Fisheries Biology and the Dismal Science: Economists and the Rational Exploitation of Fisheries for Social Progress

Abstract

In the mid-twentieth century, several economists –led by the Canadians Gordon Scott and Scott Anthony–introduced bio-economic analysis which founded the modern understanding of issues in managing common property resources. They focused on managing marine fisheries to improve their national economic profitability, but many economists, including Gordon Scott, advocated for intensifying industrialized technologies that soon exacerbated the need for catch limits, limited entry, ITQs and other conservation measures. Fisheries biologists have largely bought into these approaches and have been unable to critique the bio-economic understanding in part because economists successfully alienated them from an understanding of their own past by appropriating fisheries biologists’ expertise over the economic dimensions of their scientific project. This chapter builds on my earlier findings that both Victorian-era economic ideas and nineteenth century German scientific forestry management ideals have powerfully influenced marine resource management to this day. The focus on ‘rational’ exploitation of fish and other marine species for maximum sustainable yield has been the result. The use of population models allowed the marine environment to become an abstraction, facilitated a limited understanding of fisheries science by economists, and mediated the focus on economic efficiency. Twentieth century fisheries management became further enmeshed in economic and social idealist constructions with the incursion of Keynesian economists such as Gordon Scott, and Canadian Deputy Minister of Fisheries Stewart Bates. By placing their contributions within the context of changing economic theory and mid-twentieth century Cold War issues affecting governments, scientists, and productivity in the North Atlantic region, and by analyzing the basic assumptions of Gordon Scott and his followers in the light of greater historical context, the fundamental irrationality and personal bias that form the basis of bio-economic models is exposed, as is the irrationality of mid-century fisheries management policy.