of at least passing interest to recreational fishermen:


Wall Street Journal

REVIEW & OUTLOOK

Save the Fish

November 14, 2006; Page A20

We like fish. They're tasty, good for you and catching them is good
sport. We'd hate to see them disappear from the Earth's waters in our
lifetime, as a recent meta-analysis in Science magazine suggested could
occur. The four-page paper looked at trends across various regions from
different sources and concluded that if present trends continued, the
total collapse of fisheries around the world could occur by 2048.

Now, extrapolation of any trend far enough into the future can bring
surprising results (remember Dow 36,000?). And at least one professor
of marine sciences has called this particular extrapolation
"mind-bogglingly stupid." But it's certainly true that some fisheries
are overtaxed. And while the problem is worse in the developing world
than in First World countries, we in the West have not exactly
perfected the art of fisheries management. No one believes that cows
are going extinct any time soon, and chickens seem safe. So what's the
problem with fish?

Well, unlike domesticated animals, no one owns them. Government
programs to set catch limits and so reduce fishing effort are a
constant source of friction with fishermen, who are always pushing for
higher limits than regulators feel are advisable. It's not that
fishermen want to decimate their cash crop. But the system is set up to
encourage them to push for whatever they can get, now. There's a better
way.

Iceland has saved its fishing industry by adopting a system of
individual, tradeable quotas. It's not quite the same as owning the
fish, but it's probably as close as you can get short of starting a
fish farm. The quotas are an asset that can be bought and sold, and
their value is dependent on the viability of the fishery, so they give
fishermen a direct financial stake in sustaining the fishery. It also
takes the hair-pulling out of the current frequent negotiations between
regulators and fishermen over where to set the limits for a given year
or several years.

The current U.S. law on fisheries management expires this year and must
be renewed. This has occasioned a resumption of the same old fight,
with fishermen demanding that certain rules be relaxed and
environmentalists pushing for a tightening of the restrictions. Why not
instead sell the fisheries to the fishermen? Set the quotas at a
reasonable level, and let the fishermen themselves decide in whose
hands they're worth the most.

For some, this will serve as a buyout program; they will sell their
quotas and retire. We suppose the environmentally minded might even be
willing to purchase some quotas and keep them. This could be expensive,
but if they're right about the need to reduce fishing in a particular
fishery, sitting on a quota they've purchased could prove a sound
investment over time. Nor are tradeable quotas merely a libertarian
fantasy; groups like Environmental Defense have also come out in favor
of them.

The alternative, as three decades of command-and-control fisheries
management has shown, is a tragedy of the commons on the high seas. We
don't expect to see the last fish hauled from the ocean, whatever the
models may say. But there's no question the world could be doing a
better job managing that resource. The need to reauthorize the current
law offers an opportunity for rights-based reform.

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