 520–521 economic analysis of, 525–526 embedding in regulation, 526–528 of mixed fisheries, 522 corruption, 159, 174, 176, 448 Consortium for Ocean Leadership, 53 Costa Rica, voluntary agreements, 622 cost recovery in New Zealand, 350 stakeholder payment for management and, 690 Council for Exploration of the Seas management of Russian and Norwegian fisheries, 174 crab fisheries. See also snow crab Canadian catch, 396 harvest control rules, 587 credit, 34, 279, 284, 386, 435 crew remuneration, 30 Crosbie, John, 402 curvina golfina, 208
Index Darwin Mounds, 221 data acquisition, 714 availability, 591 collection in U.K., 375 consideration of sources, 603 integration, 378 quality, 435, 439, 440 data envelopment analysis, 547, 548 days-at-sea restrictions, 374, 387 dead zones, 51 debt fisheries, 514 of fishers, 284 decentralization, 537, 634, 680 decision making defensive, 355 equality in, 521, 522, 527 level of, 537 participatory, 675–676 structured, 631 decommissioning, 268, 363, 376, 378, 418, 709. See also buyback programs in Southeast Asia, 249–250 delayed responses, 89 demersal species African regulations, 262 assumption of catch per unit effort, 638 catch, 21 stock health, 365 stocks in North Sea, 363 targeted by small-scale fisheries, 533 in West African fisheries, 260–261 demonstration effects, 318–319 density-dependent growth, 661 deposit feeders, 218 developing countries, 533 conservation costs, 232 differential treatment, 109 fish demand, 26 fisheries investment, 534 unregulated fisheries, 165 development assistance, for Indian fisheries, 11 Development of Fisheries in Areas of the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, 433 Dijibouti, 426 direct payments, 197, 238, 620, 622–623 disasters effect on markets, 523 relief and buyback programs, 507 risk of, 295–296 discards, 150, 373 bans on, 189 changing patterns, 21 conflicts over, 363 moral hazards and, 568 discount rate, 645, 661 displacement, of fishing communities, 276 distant waters fishing nations, 651
747
investment by, 444 in regional management organizations, 654 distrust, 355, 499, 500 among agencies, 147n between fishers and environmental interests, 146 diving, commercial, 324 divisibility, 313, 314 Doha Round, 100 inclusion of fisheries subsidies, 109 dolphins bycatch of, 150 devices to reduce bycatch, 719 mortality, 154, 704 allocations in, 702 limits, 15, 159 protection of, 157 Doughnut Hole, 651 downstream externalities, 527 Dr. Fridtjof Nansen research vessel, 437, 440 driftnets bans, 416–417, 421–422 buyback of, 510 Duke University, Project GLOBAL, 53 dumping, 122n, 251 Dupuy, Peter, 232, 237 dynamic regime switching, 664 dynamic systems, understanding structure, 596 East Asian Seas congresses, participation, 252 Eastern Pacific Barrier, 45 ecolabeling, 121, 161, 173, 406, 496, 502n costs and benefits to fisheries, 612–613 description, 608–609 effectiveness of, 614–615 information and data requirements, 611 standards for, 613–614 types, 610–611 verification programs, 614 ecolabels, logos, 610 econometrics, 603 economic analysis of self-governance, 525–526, 528–529 economic assistance, 387 to Canadian fisheries, 406–407 economic development, increased trade and, 115 economic efficiency, 316 buyback programs and, 507 as goal of policy, 383 government failures and, 524 trade-off with social equity, 332 use rights and, 669, 673 economic growth, pollution and, 69 economic instruments, 313 characteristics of, 313–316 in ecosystem-based management, 319–320 in international fisheries, 319 pragmatic use, 318 economic optimizing behavior, 549
748 economics application of principal-agent paradigm, 563 effect on illegal fishing, 169–170 effects of bycatch on, 150 effects of climate change on, 132 effects of subsidies on, 99 importance of considering, 638 overfishing and, 265 research, 375 of straddling stock management, 652 Ecopath with Ecosim model, 183, 184 application, 186–187 ecosystem-based management, 8, 53, 87–89, 143, 182, 265, 383, 404, 633, 675, 721–723 biodiversity and, 145–146, 485 in Canada, 407–408 development of, 94 economic instruments in, 319–320 incorporation in legal instruments, 446 as integrating force, 500 in Japan, 293–294 main objectives, 718 in small-scale fisheries, 540 in Southeast Asia, 247, 248 in U.S., 389–390 ecosystem modeling, 183–185 fisheries management and, 185–191 versus population modeling, 190 Ecosystem Productivity Ocean Climate model, 183 ecosystems, 8 acceptable levels of impact, 190 addressing effects on, 162, 390 alterations, 44 assessing components, 145 description, 49–50 drivers of decline, 5 effects of fisheries, 140, 721 relationships between terrestrial and marine, 294 structure and function, 718–719 threats to, 50–53 education conservation and, 197 of management personnel, 80–81 efficiency. See also economic efficiency of fisheries, 366–368 as focus of policy, 360, 365 individual transferable quotas and, 306–307 of policy, 499 use of economic instruments and, 310 egg production surveys, 716 Egypt, 426, 427 fisheries research and management, 438 tilapia production, 64 eliminator trawl, 719 El Nino-Southern Oscillation, 123 employment alternative, 249 bycatch solutions and, 156 in Italian fisheries, 417
Index migrants and, 268 in Norwegian fisheries, 362 in Red Sea fisheries, 428–429 reduction, 268 subsidies and, 107 trends, 28–30 in U.K. fisheries, 371 Endangered Species Act (U.S.), 199, 236, 239n, 389 endowments, 198 enforcement, 331, 639 assumption of perfect, 106 in Chile, 324, 335 in co-management, 677 illegal fishing and, 159, 167 management and, 496–497 of Mexican regulations, 212 in Red Sea fisheries, 434, 436, 439 relation to biodiversity, 499 in scallop fisheries, 351 in U.K., 377 in West Africa, 262, 263 engine power, 376 England, attempts to exclusively control herring fishery, 667 enhanced quota management strategy, 188 enterprise allocations, 400–401 environmental carrying capacity, 640 environmental certification, 609, 723 costs of, 612 environmental conditions, stock collapses and, 394 Environmental Defense fund, 390 funding of buybacks, 514 environmental issues, 87 of aquaculture, 67–70 management success and, 485 in salmon fisheries, 464, 467 of U.K. fisheries, 373 environmental legislation, 146 environmental management systems, 723 environmental nongovernmental organizations, 450, 502n, 514 influence in New Zealand, 352 opposition to property rights, 322n participation in management, 390 purchase of quotas, 323n reduction of illegal fishing by, 176 as stakeholders, 357 sustainability assessments, 160–161 in U.K., 379–380 in U.S., 382 environmental protection, 622 attitudes toward, 619 voluntary approaches, 618–619 environmental variability, 523, 599 assessment, 265 effect on economics of reserves, 661–663 forms of, 659 environmental variables, harvest control rules based on, 590–591
Index equimarginal principle, 201 equity, as focus of policy, 360, 365 Eritrea, 426 enforcement in, 436 fisheries projects, 434 war and fisheries, 430 escapement, 458 constant, 585 estuaries, 49 Euphrates River, 428 Europe. See also European Union fish demand, 24 seafood market, 117 shared resources, 373–374 women in fisheries, 75 European Commission, Scientific, Technical and Economic Advisory Committee on Fisheries, 375 European Fisheries Convention, 370 European Habitat Directive, 373 European Union analysis of fishery policy, 567 antibiotic, regulations, 251 Common Fisheries Policy, 108, 370, 374, 415 imports, 115, 173 monitoring assistance to Africa, 263 total allowable catch negotiations, 362–363 eutrophication, 69 evergreen contracting, 528 exclusive economic zones, 5, 557, 644, 666 Canada, 10 development of, 668–669 distant waters fishing nations agreements, 567–568 effect on overcapacity, 598 versus high seas, 422 illegal fishing in, 169 implementation, 121n India, 11, 281 lack in the Mediterranean, 415, 419 management, 650 significance to world fisheries, 647–648 trade and, 114 tuna catch, 444 U.S., 386 West Africa, 263 exclusivity, 313, 314, 400, 551, 701 existence value, 202n, 527 expertise, use of, 592 exploitation controlling, 254 in models, 185 rate, 586 sensitivity to climate change and, 128 statistics, 21 sustainable, 142 exports Indian, 280–281 quantity, 115 West African, 260
749
external drivers, fisheries sensitivity to, 89 externality theory, 528–529 extinction, 45, 126 estimating probabilities, 643 of sea turtles, 234 of vaquita, 209 of Yangtze River dolphin, 210 extraction rights, 673 Faeroe Islands, total allowable catch negotiations, 363 family fishers, 211. See also fishing communities farm consolidation, 579 farmers, incentive payments to, 622 farm land, rights to, 578–579 fecundity, 715 Federation of Independent Seafood Harvesters (FISH), 232, 235, 237–238 feedbacks, 596, 605n control loops, 89 fees, 303–304, 669 to pay for conservation, 200–201 to reduce bycatch, 199 First Nations peoples, 458 fisheries, 400 treaties with, 463 fish. See also fish stocks age, 714, 715 as aquaculture feed, 3, 21, 66–68, 251 biology, 713–715 competition among, 140 effect of climate on, 125–128 estimation of natural mortality, 714 populations age structure and stability, 3 densities, 140 replacement, 140 size and behavior, 720 fish-aggregating devices, 154, 157, 699, 706, 707 fish consumption. See also seafood consumption global trends, 24 in West Africa, 259 fisheries. See also fisheries management; see also under names of countries and common names of fish assessment of impacts, 501 biodiversity and, 140, 147 categories and characteristics, 6–8, 534 climate change and, 128, 130 closures. See closures of fisheries commercialization, 233, 682 concept of private property, 667–668 conflicts within, 267–268 data, 72, 250, 254 deterioration, 20–23, 36 development projects, 103 economics, 20, 35–37, 210–212 effect of ecolabeling on, 612–613 effect of wars on, 430 efficiency of, 366–368
