Joint ventures in fisheries between distant-water and developed coastal nations: An economic view

Abstract

Abstract With extension of national jurisdiction over coastal living resources, new dimensions and objectives should be added to international cooperation in fisheries concepts. For distant-water fishing nations, joint exploitation of these resources is today considered not only as a way of producing additional income opportunities, but first of all as at least a partial solution to neutralization of harvesting limitations imposed on them in traditionally exploited fishing grounds. Japan is leading in number of joint ventures run by this country abroad. They are supplying fish products to the Japanese consumption market. Many other distant-water fishing nations, including Eastern Europe, began to build their cooperational links with coastal states in recent years when it became clear that this can alleviate harvesting restrictions and increase employment opportunities for their fishing fleets. For the developed coastal states, joint ventures with foreign partners could be seen as a way to develop these coastal resources, which temporarily can not be utilized by local fishermen, mainly for economic reasons. Joint ventures developing such resources will be attractive for both sides if they could produce additional volumes of fish for the foreign markets and offer an economically more effective way of resource utilization than would be possible in non-cooperative activities. Cooperation in fisheries between foreign distant-water and developed nations can find a good future in the development of lower market values species in coastal nations which, in the case of the United States, Canada or Australia, represent a very large fishing potential. The benefits and constraints for each joint venture operation should be considered on a case-by-case basis.