Fisheries Policies Essay, Research Paper

Policy instruments in the fishery sector come under two general headings, ones that are encouraging capital investment and greater catches and those acting against overcapitalisation and overcapacity trying to reduce catches. Control of fishing effort has been the major problem in fisheries management since the mass mechanisation of the worlds fishing fleets after World War two and there have been large volumes of work dedicated to the reduction of fishing effort and attaining the holy grail of “sustainable” fisheries. Fishing effort can be controlled using several different methods coming under many different guises, but all fundamentally aim for a reduction in fish catches through monetary or physical means.

The use of tax to reduce effort is based on adding an extra cost to the fisherman. Hence curtailing the amount of fishing pressure he can apply on a fish stock, by reducing his profit and lowering his returns for every extra unit of effort added, in effect reducing his net income.

The main criticisms for the use of taxation in the controlling of fishing pressure are its slowness to be implemented, its associated political problems and its inability to be flexible in a dynamic system like fisheries. The implementation of a tax on any part of a society takes time, too much time if the fishery being managed runs on a one or two year cycle, leading to a situation where when the legislation is finally drafted the fishery is extinct.

This is a social question and in this form involves politics, this involvement could seriously curtail the effectiveness of a tax as its implementation might be politically undesirable (tax is rarely desirable). If the measures are applied in a reduced form or levied in a broad pursuit of policy objectives the outcome could be more social problems caused then biological problems fixed.

The main argument levelled against the use of a tax is its inability to change quickly, to fluctuations in the fishery in the short term. This could lead to a once large fishery with many fishermen reduced to few, but these few still paying a large tax even though the risk to the stock has been removed. McGoodwin (1990) also showed that the amount collected by these taxes rarely covers the cost of implementation, regulation, enforcement and environmental protection.

The tax as an implement for fisheries regulation in the short term is not advisable due to its effect on politics and social-economics in an area and its inevitably slow introduction. However this may be a means in the long term to reduce overcapacity as it reduces the amount of reinvestment a fisher is willing to back into the fishery as the more fish he catches does not mean the more money he makes.

The use of a licence system in fishery management has been about since pre-history with groups of individuals owning a specific fishing area and only letting designated people fish there, this can still be seen in fishing cultures scattered through the South Pacific today. In the modern world its theory still stands if they don t have a licence to fish in an area they can t fish. This has some advantages with boats being easily counted, recognised and tracked when fishing in the modern high tech age.

Licences can also be issued with stipulations about the boats, these can regulate the size of the boats in the fleet, their horse power and other capacities. This has certain flaws such as taking into account technological improvements in the licences, as recently boats have got more efficient while not increasing in size or horse power. Therefore there must be careful consideration put into the stipulations in the licence agreements so as not to allow overcapacity in the fleet.

With the initial implementation of the licences system into an already developed fishery, there will be an increase in fishing effort, as some individuals in the fishing fleet will be removed. This effect should be minimised with quick implementation of legislature and the removal of boats from the fishery. Licences are usually distributed by auction or through historical activity in the fishery. The licences specify the boat numbers or the number of fishermen, and the type of gear the boat is allowed to use (R gnvaldur 1996).

Licences cannot prevent overcapacity, with the boats and fishermen improving in efficiency the longer they are in the fishery or the more technically advanced they become. This is why additional stipulations need to be made to the licence to prevent this overcapacity which ultimately leads to overfishing. This method of fishery regulation is also costly to administer and police as fisheries officers must be present at all times to inspect licences and prevent any illegal fishing activity.

The restrictions on gear and boat size are the typical management measure which try’s to control fishing effort. This measure usually implies minimum mesh sizes on trawl and fixed nets, a maximum hook size and fish pots and traps with biodegradable escape hatches (Gordon 1983). These restrictions also encompass limited vessel size and horsepower and the physical size or length of the net towed or fixed.

This method of effort reduction is favoured by management due to its simplicity to explain to fishermen and ease to in-force. This method also assumes that gear restrictions full fill their biological goal and release the small fish, weather the fish survive is another mater up for debate.

This method is not favoured by fishermen in certain fisheries as it mean they have to replace present gear with new even though the old gear is still good, this can have significant monetary implications for the small fisherman. Fishermen do not like this measure as they see it as mandated inefficiency, which is exactly what it is.

However it does have advantages for both parties for the fisheries manager there are less undersized fish being caught and for the fisherman there is less discards in his catch and therefore less physical sorting of the catch to do before he can shoot his net again.

This method directly attacks the problem of overcapacity expelling the big boats in the fishery and making the nets of other fishermen less effective. This has the less politically hurtful effect of allowing a lot of the fishermen to stay in the fishery by making them inefficient in catching the fish.

However this is not an answer to all fisheries problems, this approach only works in single species fisheries. It will not work in multi-species fisheries as all fish do not reach there marketable size at the same catchable size. An example would be the skate in the Irish sea, due to its shape (a flat diamond) gear is highly selective for the species. Even at an age of 3 or 4 years, with the animal reaching maturity at about 8 years old its chances of reaching maturity in the heavily fish Irish Sea are slim, so shouldn t mesh sizes be changed to save the skate? If this was done every Cod in the Irish Sea would be uncatchable, not a politically appealing idea.

Fishermen also disapprove of increase net sizes as it reduces there catch in the short term as catch rates fall as there are larger numbers of fish escaping, however there is a plus with these escaping fish eventually reappearing in his catch as adults or just larger fish.

The quota system has been widely used over the last number of years especially in Europe. This is based on the Total Allowable Catch (TAC) idea, where biological statistics derived from sampling and landings data is used to calculate the weight of the stock in the sea and what fishing mortality can be applied to it. The idea being when the TAC is reached the fishery stops and the stock is still large enough to recover to the size it was before fishing.

This approach is again best used in a single species fishery, an example being the high seas fisheries for Tuna, where it is industrial fishing and there is very small amounts of this species taken as bycatch in other fisheries.

This method has several major problems, this method is expensive and times consuming needing lots of scientist to calculate the data from landing statistics and even more expensive research cruses. In effect it is information hungry, but is reliant on the quality of the data fed into it. This data as the fishery is managed over time by this method becomes more and more unrepresentative of the actual catch as fishermen find better ways to underreport their landing statistics. There is also some very big questions looming over the accuracy of the calculations as discarding, high grading and illegal landings are only guessed at before being put into the equation to get the TAC.

This method will not stop overcapitalisation as it increases the “race to fish” as each skipper tries to fill his quota first then cheat the system for all he can get. The way round this is specified allocations with smaller boats being given the larger quotas to remove the larger boats, there is also the gear restrictions which could be applied to reduce efficiency in these big boats.

This method of controlling fishing effort will not work unless there is compliance in the fishing industry with boats actually taking there quota and not landing “Black Fish” onto the market place.

However without enforced property rights for fishermen there is no security in the fish stocks, so the fisher is tied into the race to fish as fish are common property till they are caught. This has led most economists to recommend abandonment of input controls (licences) in favour of output controls in the form of individual quota (Criddle et al., 2000), were the fisherman is the owner of the fishery quota exclusively for the medium to long term.

Bibliography

Criddle, K, R, and Macinko, S. (2000) A requiem for the IFQ in US Fisheries? Marine Policy 24 461-469

Gordon, E, C, (1983) Engineering Economics and Fisheries Management. Fishing News Books Limited

McGoodwin, J, R., (1990) Crisis in the Worlds Fisheries, people, problems and politics. Stanford University press.

R gnvaldur, H., (1996) Fisheries Mismanagement, the case of the North Sea Cod. Fishing News Books.