750 fisheries (continued) global and private norms, 495–496 important aspects for policy, 423 partitioning, 335 perception of inexhaustibility, 646–647 production trends, 23–24 reform, 37 renting out, 672 strategic behavior in, 556–557 systemic nature of, 89 systems view, 185 unregulated, 349 women in, 74–77 world locations, 5 worldwide economic performance, 25–30 fisheries access agreements, 260, 268 fisheries management, 582–583. See also fisheries management science; names of countries; specific types of management adaptive, 185 adherence to, 588 administration, 378 application of principal agent theory to, 566–569 of aquaculture, 70 capacity, 244 coherence, 485, 487, 494 concept of natural resource, 445–446 conflict with ownership, 563 consumers as drivers of, 612 conventional, 96, 535 cooperation in, 245, 253, 384 coordination, 334 costs, 34–35, 289, 345, 410, 453, 524 decentralized, 289, 676 effectiveness, 633, 647 effect of exclusive economic zones, 650 evolution of, 633 exemptions, 448 financing, 438, 441, 498–499 gender issues, 73–74, 80–81 general problems, 638–639 geography of organizations, 423 goals of, 124, 263, 450, 509, 582, 589, 591 ideological differences in, 95 importance of economics and behavior, 638 integration, 332, 334, 485–487 modeling and, 638, 663–664 multiple species, 590–591 nature of fish stocks and, 650–655, 680 overstaffing, 434 participatory, 496, 631, 687–689 performance measures, 188 physical environment and, 128–133, 250–251 planning, 264, 352, 356–357, 542, 543 priorities, 13–14, 418, 420, 492–495 private, 524 reform challenges, 144 rules, 677 separation from policy, 350
Index spatial measures, 142 steady-state, 599, 601–602 strategy evaluation, 188 support for, 103, 333, 450 systems, 544 target reference points, 586 top-down, 265, 500, 675 traditional, 145, 262–263, 278, 335, 435, 534–535 training and recruiting staff, 452 uncertainty in, 539, 660 use of economic instruments, 313–316 Fisheries Management Act (Australia), 341 fisheries management science, 89, 631, 634 application of, 632–633 bases for, 631–632 concept, 630 fisheries partnership agreements, 260 Fisheries Products International, 406 Fisheries Research and Development Corporation, 341 Fisheries Resource Conservation Council, 396, 403 Fishermen’s Welfare Corporation (India), 279 fishers. See also artisanal fishers assistance programs, 103 attitudes during transitions, 508 behavior, 189, 190 buybacks and, 514 and capacity estimates, 549 modeling, 185, 557–561 commitment to rules, 348 competition among, 641 coordination among, 293 definition of, 681 distrust of environmental interests, 146 effect of declining fisheries, 3 former employment of farming, 251 functional groups of, 679–680 investing in conservation, 236–238 investing in technology, 641 management participation of, 218–219, 265, 296, 297, 328, 331, 424 migrant, 268, 284 numbers of, 28, 335n, 362, 442n opposition to marine reserves, 659 as part of ecosystem, 296 perceptions of territorial use rights, 330 relationships among, 291, 425, 680 training in modern methods, 435 types of employment, 6 fishers’ organizations, 402, 417. See also cooperatives; names of organizations in Chile, 328–329 in Italy, 424 Fishery Committee for the Eastern Central Atlantic, 262, 269n Fishery Committee of the West Central Gulf of Guinea, 269n Fishery Conservation and Management Act (U.S.), 382, 383 Fishery Policy Council (Japan), 288
Index fish farmers. See also aquaculture former employment of, 251 fish farming. See aquaculture fishing costs, 26 decreasing, 105 and illegal fishing, 170 versus value, 20 economic alternatives to, 209 length of trips, 235 personal benefits of, 683 revenues, 6 social versus economic perspective, 379 technologies. See technology traditional methods, 465 fishing agreements access, 444 international, 567–568 fishing capacity. See also names of countries; overcapacity assessment of, 546–549, 552 in Australia, 339 buyback programs and, 515, 516 definitions, 546–547 development in U.S., 386 economic concept, 546 environmental variability and, 605n excess, 549–550, 600 global development, 31–33 limiting, 328, 376 misperceptions about, 601 quotas and, 670 reducing, 106, 378, 406–407, 418, 452 relationship to harvest, 597 resource rent and, 367 in tuna fisheries, 700–701, 705, 707–708 utilization, 601 worldwide expansion, 3 fishing communities, 537–538, 679–680. See also artisanal fishers in Canada, 410 characteristics, 79 costs of conservation to, 199, 232 effect of limited-access privilege programs on, 389 environmental interests and, 139 Indian, 276–278 local knowledge, 678 norms and management, 262 policy considerations, 285, 384 property rights and, 16 protection of rights and, 254 women in, 75 fishing effect on ecosystems, 614, 616, 721 historically limited, 667 realization of, 647 reducing biodiversity threats, 141–142 fishing effort, 30–33, 232 biodiversity and, 187
751
controlling, 6, 128–131 effectiveness of limitations on, 671 effect of subsidies on, 105 versus fishing capacity, 546, 550 increase in West Africa, 263 in India, 284 lack of information, 434 policies in Mediterranean, 418 reducing, 249, 304, 305, 377 relationship to benefits of reserves, 660 transferring excess, 249 fishing fleets. See vessels fishing industry funding of buybacks, 514 involvement in governance, 162 partnerships with nongovernmental organizations, 238 response to management in Australia, 343, 344 size and environmental degradation, 69 fishing masters, 176 fishing mortality, 140, 582 climate change and, 125 constant, 585 direct from gear, 141 measures to reduce bycatch, 152–153, 155, 157 in models, 183 rate, 385, 586 recommendations for target, 588 of tuna, 700 fishing partnership associations, 268 fish landings. See catch fish meal, 26, 67–68 fish oil, 26 fish prices, 603 and bycatch in India, 282 determinants, 118 global, 25–26 illegal fishing and, 170 fish species. See also target species aquacultured, 61, 62, 119 composition in Kerala fisheries, 11 composition of Red Sea fisheries, 430 considering effects on multiple, 157 discoveries, 44 important in Norwegian fisheries, 361 migratory, 167, 245, 416, 419–420, 444, 648 role in food web, 140 sensitivity to climate, 125, 126 shelf, 190 threatened, 182 values, 21, 26, 62 fish stocks. See also stock assessments; stock biomass; stock collapse age structure, 3, 128, 129, 714, 715 categories, 583, 648 causes of changes in, 129 conceptualizations of, 522 conservation, 251, 387 depletion, 20, 265, 361, 668
752 fish stocks (continued) effect of subsidies on, 105 excessive, 599–600 exploited by small-scale fisheries, 533 inflow and outflow correlations and, 596 health and management, 365, 640, 680 discrete high seas stock, 655–656 Indian, 279–280 misperceptions, 597 protected versus exploited, 664 rebuilding, 390, 420 status and management, 121, 342, 352 straddling, 650–655 structure, 713–714 traditional management, 145 transboundary, 649, 652–653 West African, 260–261 fixed reserve model, 663 flags, changes in vessels, 703–704 flags of convenience, 167, 168 flexibility, 313, 314, 318, 334–335, 626n in decision making processes, 692 loss of ecological, 682 flick-off practices, 152 flows misperceptions, 597 nonlinear, 598 relationships with stocks, 596 Food and Agricultural Organization, 492–493. See also Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries Advisory Committee on Fisheries Research, 263 definition of capacity, 546–547, 708 fisheries governance guidelines, 269n International Plan of Action on IUU Fishing, 167 Red Sea projects, 440 resources assessment survey, 437 food chain, effect of climate, 127–128 food prices, 33 food security, 260, 265, 537 food webs, 296 changes in, 140 effects of fishing on, 721 Forbes, Edward, 43 foreign fishing. See also distant water fishing nations foreign fishing, U.S. phaseout of, 386 Forum Fisheries Agency, 444 France, misreporting of catch, 173 Fraser River, 466 freedom of the seas doctrine, 646–647 free-rider problem, 4, 232, 237, 449, 558, 568, 623, 677 in bycatch reduction programs, 625 cooperation and, 649 illegal fishing as, 653 real interest and, 654 free trade agreements, in Southeast Asia, 251
