Catch Shares Management

Abstract

The Alaskan halibut fishery in the early 1990s was an intense, adrenaline-soaked sprint. Fishing was permitted during just a few 24-hour windows. Two thousand boats might race to sea at once, each crew working madly to land a full year’s catch in a day. Boats were overloaded with fish, and lives were lost: Nine workers drowned during derby fishing in Alaska during 1991 and 1992. In their hurry, fishers damaged creatures they were not targeting and lost much of their long-line gear, leaving thousands of baited hooks on the seafloor that imperiled halibut and other fish after the season had ended. When the catch was landed, the market was flooded with a year’s worth of halibut at once, reducing its value. Then, in 1995, regulators abruptly ended the race for Alaskan halibut. The season expanded to months instead of days, and the value of the catch rose as fishers landed a steady supply of fresh halibut. Fishing accidents and fatalities dropped sharply. All of this was accomplished using a management system called individual transferable quotas (ITQs), a form of catch shares management under which individual fishers or associations are given rights to a set percentage of the total catch. This new approach to fisheries management is used increasingly in the United States and around the world. It’s clear that catch shares can end the dangerous and wasteful race simple. While catch share systems have important economic benefits, they can also carry real problems, and their biological impacts remain unknown.