Save the Fish

November 14, 2006

Wall Street Journal

We like fish. They're tasty, good for you and catching them is good sport. We'd hate to see them disappear from the Earth's waters in our lifetime, as a recent meta-analysis in Science magazine suggested could occur. The four-page paper looked at trends across various regions from different sources and concluded that if present trends continued, the total collapse of fisheries around the world could occur by 2048.

Now, extrapolation of any trend far enough into the future can bring surprising results (remember Dow 36,000?). And at least one professor of marine sciences has called this particular extrapolation "mind-bogglingly stupid." But it's certainly true that some fisheries are overtaxed. And while the problem is worse in the developing world than in First World countries, we in the West have not exactly perfected the art of fisheries management. No one believes that cows are going extinct any time soon, and chickens seem safe. So what's the problem with fish?

Well, unlike domesticated animals, no one owns them. Government programs to set catch limits and so reduce fishing effort are a constant source of friction with fishermen, who are always pushing for higher limits than regulators feel are advisable. It's not that fishermen want to decimate their cash crop. But the system is set up to encourage them to push for whatever they can get, now. There's a better way.

Iceland has saved its fishing industry by adopting a system of individual, tradeable quotas. It's not quite the same as owning the fish, but it's probably as close as you can get short of starting a fish farm. The quotas are an asset that can be bought and sold, and their value is dependent on the viability of the fishery, so they give fishermen a direct financial stake in sustaining the fishery. It also takes the hair-pulling out of the current frequent negotiations between regulators and fishermen over where to set the limits for a given year or several years.

The current U.S. law on fisheries management expires this year and must be renewed. This has occasioned a resumption of the same old fight, with fishermen demanding that certain rules be relaxed and environmentalists pushing for a tightening of the restrictions. Why not instead sell the fisheries to the fishermen? Set the quotas at a reasonable level, and let the fishermen themselves decide in whose hands they're worth the most.

For some, this will serve as a buyout program; they will sell their quotas and retire. We suppose the environmentally minded might even be willing to purchase some quotas and keep them. This could be expensive, but if they're right about the need to reduce fishing in a particular fishery, sitting on a quota they've purchased could prove a sound investment over time. Nor are tradeable quotas merely a libertarian fantasy; groups like Environmental Defense have also come out in favor of them.

The alternative, as three decades of command-and-control fisheries management has shown, is a tragedy of the commons on the high seas. We don't expect to see the last fish hauled from the ocean, whatever the models may say. But there's no question the world could be doing a better job managing that resource. The need to reauthorize the current law offers an opportunity for rights-based reform.