Index freezing technology, 113, 114, 116, 461 effect on supply chains, 120 Friend of the Sea ecolabel, 614 fuel consumption, 28, 129 costs, 26–28, 33, 252 pollution from, 46 subsidies, 34 taxes, exemptions, 103–104 fuel efficiency, 129 improving, 720–721 functional complexity, of fisheries governance, 91–92 funding, 498 for conservation, 198, 235–236 constraints, 439, 452 co-management and, 248 of Red Sea fisheries projects, 432–433 research in developing countries, 439–440 transparency of sources for capacity building, 498 GADGET model, 183 Galapagos Islands, 9 game theory, 649–650 model of fisher behavior, 557–560 gas exploration and production, allocation of rights in, 573–577 gear buyback, 509 co-management and type of, 679 conflict, 189 conversion, 422 costs, 26, 27, 232 effect on catch composition, 523 fish population impact, 142 habitat impacts, 141, 720 investment in, 284 modernization, 11 modification, 618, 719 postrelease survival and, 152 regulations, 182, 262 restrictions, 301, 459 reuse of bought back, 510 selectivity, 719–720 sophistication investment, 534 traditional, 533 types, 278 used in Japanese fisheries, 294 gender, fisheries management and, 72–74, 81 gene flow, 45 gene pool, aquaculture and, 69 General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean, 416 genetic adaptation, 130 genetics inbreeding, 208 use to estimate spawning stock size, 716 Georges Bank fishery sector, 388–389 Ghana, migrant fishers, 268 ghost fishing, 166
Index gillnets, 297 ban, 210 bycatch of vaquita, 205 effect on reefs, 221–222, 228 entanglement of cetaceans, 208 operation of, 235 Global Environmental Facility, 252, 498 Global Forum on Oceans, Coasts, and Islands, 144, 492 globalization, 54 challenges for management, 485–486 effect on fisheries sustainability, 259. See also trade, international Global Oceans Forum, 489, 494–495 global warming, 53 goals, prioritizing, 12 gorgonians, effect of gillnets on, 222 governance. See also fisheries management definition, 90 poverty and, 268 principles, 92–93 responsibilities, 90 structure, 91 Governance of High Seas Fisheries and the United Nations Fish Agreement, 171 government contracting, 351–352 failures, economic efficiency and, 524 overinvolvement, 689 support from, 633 grants, 34 grassroots activism, 353 Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, 14 Greece, women in fish processing, 73 greenhouse gases, 124, 721 green turtles, conservation, 235 gross domestic product, fisheries and, 36 gross tonnage, 376 Grotius, Hugo, 646 groundfish fisheries buybacks in, 508 Canadian Atlantic, 394–396 government assistance, 406 stock collapse, 393 stocks in Canada, 409 ground-truthing methods, 220 group policies, 624 group quotas, 363 growth, fish estimation of, 714 growth rates, 598 effect of fisheries on, 140 Guinea Current Large Marine Ecosystem Project, 264 Gujarat, India, 276 Gulf of Aden, 426–427 Gulf of California, 207–208 gillnet fisheries valuation, 210 Gulf of Oman, 427 oceanography, 428
Gulf of St. Lawrence, 403 Gulfs Project Follow-up, 433 Gunnerus, J. C., 216 habitat degradation and destruction, 20, 36, 47, 51–52, 141, 190, 389, 460, 718 in India, 276 sea turtle, 195, 197 habitat diversity, 5 haddock, 361 Canada-U.S. agreements, 384 stock health, 365 in U.K. fisheries, 371 hake, 348 halibut fishery, 387 transfer of quotas, 580 harpoon cannons, 9 harvest. See also catch caps, 305 controlling, 132 costs, 32 documenting, 448 efficiency, 459, 523 optimal, 365, 523, 602, 661 rate, 142, 335, 660 relationship to capacity, 597 smoothing, 600 unintentional. See bycatch worldwide, 3 harvest control rules, 583 empirical, 586–587 inputs, 584 multispecies, 590 testing, 588–590 tier system, 588 threshold, 586 traditional, 585–587 harvest cooperatives, 388, 390 hatching success of sea turtles, 196–197, 234 Hawaii, longline regulations, 201, 233 Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point, 120 H.B. Nickersons and National Sea Products, 406 heavy metals, 51 herbivores, aquaculture of, 62 herring, 361 fisheries in Iceland, 299–300 fisheries in U.K., 371, 373 stock collapse, 361 stock depletion, 299 stock health, 365 stock models, 366 hidden action problem. See moral hazards hidden information problem. See adverse selection high seas territorial seas and, 647 discrete stocks, 655–656 lack of fisheries regulation, 639 High Seas Task Force, 171, 172, 494
753
754
Index
hoki fishery, in New Zealand, 348 homesteading, 578–579 Hong Kong, illicit markets, 175 Hong Kong Declaration, 109 hook bycatch and, 158, 160 quota licenses, 302 shape, 151 household assets, 80 Huxley, Thomas, 647, 667, 668 hydraulic dredges, 422 IATTC. See Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission ICCAT. See International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna Iceland coral habitat, 216 exclusive economic zone, 6 fisheries management, 302–306 fishing communities, 80 individual transferable quotas, 306–307, 311 investment in fisheries, 671–672 litigation concerning quotas, 307–308 stock health, 299 total allowable catch negotiations, 362, 363 ideological differences, in fisheries management, 95 illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing. See IUU fishing immunosuppression, 51 imports, volume, 115 inbreeding, vaquita mortality and, 208 incentives, 13, 202, 310, 410, 435, 485, 564 to avoid overinvesting in effort, 145 buybacks and, 514 and capacity building, 498 to cheat, 425 compatibility, 567, 569 for conservation, 197, 199, 334 created by regulatory measures, 160 economic, 232 effectiveness of, 347 effect of subsidies on, 106 to elicit participation, 333 importance of understanding, 7 market-based, 161, 176, 177, 619–620 match to capacity, 314 in principal-agent approach, 565 role in promoting public benefits, 15 in territorial use rights fisheries, 335 in voluntary regulation, 619–620, 622 incidental catch. See bycatch income in clam fisheries, 423 distribution, 318, 333, 673 of fishers, 534 flow of net, 640 lost, 199 maximization, 641 schemes to increase, 360, 387
support, 108 trends, 28–30 India fisheries employment, 29 fisheries management, 281–283 Kerala fisheries, 10–12 physical geography, 274–275 World Trade Organization policy, 109 Indian Marine Fisheries Census, 73 Indian Ocean Fishery Commission, 431 Indian Ocean Program, 431 Indian Ocean Tuna Commission, 245, 699–701 seabird avoidance policies, 159 indirect use value, 202n individual fishing quotas, 390 in Canada, 400–402 in U.S. fisheries, 385, 388–389 individual nontransferable quotas, 314–315 individual rationality constraint, 650 individual transferable quotas, 299, 310, 314–316, 321, 349, 425, 520, 522–573, 579–580, 641–642, 701 in Australian fisheries, 340 benefits of, 353, 644 in Canada, 468n in co-management, 683 development of, 595 efficiency gains from, 306–307 in the European Union, 378 fish stocks and, 671 in Iceland, 302–307 incentives to set private catch limits, 525 participation in, 308 rationalizing effect of, 671–672 rent losses and, 522–524 subsidies and, 105–106 unanimous consent under, 526 individual vessel quotas, 400 Indonesia ecosystem-based management, 248 fisheries, 244 fisheries management, 247 illegal fishing, 169 Indo-Norwegian Project for Fisheries Development, 11 industrial areas coastal management in, 252 pollution from, 276 information. See also scientific data asymmetric, 508–509, 515, 563, 569 allocations and, 575 effort level and, 567 sources of, 564–565 building, 678 in buybacks, 512 credibility, 496 for decision making, 496, 676 economics of, 564 effect on investments, 598 gathering and use, 296
Index inadequate and buy-in, 317 integration of, 333 lacking for Red Sea fisheries, 434 role in increasing value, 523–524 sharing, 495 source of, 501 time dependent, 611 use in small-scale fisheries management, 541 infrastructure, market access and, 115 initial management stocks, 583, 591 input controls, 542 input, mobility, 485 inspections, 168 Institute of Marine Research, 218 institutions as constraints, 677 definition, 677 dimensions of, 677–678 integration and, 487–488 role of, 485 insurance, 34 integrated management, 188, 485–487, 631, 633, 634 in small-scale fisheries, 540 integration forces for increasing, 499–500 within regional fisheries management organizations, 498 role of institutions, 487–488 in small-scale fisheries policy, 537 state of, 492–499 Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission (IATTC), 159, 172, 699–701, 705 capacity reduction schemes, 708 international agreements, 647 International Collective in Support of Fishworkers, 74 International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna (ICCAT), 172, 262, 269n, 416, 420, 498, 699–701 granting of membership, 654 International Commission for the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries, 399, 647 international cooperation, 4, 15, 361, 443, 444, 465, 485–486 International Council for the Exploration of the Sea, 9, 489 assessment of fish stocks, 375 Multispecies Working Group, 183 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 307 International Fund for Agricultural Development, 440 International Labor Organization, 77 International Laws of the Sea, 657n International MCS Network Database, 171 international organizations. See also names of organizations functions of, 493 linked to fisheries, 489–492
755
