Fishing for sustenance has been practiced for thousands of years, probably starting from the times when hunter-gatherers roamed the Earth. The hunter-gatherers were limited to catching small quantities of fish from shallow lakes and along the seashore, and the catch was for immediate consumption. The growth of earth’s population and start of earlier civilization resulted in an increase in use of fish for sustenance. During the Mesolithic Period (c. 10,000-6,000 BC), the first civilizations developed that relied heavily on fish for sustenance. These civilizations invented primitive fishing tools, such as stone-tipped fishing spears, fishhooks, fish lines, and nets, and developed new techniques of preservation such as salting, drying, smoking, and fermentation. Since then the fishing industry has expanded to whooping proportions, reaching an estimated catch of up to 96 million tons in year 2000. [1]
Fishing in open seas is one of the most convincing examples of tragedy of commons, and as such,
bringing the industry under the net is a big challenge. The expansion of fishing fleets through the late 1980s and improvements in fish-finding and harvesting technologies has resulted in expansion of fishing at greater depths and in more remote waters. According to FAO estimates, over the past 50 years, the number of large predatory fish in the oceans has dropped by a startling 90 percent, and the 4 million vessels scouring the world’s waters are at or exceeding the sustainable yields of three quarters of all oceanic fisheries [2].
To put a check on this ever expanding fish industry and dwindling fish populations, a number of input and output controls can be put in place. Input controls include limiting the number of participants, restricting season length, closing fishing areas and restricting types and amount of gear, while output controls include various methods of limiting the amount of fish harvested, below a total allowable catch based on a predetermined long-term sustainable level. One such output control measure is Individual Tradable Quotas (ITQs), which amounts to exclusive and transferable rights to harvest and are primarily an instrument for promoting economic efficiency rather than conservation. ITQs puts a lid on total fish catch and allocates quotas to individuals which can be traded in market. If these rights are of sufficiently high quality, they eliminate a good part of the common property problem and create incentives for the ITQ-holders to collectively take steps to maximize the market value of their fishing rights.
ITQs have been successful to a certain extent in putting a check on overfishing problem and up to 15% of the global ocean catch is currently taken under ITQs [3]. The expansion of the method to more countries can increase this number, but not every thing is perfect about ITQs. Some concerns with ITQs are:
Initial allocations
Just as is the case with tradable carbon permits in environmental sector, permits are generally given to individuals or vessels based on catch history over several years. This raises the questions of equity as new fishers are excluded from the allocation, and fishers who have harvested large quantities of fish in the past (perhaps unsustainably) are allocated the largest share of the total allowable catch.
Corporate Structure
The consolidation of quota shares by large industrial vessels that have the money and power to buy out smaller boats creates a corporate structure, effectively destroying small fishing communities and creating serious social consequences. For example in New Zealand, 80% of quotas are owned by 10% of the permit holders and in Iceland 700 of the 1,000 small boat fishermen sold their quota to industrialized fishing boats [4].
By Catch
By catch is the name for the unwanted creatures that are also caught in the nets and are either too small or wrong species. They are thrown back into the water and usually die. Around a quarter of everything caught is by catch, which is enough to make over 5 billion meals. It is not just fish that are killed. Sharks, turtles and dolphins often get caught in nets. Tuna nets in the Pacific killed hundreds of thousands of dolphins. In Southern Oceans, albatross (large sea birds) get caught on the baited hooks of longlines for 'dolphin friendly' tuna.
Over fishing of costly species
Since fisheries can catch only a certain amount of fish only, they concentrate on certain species which can carry good prices in the market. This creates problems of over fishing of certain species, thus creating an imbalance in marine ecosystem as well as endangering the over caught species.
Besides these direct effects of ITQs, fishing industry is causing a lot more environmental damage in the oceans which is not taken care of in ITQ management system. This include the damage to sea bed by trawlers or dredgers for shell fish, and the discarded nets, also called 'ghost nets', which drift around in the sea entangling fish and other sea creatures.
In conclusion, ITQs are not perfect and although they have solved the problem of over fishing to certain extent, it needs to be expanded to include provisions which limit fishing of exotic species as well. Moreover, the environmental damage to ocean bed by use of seas as sinks by fishing vessels should be controlled through better monitoring. This can be done by assigning signatured fishing equipment to fishing companies, so that any found discarded equipment can be traced back to the culprit and penalties place on them. Effective monitoring is also required to control the discarding of by catch. To bring more equity in the fishing industry, the initial allocation should be divided through partly auctioning and partly grandfathering, where small fisheries get a certain allocation through grand fathering.
References
2. Larsen, Janet. 2005. Wild Fish Catch Hits Limits-Oceanic Decline Offset by Increased Fish Farming, Earth Policy Institute.
http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/Fish/2005.htm
3. Arnason, Ragnar. 2006. Fisheries Self-management under ITQs, paper given at the Workshop on Advances in Rights-based Fisheries Management,
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