International Pacific Halibut Commission, 172, 384 International Pacific Salmon Fisheries Commission, 465 International Plan of Action on IUU Fishing, Model Scheme on Port State Measures to Combat IUU Fishing, 167 International Plan of Action on the Management of Fishing Capacity, 249 International Southern Ocean Longline Fisheries Information Clearing House, 176 International Standards Organization, certifications, 120 International Standard Statistical Classification of Aquatic Animals and Plants, 62 International Union for the Conservation of Nature, 144, 171, 489, 495 International Whaling Commission, 583, 591 small cetacean subcommittee, 208 use of management strategy evaluation, 590 International Whaling Convention, 9 invasive species, 127 principal-agent model, 569, 570 invertebrates. See also common names of animals associated with coral reefs, 217–218 catch of benthic in Chile, 324, 327 investment, 391, 450. See also overinvestment to address bycatch, 161 in Australian fisheries, 341 conservation, 199, 231, 232 control and limited entry, 703 by distant waters fishing nations, 444 effect of subsidies on, 106 in Icelandic fisheries, 300 in Indian fisheries, 283–284 in Red Sea region, 431 relationship to overcapacity, 597–598 in small-scale fisheries, 534 technology, 641 InVitro, agent-based model, 184 Ionian Sea, coral habitats, 216 Iran, fisheries research, 436 Iran-Iraq war, effect on fisheries, 430 Iraq fisheries, 431 fisheries research, 436 iron deposition, 127 irrigation channels, 442n Ise Bay, 289–290 Islamic Development Bank, 440 Israel, 426 Italy coastal fisheries, 417 composition of fishing fleet, 416 distant-water fleet, 418–419 driftnet buyback, 510 shellfish management, 422–423 women in fish processing, 73 IUU fishing, 150, 165, 333, 421, 442 and allocation problems, 655 ambiguous rights and, 653
756 IUU fishing (continued) in Australia, 174 background, 166 bycatch and, 159 costs of, 35, 169 in east-central Atlantic, 169 effect on domestic fisheries, 485 effect on sustainability, 334 estimating, 168–169 E.U. measures, 173 factors contributing to, 166–167, 265–267 gillnet, 210 institutionalized, 497 laws against, 167–168 magnitude, 169 profits, 174 in Red Sea region, 438–439 reducing, 171, 175–176 in Southeast Asia, 249–250 U.S. measures, 173 in West Africa, 262 Iwi tribal grouping, Maori people, 358n Jakarta Mandate, 494 Japan community quota-pooling system, 312 cooperatives, 679, 683 ecosystem-based management, 293 effect of exclusive economic zones, 114 fisheries management, 287–293 gender and fishing, 79 imports, 115 loggerhead turtles in, 198 snow crab fisheries, 291–293 Japan International Cooperation Agency, 440 Jeddah Convention, 434 Jordan, 426 jump-diffusion processes, 659 Kaitala-Munro argument, 654 Karun River, 428 kelp, 294 Kerala, India fisheries, 10–12 women in fisheries, 279 keystone predators, 142 Kirby, Michael, 402 Kirby Task Force on the Atlantic Fisheries, 402 Kiribati, 448 knowledge sharing, 488 Kobe Action Plan, 497 Korea, community quota system, 311 krill harvesting, 183 Kuwait fisheries, 431 fisheries research and management, 436–437 war and fisheries, 430 Kuznets curve, 69 Kyoto Protocol, 199, 231
Index labor costs, 26, 167 demand for, 268 effect of subsidies on, 361 emphasis in small-scale fisheries, 532 excessive and rent, 367 in principal-agent model, 566 sexual division, 278–279 underpaid, 77 lagoon systems, in West Africa, 258 land purchases, as conservation payments, 200 language barriers, 452 preciseness of, 596 leaded gasoline, phase-out, 201 learning role in management, 539 role of complexity, 596 leases as conservation payments, 200 negative effects, 16 in U.K., 376 leatherback sea turtles conservation, 201, 234, 235–236, 238 migration, 197 mortality, 195–196 nesting sites, 196–197, 232 legal agreements, 446 legal expertise, 488 levies, use in New Zealand, 351 Ley General de Pesca y Acuacultura (Chile), 324 licensing, 669. See also registration for access to exclusive economic zones, 444 buyback programs, 509–510, 553n in Canada, 405, 458–459, 462–463 in Chile, 328 in Iceland, 302, 304 in Japan, 288–289 limited entry, 399, 688, 701, 703–704 moratoria, 324, 391n retirement schemes, 406–407, 410 security of tenure, 400 for tuna fisheries, 698 in U.K., 376–377 life history stages, vulnerability to climate change, 126 life history traits, effect of exploitation on, 140 limited-access privilege programs, 383, 385, 551–552, 553n limited entry. See under licensing limited nontransferable and transferable permits, 314–315 ling, 216, 348 litigation, 307–308, 355 livelihoods approach, 540 Lloyd’s database of vessels, 31 loan guarantees, 104 lobster fisheries. See also rock lobster fisheries Canadian, 396, 399, 410 West African, 260–261 Yemeni, 440
Index local resource management, 247 loco fisheries, 324, 335n catch, 325, 326 recovery, 328 loggerhead turtles, 231 conservation, 235 population, 198 longline fishing bycatch, 153–154 of seabirds, 156 of turtles, 618 catch types, 151 controls, 708 effect on reefs, 221–222, 228 fleet communication, 160 gear description, 151 Hawaiian regulations, 201 of tuna, 706 loopholes, 452 access, 331 vessel size, 304–306 lumpy investments, 201 mackerel, 260, 361 stock health, 365 in U.K. fisheries, 371, 373 Magnuson-Stevens Act (U.S.), 173, 391n, 551 majority voting rule, 521 Malaysia aquaculture, 251 ecosystem-based management, 248 fisheries, 244 fisheries management organizations, 245 reduction of fishing capacity, 249 reporting of unregistered vessels, 250 trade disputes, 251 World Trade Organization policy, 109 management. See fisheries management management advisory committees, 688–689 system structure, 689–691 management strategy evaluation, 7, 589–590, 717–718 mangroves destruction of, 47, 69 effect of coastal development, 276 Indian, 275 in Southeast Asia, 252 Maori, 358n fishing claims, 350, 353, 354 maps, inclusion of coral reefs, 227 Marbank, 223 mariculture, 431. See also aquaculture Marine and Coastal Access Bill (U.K.), 377 Marine and Fisheries Agency (U.K.), 374 marine bioreserves, of India, 275 marine debris, 51 Marine Fisheries Resource Development Promotion Law (Japan), 289 Marine Mammal Protection Act, 235 marine mammals. See cetaceans
marine protected areas, 139, 155, 643–644 Indian, 283 in Japan, 290, 291 in Norway, 224–225 overreliance on, 500 small-scale fisheries and, 543 in West Africa, 262 marine reserves, 659 economics of, 660–663 migration of fish out of, 660 size of and optimal harvest, 661–662 switchable, 664 Marine Resources Assessment Group, 168 Marine Stewardship Council, 609, 611, 614 effectiveness of, 615 Maritime Zones Act (India), 283 market-based incentives, 161 for environmental protection, 619–620 to reduce illegal fishing, 176, 177 market-based management, 121, 199, 310, 390. See also economic instruments gradual implementation, 317–318 in U.S., 173 marketing, 67 role of ecolabeling, 611–612 women in, 278 market price support, 101 markets benefits of ecolabeling, 613 competition in local, 279 competition with nonseafood, 119 demand for sustainable products, 495 drivers of, 121 as drivers of management, 612 dynamics, 523 global, 113–114, 116–117 illicit, 174, 175, 176 integrated, 117 interdependence of, 485 local, 78 segmentation of, 118 for small-scale fisheries, 537 traditional, 113, 120 market signals, 508 mark-recapture techniques, 716 mass balance solution, 184 maturity, size and age at, 715 Mauritania, catch, 259 maximum economic yield, 341–342, 345 maximum likelihood estimation, 584 maximum sustainable yield, 151, 341, 583, 592n, 597, 640, 709 biomass and, 342 maximum sustained economic yield, 640–641 Mediterranean fisheries, 415 factors limiting efficient management, 419, 423–425 Mediterranean Sea, coral habitats, 216 Mekong River, 132
757
758
Index
Mekong River Commission, 81 Melanesia, culture, 197 meridional overturning circulation, 127 Mexico National Institute of Ecology, 210 National Institute of Fisheries, 212 sea turtle conservation, 235–238 vaquita conservation, 209, 212 Mifflin, Fred, 403 Mifflin Plan, 461 migrant labor, 75 migrant workers, 284 migration, fish, 45, 715 in models, 184 migratory species, 167, 245, 416, 419–420, 444, 648 management of, 486, 649 Millennium Development Goals, 265 mineral rights, in the U.S., 577–578 minimally realistic models, 183 Ministerial Conference on Fisheries Cooperation among African States Bordering the Atlantic Ocean, 269n Minister of Fisheries and Oceans (Canada), 398 minority rights, 79 misperceptions, 595, 604 mitigation measures, 231 mixed-use approaches, 14 models, 7, 290, 638 acceptance of data from, 344 of behavior, 566 boundaries of, 602–604 change in parameter values, 663 development and parameterization of structural, 589 fitting, 583–584 harvesting, 366–367 of marine reserves, 661–662 single-species and multispecies, 717 of species invasions, 569 steady-state management with stochastic variability, 599 of stock health, 366 testing, 603 uncertainty in, 643 modernization buyback programs and, 507 in Icelandic fisheries, 299, 305 in Indian fisheries, 11, 277, 279, 283–284 need for training, 435 in Saudi Arabia, 437 monitoring, 6–7, 94, 168, 521 capacity, 452 costs and benefits, 391 effect on illegal fishing, 265, 267 by fishers, 333 by fishers’ organizations, 330 inadequate, 54, 442 involvement of industry, 403 in Italy, 424 in models, 185 progress in Pacific tuna fisheries, 448
in Red Sea fisheries, 436 in rights-based management, 703–705 standardizing protocols, 333 systems for vessels, 159, 226–227 of voluntary compliance, 621 in West Africa, 263 monkfish, in U.K. fisheries, 371 monopoly power, 521 monsoons fish abundance and, 11 in Gulf of Oman, 428 role in Indian fisheries, 275 Montauk Tilefish Association, 623 Montreal Protocol, 199, 201, 231 moral hazards, 508, 515, 565, 570n discards and illegal fishing and, 568–569 effect on risk taking and safety, 568 moratoria. See also under licensing on commercial whaling, 9 Morocco, use of driftnets, 422 motivation, for self-regulation, 619 movement dynamics, information on, 715 MSX (multinucleated spore unknown), 127 multiannual guidance programs, 371, 418, 548 multibeam echo sounder, 219–220 multilateral agreements, 536–537, 619 Multiple Use Integrated Marine Management Plan, 295 Mumrinskiy, 174 mussels aquacultured, 61, 330 mutual vulnerability, 683 Myanmar aquaculture, 251 fisheries, 244 Namibia, monitoring program, 265 Nash equilibrium, 558 National Fishworkers Forum (India), 285 National Marine Fisheries Service (U.S.), 383 National Sea Products, 406 national wealth loss of, 37 world fisheries and, 4 National Welfare Fund (India), 283 natural barriers, breakdown of, 50 natural disasters management and, 250–251 vulnerability to, 253 natural resources property rights, 580 variability, 411 Nature Conservancy, 390 funding of buybacks, 514 negative shocks, sensitivity to and effects of, 661–663 New Atlantis concept, 89 New England buyback programs, 509 groundfish fishery, 388–389 stock conservation, 387 new primary production, 127
Index New Zealand, 322n characteristics of fisheries, 348–349 corporate governance in, 521 cost recovery programs, 350 exclusive economic zone, 6 fisheries management, 347–348, 354–355, 528, 687 involvement of stakeholders, 688, 691–694 private, 524 quota system, 694–695 political system, 355 sustainability of fisheries, 356 women in fishing, 76 New Zealand Seafood Industry Council, 695 Nigeria, migrant fishers, 268 noncooperative games, 649–650 nongovernmental organizations, 488, 495. See also environmental nongovernmental organizations nonlinearity, 89 nontarget species, conservation, 160 nonuse value, 9, 293, 527 North Atlantic Oscillation Index, 396 Northern Cod Adjustment and Recovery Plan, 406 northern cod fishery history, 10 sensitivity to climate, 126 Northern Ireland, fisheries management, 374 North Pacific fisheries, sustainability, 387 North Sea declining cod stocks, 173 fish stocks, 361 herring fishery closures, 376 whitefish stocks, 373 Norway cold-water coral reefs, 215–216, 218, 223–225, 227 development assistance project, 11 fisheries policy, 360 fishing capacity and vessel sizes, 361–362 important fish species, 361 moral hazards, 508 overcapacity, 268 performance of fisheries, 364–368 salmon fisheries, 65, 117, 222 subsidy reform, 108 total allowable catches, 362–364 women in fisheries management, 80 Norwegian Fishing Vessel Owners Association, 221 Norwegian Nature Conservation Act, 224 Norwegian Petroleum Activities Act, 223 Norwegian-Russian Fisheries Commission, 362 no-take zones, 291 Nova Scotia community-based management, 683 scallop fisheries, 523, 524 nutrient flows, in models, 184 observation error model, 717 observer programs, 6, 160, 161, 232, 448 onboard, 15, 162
ocean conveyor belt circulation, 55 oceanography, 49 ocean quahog, quota system, 552 ocean ranching, 62 ocean resources, application of principal-agent paradigm, 563 oceans acidification. See acidification changes in color, satellite measurement, 127 climate, 396 currents, 7 debate on health, 499–500 exploration, 43–44 relation to global economy, 54 restoring, 53–54 Oceans to Plate, 405 Ocean Trawlers company, 174 offer prices, 509 Office International des Epizooties, 245 oil exploration and production, 411 allocation of rights in, 573–577 costs of prorationing regulations, 575 effect on reefs, 222–223 oil pollution, 430 spills, 46 oil sardine, 11 Oman fisheries projects, 433 research and management, 437 traditional fisheries management, 435 onboard processing, 9 open access, 110n, 244, 400, 556, 572, 595, 682 in Chile, 324, 335 disputes, 580 in India, 284 in Mexico, 209 models of, 640 in oil exploration and production, 573–574, 576 in Red Sea fisheries, 434 small-vessel loophole, 304 subsidies and, 105 in West Africa, 262, 263 operating costs, 167, 211 in Indian fisheries, 284 opportunity cost, 211 optimum yield, 384 orange roughy, 170, 348 stock health, 349 stock management in Australia, 340 oreos, 348 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 121, 322n, 489 approach to policy development, 312–313 promotion of economic instruments, 320 research activities, 493–494 organized crime involvement in illegal fishing, 171, 174, 177
759
760
Index
outliers, in capacity estimates, 549 outsourcing, 351–352 overcapacity, 32, 265, 435, 485, 514, 595, 638, 710–711 addressing in Southeast Asia, 249 buyback programs and, 507 capacity estimates and, 549 employment and, 379 fishing mortality and, 700 generation of conflict, 400 global, 498 high-seas, 319 illegal fishing and, 166–167 improvements and quotas, 318 migration of, 498 in Norway, 268 in Pacific fisheries, 444, 448 reasons for, 644 role of subsidies, 33–35, 99, 361 in small-scale fisheries, 542 sustained, 600 in U.S., 382, 386–387 in West Africa, 263 overcapitalization, 421 incentives for, 459 overfishing, 3, 47, 51, 165, 638, 640 in Australia, 339, 340–345 biodiversity and, 140–141 biological and economic, 365 biological health and, 20 of cod, 10, 300 economic, 268 economic factors, 265 effects of management on, 7, 390, 644 emergence of concerns about, 646 as function of mortality, 582 in Gulf of California, 208 institutionalized, 497 lack of property rights and, 551 mandate to prevent, 12 recovery from, 142 of Red Sea fisheries, 430, 434 relationship to overcapacity, 601 role of subsidies, 6, 99 root causes, 263 of snow crab, 291 statistics, 21 of tuna, 151, 444 in U.S., 382, 384–385, 387 in West Africa, 261, 263 of whitefish, 373 overgrazing, 578, 598 overharvesting. See overfishing overhead costs, 167 overinvestment, 106, 421 incentives to avoid, 145 ownership, duration, 313 oysters decline and habitat degradation, 190 effect of climate on farmed, 127
Pacific cod market changes, 117, 118 Pacific Fisheries Inquiry, 402 Pacific Fisheries Licensing Board, 402 Pacific Halibut Commission, 668–669 Pacific Integrated Commercial Fisheries Initiative, 464 Pacific Island countries, 450 effort creep, 452 traditional fisheries, 533 tuna fisheries, 444 women in fishing, 76 Pacific Island Forum Fisheries Agency, 454n Pacific oyster, effect of climate change, 127 Pacific Policy Roundtable, 461 Pacific salmon, cooperative management, 650, 651 Pacific Salmon Revitalization Plan, 461 Pacific Salmon Treaty, 465, 467n packaging, market expansion and, 117 panga fishing, 207 illegal, 210 pangasius catfish, disputes, 251 Papua New Guinea, 455n parameter estimation for harvest control rules, 586 in stock assessments, 584 parameters, choice of, 591 parasites effect of climate change on, 127 transfer from aquaculture, 68–69 Paretian analysis, 525 Parties to the Nauru Agreement, 446 partition function games, 561 partnerships associations, 268 in Canadian fisheries management, 403–404 right to enter, 452 Patagonian toothfish, 170 pattern-matching heuristics, 596 peak-to-peak approach, 548 Pearse, Peter, 402 Pelagic Fish Assessment Survey of the North Arabian Sea, 433 pelagic species African regulations, 261–262 assumption of catch per unit effort, 638 catch, 21 difficulty of studying, 47 stock health in U.K. fisheries, 373 targeted by small-scale fisheries, 533 in West African fisheries, 260 penalties, 377 for illegal fishing, 167, 170 for poaching, 330 performance-based voluntary actions, 620–621 permits, value of, 211 permit stacking, 551 Persian Gulf, 427 oceanography, 428 Peru fishery, efficiency gains, 37
Index petroleum-based fuels, pollution from, 46 Philippines aquaculture, 251 ecosystem-based management, 248 fisheries, 244 reporting of unregistered vessels, 250 women in fishing, 75 physical environment. See also climate change challenges to management, 250–251, 639 Pinal, Rene, 237, 238n pirate fishing. See IUU fishing place-based management, 53 plaice, in U.K. fisheries, 371 planetary motion, 124 plankton, biomass declines, 127–128 plastics, pollution, 51 platforms, effect on marine ecosystems, 50 poaching, 174, 175 seafood imports from, 176 in territorial use rights fisheries, 330 polar regions, effect of climate change, 127 pole-and-line vessels, 151 policy, 16, 543, 634 analyzing sensitivity, 603 coherence, 494, 498, 499 communicating insights, 597 consideration of complexity, 603 consideration of fishing communities, 384 development, 383, 453 divergent, 485 ecosystem-based management and, 96 engagement of experts, 492 failures and management success, 498 feedbacks, 596 focuses of, 382–383, 677–678 impetus for, 595 implementation, 495, 496–497 implications of assessment error, 602 importance of fishery characteristics in, 423 information for determining, 145, 403, 422, 496 integration in small-scale fisheries, 537 interface with science, 93–94 international and subsidies, 99–100 international obligations, 500 in management of small-scale fisheries, 536–537 models to evaluate, 184 objectives, 187, 435 optimal, 569 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development approach, 312–313 research, 501 routine review of, 344 separation from management, 350 as subsidies, 34, 101 political conflict, effect on fisheries, 430 political costs, 16 political support, 450 actions to build, 574 politics, 285
pollution, 20, 44, 50–51, 626n, 639 oil, 46, 430 from shipwrecking, 276 vaquita mortality and, 208 pool externality, 527 population, human growth, 52, 259 and habitat degradation in India, 276 population biology, 638 population biomass, 714 population dynamics, of sea turtles, 198 population models, 190 Porcupine Sea Bight, 221 port inspection programs, 159 ports construction, 103 development in India, 276 restricted access to U.S., 173 Portugal misreporting of catch, 173 women in fish processing, 73 postrelease survival rates, 152 poverty, 12, 74, 533, 537, 673 co-management as a tool against, 676 conflict and, 267 governance and, 268 illegal fishing and, 170 overexploitation and, 263 in Southeast Asia, 247 strategies that consider, 265 as target of Indian fisheries management, 282 Powell River Symposium, 349 prawn fishery Australian, 340 buybacks in, 517n precautionary approach, 467n, 536–537, 591 economically motivated, 642–643 precipitation, changes with climate change, 124 predator-prey models, 183, 184 predator-prey relationships, 141, 147n predators biomass, 21–22 keystone, 142 removal of, 150 predictability, reduced, 89 price support, 34 Prigogine, Elia, 89 primary producers, 49 principal-agent problem, 563–564, 569–570 principal-agent theory, 564–565 application to fisheries, 566–569 priorities, 13–14, 418, 420, 541 setting, 492–495 prisoner’s dilemma, 557, 650 privatization, 317 procedural principles, 92 processing cooperatives, 388 in Iceland, 300
761
762 processing (continued) industry, 78 small-scale fisheries and, 538 women in, 73, 77–79 producer organizations, 375 product certification, 609, 632–633 product endorsement programs choosing, 609–610, 615–616 product introductions, 118 production of Australian fisheries, 338 costs, 66 development of fishing capacity and, 31–33 fluctuations, 123 fuel costs and, 27–28 global trends, 23–24 of Indian fisheries, 279–280 modeling, 184, 640 sustainability of growth, 65–66 threats to, 126 trade and, 114–116 traditional versus modern, 280 of U.K. fisheries, 372 value and fish prices, 25–26 production function, 640 productivity biological, 49, 718 fish, harvest rates and, 142 marine, in Shiretoko World Heritage Site, 294 ocean, 48 stock, 140 profitability buyback programs and, 508 effect of subsidies, 105–106 as focus of policy, 360, 365 production and, 65–66 social acceptability, 15 profits, effect of reserves on, 661 property rights, 14, 673 co-management and, 682–683 economic theory of, 669 exclusive economic zones and, 5–6 fairness, 16 issues in cod fishery, 10 private, 666, 667–668, 683 protected areas establishing, 162 size and effectiveness, 54 protected species, 146 protectionism, 116 protection stocks, 583, 591 public benefits, versus private, 4, 14–15 public goods, 4, 14, 202n, 310 buybacks and, 516 sea turtle biodiversity as, 232 purchase prices, in buybacks, 511 purse seines backdown maneuver, 158 bycatch and, 153–154 capacity, 451, 700
Index description, 151 fisheries, 707, 708–709 well capacity, 710 Qatar, research and management, 437 quantitative stock assessment models, assumptions of, 714 quota hopping, 378, 379 quota management system in New Zealand, 347, 349, 351, 691–694, 694 quotas, 669, 670. See also specific types of quotas allocation, 349, 363–364, 420, 421. See also allocation caps on holding, 318 for cod, 362–363 in Europe, 374 fixed, 379 holders, groups for co-management, 679 international, 319, 363 introduction in Iceland, 299, 301–302 litigation concerning, 307–308 maximization of net present values and, 671 monitoring compliance, 704 registry of, 351 tied to buybacks, 510 trading, 189, 378, 379 transferability, 378 value of, 672–673 in West Africa, 263 race for fish, 312, 376, 421, 459, 517, 572 eliminating, 641, 642 incentives, 523 in North Pacific, 387 ranching, land rights, 578 range land, rights, 578 Rastrelliger research vessel, 437 ratings systems, 609 recreational fishers participation in management, 390 power in New Zealand, 693 reaction to quotas, 353 recreational fishing in Canada, 458 in Italy, 417 salmon restrictions, 467n in U.S., 382 recruitment, 714–715 redfish, 216, 217 Red Sea, 426 commercial fish species, 430 fisheries development projects, 440–441 fisheries employment, 428–429 fisheries management, 429, 435–440, 438 length of coastline for countries along, 427 organizational structures, 438–439 overexploitation, 434 physical oceanographical features, 428 red sea urchins fisheries, management, 526 reflagging. See flags of convenience
Index Regime for Benthic Exploitation, 328 Regional Commission for Fisheries, 431, 434, 438, 439, 441 Regional Fisheries Committee for the Gulf of Guinea, 267, 269n regional fisheries management organizations, 446, 489. See also names of organizations accountability, 497 bycatch reduction initiatives, 157, 159–161 challenges of, 171–172 councils in U.S., 382 improving, 501 invitation and motivation of members, 653–655 list of, 497 management of straddling stocks, 651–652 participants, 496 in the Red Sea area, 438 for tuna fisheries, 699–701 use of scientific data, 162 Regional Fishery Survey and Development Project (Gulfs Project), 432–433 Regional Organization for the Conservation of the Environment of the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, 434 registration, 703. See also licensing importance in buyback programs, 509 maintenance of registers, 704 in Norway, 364 regulation as driver of business practices, 623 perceived need for, 177n trade effects and, 107 regulatory threat, 620, 624 relative abundance, 715 relative payment contracts, 566 relative stability principle, 380n release practices, 156 religion gender roles and, 79 role in traditional management, 262 rent, 36, 38, 110n, 303, 322n, 369n, 467n, 661 allocating, 527 conditions of optimal, 367 dissipation, 459, 522, 523, 573 effect of reserves on, 664 losses and transferable quotas, 522–524 maximizing, 365, 524, 574 negative, 105 resource, 672 sustainable, 640 in territorial use rights fisheries, 333 rent seeking, 435, 672 incentives to eliminate, 522 principal-agent problem and, 564 repeated games, 560 reputation, role in voluntary participation, 622 research, 49 in developing countries, 439–440 and fishers’ organizations in Japan, 291 importance of statistics to, 35
763
on pelagic animals, 47 in Red Sea countries, 436 in U.K., 374–375 research vessels, 439, 441 resilience, 94, 129, 130, 536, 543, 650, 663 effect of subsidies, 108 food web changes and, 140 of marine reserves, 659 resource conditions, inclusion in capacity estimates, 549 resource limits, adapting to, 597–599 resource management fisheries, in Japan, 288 resource recovery, buybacks and, 551 retail chains, effect on supply chain development, 119–120 revelation principle, 565, 570n revenue distribution, 410 forgone as subsidy, 104 in models, 640, 644 of Norwegian fisheries, 362 range of, 6 wages as share of, 566 reverse auctions, 512, 513 reversibility of effects of overfishing, 140 loss of, 89 Reykjavik Declaration on Sustainable Fisheries, 143 rice paddies, 275 rights, 7–8, 110n, 313, 424, 542–543. See also property rights; territorial use rights allocating, 319 ambiguous, 653, 654 benefits of private use, 672–673 collective, 652 economic analysis and, 528–529 economic efficiency and, 673 equitable access, 262 importance of defining, 354 as incentive for investment, 572 in Japan, 287, 288–289 litigation, 307 ownership, 376, 444, 669 perspective in Mexico, 209–210 protection and community well-being, 254 redefinition, 528 security limits, 390 stakeholder involvement and, 689–690 of states to develop, 451–452 territorial, 287 transferable quotas and, 349 undermining of traditional, 38 varying approaches to implement, 318 women’s, 81 rights-based management, 15, 378, 410, 572, 639. See also individual transferable quotas development in U.S., 385 importance of industry support, 670 of sedentary resources, 422–423 in Southeast Asia, 249–250
764 rights-based management (continued) in tuna fisheries, 701–702 in U.S., 383, 387–389 risk assessment in ecolabeling programs, 615–616 use in Australian fisheries, 340 risk management, 523, 631 ritualism, 262 rivers constructions, 295 vulnerability to climate change, 132 Rockefeller Foundation, xi rock lobster fisheries illegal fishing, 178 in New Zealand, 692, 693, 694–695 quota holder associations, 351 roe herring fishery, management, 526 Round Table on Sustainable Development, 171 Royal Institute of International Affairs, 171 rules, institution, 677 runoff, agricultural, 51 Russia illegal fishing, 175–176 total allowable catch negotiations, 362 trawlers, 297n sacred fishing grounds, 262 safety costs, 167 moral hazards and, 568 quota systems and, 670 saithe, 361, 365 salinity, cod populations and, 132 salmon aquaculture, 68–69, 117, 222 Pacific, 394, 397–398, 458 processing, 67 production and price, 64 salmon fisheries Canada-U.S. agreements, 384 economic state, 466 management in Canada, 459–464, 463–464 policy response to stock status, 404 stock assessments, 458 sanctions, 563 sandeel fisheries, in Japan, 289–291 sardinellas, 260 sardines, 11, 260 satellite technologies, 46–48 Saudi Arabia, 426, 427 fisheries, 431 fisheries projects, 433–434 fisheries research and management, 437–438 Savoie, Donald, 404 scale, co-management and, 680–681 scallop fisheries, 354 in New Zealand, 351 techniques to maximize yield, 523 technology investment, 524 Schaefer equation. See catch-effort equation
Index scholarship programs, 197 science interface with policy, 93–94 scientific data, 634 acceptance of and adherence to, 291, 443, 448, 588, 591 collection, 375 lack of, 144, 263–264 policy and, 145, 403, 422, 496, 602 shared, 295 source of, 501 use of, 384 scientists, 488 in fisheries management, 496 relationships with fishers, 344, 694 training, 434, 441 Scotland fisheries management, 374, 379 fishing fleet, 371 Sea Around Us Project, 169 seabed habitats, 373, 718 effect of gear on, 720 seabed mapping, 227 seabirds avoidance, 153, 159 bycatch and gear, 154, 156 sea courts, 11 sea cucumbers, stock depletion, 440 sea fisheries committees (U.K.), 374 Seafish Industry Authority, 375 seafood competition as a food source, 115 consumption, 60 preferences, 118, 119 demand, 23–24, 47, 166–167 ecolabeling, 161 mislabeling, 159 percentage of supply as aquaculture, 60 safety, 120–121 standardization, 119 seafood industry, 36 consumer companies, 119–120 vessel ownership by, 364 Seafood Industry Council, 351, 355 seafood processing. See processing sea grass, 52 habitats in Southeast Asia, 252 sea level rise, 53 sea lice, 68–69, 464 sea lions, strategies to protect, 590 seasonal bans, in India, 12 sea surface temperature, 48, 124–125, 639 sea turtles. See also leatherback sea turtles bycatch, 198–199, 201–202, 623 avoidance, 153, 159, 160 and gear, 154, 156 conservation, 53, 251 investment by fishers, 236–238 cultural significance and status, 618 effect of artificial light, 52
Index egg harvesting, 195, 196 nest protection, 201–202, 231, 234 threats to, 233–234 sedimentation, gear and, 141 self-declaration labeling systems, 610 self-governance, 357, 522, 535, 619. See also voluntary approaches of clam fisheries, 423 contracts, 527 economic analysis, 525–526, 528–529 reducing rent dissipation, 523 under unanimous consent, 526 self-policing, industry, 155, 160 Selligrunnen Reef, 219, 224 Senegal, migrant fishers, 268 sentinel fisheries, 403 sexual maturation, effect of exploitation on, 140 share contracts, 566–567 shared resources, 4, 54, 415 Barents Sea and North Sea, 361 characteristics of, 6 conservation of, 202 costs and benefits, 38 incentives to maximize value, 527 management, 264–265, 440, 444, 451, 486, 639, 648–651, 656 in Mediterranean fisheries, 419–420 negotiations with U.S., 384 overview, 648 small-scale fisheries considerations, 538 strategic behavior and, 556, 561 sharing games, 560 sharks bycatch and gear, 154, 156 finning and mortality, 159 illicit markets, 174 overexploitation, 434 shellfish. See also common names of shellfish African regulations, 262 in Canadian fisheries, 393–394, 396–397, 409–410 overrepresentation in self-governance case studies, 354 in U.K. fisheries, 371 shipbreaking yards, in India, 276 shipbuilding, material costs, 27 ships, effect on marine ecosystems, 50 Shiretoko World Heritage Site, 294–297 shrimp aquaculture pollution, 69 decreased catch during wars, 430 fisheries in Canada, 396, 397 fisheries in Mexico, 210, 211 fisheries in West Africa, 260–261 Indian exports, 281 production and price, 63–64 trawling in Gulf of California, 207 side payments, 200, 574, 577, 650, 652, 657n signaling, 569–570 simplification, problems of, 602–603 single-species management, 8
765
sinks, 199, 231 size at maturity, 715 skipjack tuna, 444 exploitation of, 699 small island developing states, 448 small-scale fisheries, 532–533, 543 aspects of scale considerations, 538 engagement of stakeholders in management, 539 history of management, 534–535 management approaches and issues, 536 management objectives, 540–541 smuggling, 173 in the Caribbean, 175 snappers, stock depletion, 349 snow crab, 396 catch, 291–292 fisheries in Japan, 291–293 survey, 403 social benefits, of subsidies, 107–108 social capital, 355 social costs, 16 social equity, trade-off with economic efficiency, 332 social issues in fisheries management, 516, 535–536, 538 inclusion of, 632 social justice, 303 social sciences, interface with natural sciences, 93 social scientists, 488 social support, 634 socioeconomic issues, 265, 267–268. See also poverty sockeye salmon, 398 stock declines, 459 software, for stock assessments, 584 sole, in U.K. fisheries, 371 sole owners, 525, 529, 556 solid waste pollution, 51 Solomon Islands conservation in, 197, 200, 238 Somalia, 434 sonar, 47, 720 South America. See also names of countries aquaculture volume, 63 effect of climate change on fisheries, 132 fish demand, 24 women in fisheries, 76, 77, 79 Southeast Asia. See also names of countries community-based management, 247–248 ecosystem status, 251–252 fisheries, 243 fisheries management, 245–248 food expenditures, 121 fuel costs and management, 252–253 rights-based systems, 249–250 trade agreements, 251 Southern Ocean, ecosystem models, 183 South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organization, 656 Spain effect of exclusive economic zones on, 114 misreporting of catch, 173
766
Index
spatial integration, 488 Spatial Multispecies Operating Model, 183 spawning biomass, 130, 582, 586, 659 recruitment and, 714–715 spawning potential ratio, 586 special protection areas, 377 Species at Risk Act (Canada), 467n species interactions, 8 spillover, of fish from marine reserves, 660, 663 sponges, exploitation of, 223 sports fisheries, 533 sports fishing, 166 St. John’s Conference, 494 stability, management, 652 stage games, 560 stakeholders, 146 allocating rights among multiple, 94–95 buy-in, 317 in Chilean fisheries, 327–328 conflict among, 16, 500 consultation with, 690–691 empowerment, 538 involvement, 403, 695 in management, 293, 675–676, 687–689 in policy, 355 and rights context, 689 relationships among, 347 representation in co-management, 681–682 resistance to market-based tools, 310 strategic effects, 559 unity in representation, 690 status quo strategy, 188 steady-state management with assessment error, 601–602 stochastic variation in, 599 steelhead salmon, 467n stochastic production frontier, 548 stock assessments, 333, 403, 523, 568–569, 638, 714, 717 in Australia, 339 errors, 10, 601–602, 642–643 information and investments, 598 in models, 185 overview of methods, 583–585 of Pacific salmon, 458 parameter estimation, 584 problems of, 7 in product certification programs, 613–614 in Red Sea fisheries, 431, 437, 440 stock biomass, 140, 568 stock collapse, 129, 290, 296 in Chile, 324 cod, 393, 394 failure to follow scientific recommendations and, 591 herring, 361 predictions, 13–14 salmon, 464 storage and preservation technologies, 113–114 effect on trade, 116
Strait of Hormuz, 427, 428 strategic behavior basic concepts, 557–558 in fisheries, 556–557 models, 560–561 stratification, in capacity estimates, 549 structured decision making, 630, 631 structure quotas, 363 submersible technologies, 46 Sub Regional Fisheries Commission, 267, 269n Sub-regional Fisheries Training Center Project, 432 subsidiarity, principle of, 356 subsidies, 6, 20, 265, 319 in Australia, 341 categorizing, 101–102 for clam restocking, 423 defining, 100–102 effects, 105–108, 106, 107, 361 estimates, 102–103 evaluation of, 38 fuel, 27, 252 illegal fishing and, 168 included in Doha Round, 100 Indian, 282–283 of new capacity, 598 for northern cod fisheries, 10 in Norway, 360 problems of quantifying, 100–105 purposes and history of, 99 reforming, 108–109, 109–110 role in overcapacity, 33–35 small-scale fisheries and, 537 social dimension, 107–108 transparency, 103, 110 U.S., 386 at various governance levels, 105 subsistence fishing, 258, 533 in Sudan, 438 substantial principles, 92 Sudan, 426, 427 development projects, 439 fisheries, 438 Suez Canal, 426 Sula Reef complex, 215–216 Summit on Human Environment, 88 supermajority voting, 521 supermarket chains effect on aquaculture, 67 effect on trade, 114 seafood labeling, 160 supply chain, 66–67 changes in, 114 effect of international trade on, 251 opportunities for women, 82 retail chains and, 119–120 surfclam fishery, quota system, 552 surimi, 118, 122n suripera nets, 212 surveillance, 6. See also monitoring
Index suspension feeders, 218 sustainability, 265, 293, 297, 690 assessments, 161, 162 of bycatch species, 160 of Canadian fisheries, 406 of Chilean fisheries, 327 demands for, 160 functions linked to, 490 harvest and, 142, 365 mortality and, 140 need for international guidelines, 161 of New Zealand fisheries, 355 obstacles to, 16 of Pacific tuna fisheries, 448 as a priority, 13 in Southeast Asia, 253 subsidies and, 33, 109 varying interpretations, 609 sustainability science, 89 sustainable development, 88, 490 in Australia, 339, 341 Sustainable Development Strategy for the Seas of East Asia, 246 Sustainable Fisheries Act (U.S.), 580 Sustainable Fisheries Resolution, 499 sustainable livelihoods approach, 265 Sustainable Slopes Program, 624 sustainable yields, maintaining, 129 sustained management stocks, 583 swordfish, 416 system noise, in capacity estimates, 549 systems analysis, 630 taboos, 262 tagging, 47 Taiwan, illicit markets, 175 target species, 8, 162 expansion, 21 management of, 293, 582 of small-scale fisheries, 533 taxes, 15, 202n, 332, 529, 672 to address bycatch, 199, 618 in Chile, 329 exemptions from, 34, 103, 104 favorable policies, 386 to fund conservation, 200–201, 232, 238 for funding buybacks, 514, 515 tax rate, 568 technical expertise, 488, 496–497 technological coefficient, 32 technology, 20, 46–48 advancement in West African fisheries, 260 in aquaculture, 66 consequences of, 647 effect on environment, 719 effect on fish stocks, 668, 669, 699 effect on productivity, 27 fisheries employment and, 30 investment, 524
in Japan, 290 obstacles to new, 293 storage and preservation, 113–114 transfer, 268, 485 telecommunication companies, funding conservation, 237 temperature. See also sea surface temperature maturation and, 130 tenure systems, traditional, 335 terrestrial drivers, of marine ecosystem decline, 5 territorial use rights, 249, 314–315, 320, 701 benefit distribution, 329 in Chile, 324, 326–327, 335n conservation and, 334 costs, 332 sedentary species and, 417 Thailand aquaculture, 251 closures of fisheries, 249 fisheries, 244 fisheries management organizations, 245 trade disputes, 251 wages of fishers, 30 thermal stratification, 127 Tigris River, 428 tilapia, production in Egypt, 64 tilefish fisheries (in U.S.), 526 total allowable catch, 189, 289, 297, 521 in Canada, 399 caps on aggregate, 389 determining, 362–363, 380n, 642–643 economic effects, 105 in Iceland, 302–303 negative effects, 421 in New Zealand, 349, 358n in Norway, 363–364 optimal, 522 self-determined, 525 stock biomass and, 361 for tuna fisheries, 700 in U.K., 374, 375–376 in West Africa, 263 total allowable effort, 289 totoaba, 45, 207 bycatch of vaquita in fishery for, 205 tourism in Gulf of California area, 207 in India, 276 in Japan, 295 whale watching, 9 traceability, 67, 120, 173, 424, 611 trade documentation, 159, 172 factors causing increased, 113–114 international, 4, 23–24 effect on West African fisheries, 259 growth of, 114 measures to combat illegal fishing, 168 production and, 114–116
767
768 trade (continued) safety as a barrier to, 121 small-scale fisheries and, 537 trade agreements, in Southeast Asia, 251 traditional knowledge, 678 tragedy of the commons, 172, 335, 551, 572, 595, 666, 682 transactional sex, 78 transaction costs, 526, 529 transboundary resources. See shared resources transferability, 301, 302, 313, 314, 378, 400, 521, 551, 701, 702 enhancing, 379 in limited-entry systems, 703 problems with grandfathering and, 303 in quota systems, 704 transfer efficiency, 128 transfer rates, variable, 664 transition periods, in fisheries, 550 transparency in ecolabeling programs, 614, 616 of funding sources, 498 transportation costs, 117 effect on trade, 114, 116–117 local markets and, 279 market access and, 115 Trawler Development Fund (India), 282 trawling, 44, 47 bycatch of vaquita, 205 destruction of reefs, 215, 220–221, 227 fuel costs of, 721 in Gulf of California, 207 habitat destruction, 51, 720 introduction in India, 283–284 in Japan, 291 optimal effort, 186 prohibitions in West Africa, 269n treaties, international law, 653 trophic cascades, 140 tropics, special management problems in, 198–199 Truman Proclamation, 668 tsunami of 2004, 253 tuna. See also common names of species boycott, 622, 626n bycatch of undersized, 154, 156 catch, 698–699, 705–706 catch methods, 151 export value, 151 overexploitation, 710 prices and illegal fishing, 170 processing, 78, 80 stock status, 698–699 in West African fisheries, 260 tuna fisheries African regulations, 262 cooperative management, 444 international management, 699–701 regional management organizations, 497, 498
Index Turkey, use of driftnets, 422 turtle excluder devices, 719 turtle grass, 52 turtles. See leatherback sea turtles; sea turtles tusk, 216, 217 twines, high-performance, 721 unanimous consent, 526 uncertainty, 496 about catch, 568–569 addressing, 602, 639 behavioral, 189 in management, 539 in models, 184, 589, 643 quantifying in stock assessments, 584 sources of, 35 types, 642 underwater cameras, 720 underwater setting chutes, 153 unemployment insurance, 407, 410 unintentional harvest. See bycatch United Kingdom characteristics of fisheries, 371–373 fisheries management, 373–375, 378 fishing disputes with Iceland, 300 importance of fishing, 370 Overseas Development Agency, 439 seafood market, 120 total allowable catch, 375–376 United Nations, 492. See also Convention on the Law of the Sea Agreement for the Conservation and Management of Straddling Fish Stocks and Highly Migratory Fish Stocks, 6 Conference on the Law of the Sea, 647 Environment Program, 496 Fishing Stocks Agreement, 142, 167, 245, 651, 653 implementation, 451–452 Fish Stocks Conference, 651 funding of Red Sea fisheries projects, 433 Millennium Development Goals, 74 Omnibus Resolution on Oceans and the Law of the Sea, 494 Open-Ended Informal Consultative Process on Oceans and the Law of the Sea, 171 Resolution on Sustainable Fisheries, 144 ruling of Human Rights Committee, 307–308 Summit on Human Environment, 88 United States buybacks, 550–551 catch ranking, 382 Commission on Ocean Policy, 385 control of illegal fishing, 173 economic performance of fisheries, 390 exclusive economic zone, 386 fisheries as government property, 668 fisheries management, 383–385, 528 fishing capacity assessments, 546
Index imports, 115 incentive payments, 622 limited-access privilege programs, 551–552 National Marine Fisheries Service, 235, 237 oil rights, 573–574, 576 rights to resources, 577–579 trade disputes, 251 women in fisheries, 75, 80 unit formation, 575–576 universality, loss of, 89 upwelling, 11 along west coast of India, 275 in Gulf of Aden, 426–427 Red Sea, 428 in West African fisheries, 258 urban areas, coastal management in, 252 urbanization, in the Red Sea region, 431 utopia, 88, 97n vaquita bycatch of, 208 conservation of, 208–209, 212 discovery and decline, 205–207 variable-dimension in model, 663 vegetable meal, 67–68 vessels. See also decommissioning blacklisting, 171, 172, 173 capacity, 32, 304–306, 376, 452, 454–455n, 549, 703, 708, 710 catch limits, 314–315 communication among, 155 conflict between owners and crew, 563 construction subsidies, 107–108 coordination, 444 depressed profit margins and reinvestment, 32 development of fleets, 30–31 disclosure of information by environmental groups, 176 dynamic of fleets in models, 185 effect of buyback programs on, 507–508 efficiency of, 367 fuel efficiency, 721 multipurpose, 417 numbers of, 30 ownership issues, 364, 566 permits in Mexico, 210 permit stacking, 551 quotas, 363 reconversion allowances, 422 reflagging, 168, 703–704 registration, 167, 168 research, 375, 439, 441 restrictions, 7, 321 restructuring programs, 379 reuse of bought back, 510 fleet size in U.K., 371 types, 260, 277, 534 unregulated fishing, 653 Viarsa 1, 165
769
Vietnam aquaculture, 251 fisheries, 244 fisheries management, 247 reduction of fishing capacity, 249 reporting of unregistered vessels, 250 trade disputes, 251 wages of fishers, 30 voluntary approaches, 693, 694–695 design issues, 619–621 factors in success of, 621, 625 group-based, 621, 623 targets for, 621 volunteerism, 291 wages, 77. See also income as share of revenue, 566 of women in fishing, 79 Wales fisheries management, 374 fishing fleet, 371 walleye pollock, 296–297 wars, effect on fisheries, 430 weak-stock management, 590 welfare effects, 569 well capacity, 710 well volume, 708 Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission, 443, 454, 652, 699–701 developing constituency, 453 management outcomes, 446–450 membership, 454n seabird policies, 159 Western Pacific Fishery Management Council, 235 wetlands, Indian, 274 Wetlands Mitigation Banking (U.S.), 200, 231 Wetlands Reserve Program (U.S.), 622 whales conservation, 8–10, 624 mortality, 154 whaling, methods and history, 8–9 whitefish changes in market, 117 consumer preferences, 118 fisheries in U.K., 373 whiting, Canada-U.S. agreements, 384 Wiener diffusion process, 661 windborne nutrients, 127 wind power, 721 women in fisheries management, 80–81 in fishing, 74–77 in fish processing, 77–79 inclusion in development plans, 283 in Indian fisheries, 278–279, 284–285 role in fishing communities, 16 role in fish supply, 72 in West African fisheries, 260 Work in Fishing Convention, 39n
770
Index
World Bank, 498 subsidies review, 38 world population, 3 World Summit on Sustainable Development, 20, 100, 143, 494 World Trade Organization, 490, 495 Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures, 100 Doha Round, 100 fisheries subsidies, 109–110 World Tuna Purse-Seine Organization, 160 World Wide Fund for Nature, 99 World Wildlife Fund, 171
Yangtze River dolphin, 207, 210 Yaquina Bay, fisheries management, 526 yellowfin tuna, 444 conservation, 450 exploitation of, 699 yellowtail, Canada-U.S. agreements, 384 Yemen, 426, 427 ban on commercial fishing, 429, 435 cooperatives, 436 fisheries, 438 population, 442n yield-per-recruit analysis, 584