Catch–quota matching allowances balance economic and ecological targets in a fishery managed by individual transferable quota

Fishers with individual catch quota, but limited control over the mix of species caught, depend on trade and catch–quota balancing allowances to fully utilize their quota without discarding. However, these allowances can theoretically lead to overfishing if total allowable catches (TACs) are consistently exceeded. This study investigates usage of balancing allowances by the Icelandic demersal fleet over 2001–2017, for over 1,900 vessels. When a vessel’s demersal catch exceeds owned and leased quota for a given species, the gap can be bridged by borrowing quota from the subsequent fishing period or transforming unutilized quota in other species, restricted by limits. Conversely, excess quota can be saved or transformed into quota for species where there is a shortfall. We found evidence that balancing behavior is frequently similar across the fleet. Transformations are consistent with indicators of a general quota shortage and potential for arbitrage caused by differences in conversion ratios used for transformation and lease prices. Larger companies contribute more to these patterns. Nevertheless, TAC overages are generally modest especially in recent years—key reasons appear to be the tightening of vessel transformation limits and the central role of Atlantic cod, which is the main target species but cannot be persistently overfished due to a specific prohibition on positive transformations into the species. These results show how the tailored design of the Icelandic catch–quota balancing system has helped in balancing economic and ecological goals of management. We suggest policy changes that could further reduce ecological risks, e.g., prioritizing between-year transfers over transformations.

Crustaceans as Fisheries Resources: General Overview

Much of the biological and other research efforts on crustaceans have been driven by their importance to humans as a food source. Production comes from a diverse array of methods and scales of extraction, from small recreational or subsistence fisheries to industrial-scale operations. Most crustacean catch comes from shrimp fisheries, with over two million tons taken in 2014, mainly by trawl. The genera Acetes, Fenneropenaeus, and Pandalus account for around three quarters of this catch. Crab, krill, and lobster are the other main crustacean products (around 600,000 t crab, 380,000 t krill, and 300,000 t lobster in 2014). Trends in crustacean fisheries are broadly similar to those of other seafood, although crustaceans often target different market segments and receive higher prices than fish. Crustacean fisheries management faces many challenges with management of bycatch from trawl gears especially significant. Fortunately, crustaceans tend to be easily handled with low discard mortality, and this has enabled widespread use of regulations based on size, maturity, or sex (e.g., male-only fisheries). Total allowable catch (TAC) limits are widely used and highly effective for ensuring sustainable harvests when set responsibly using good information. TAC systems are often combined with catch share or individual transferable quota systems, which had a mixed history in crustaceans, sometimes reducing overall community benefit. This parallels the challenge facing fisheries globally of ensuring that harvests are not only sustainable but also deliver benefits to the wider community beyond the commercial fishers; management of some crustacean fisheries is at the forefront of these developments.

Individual Transferable Quotas (ITQ), Rebuilding Fisheries and Short-Termism: How Biased Reasoning Impacts Management

Recent research on global fisheries has reconfirmed a 2006 study that suggested global fisheries would collapse by 2048 if fisheries were not better managed and trends reversed. While many researchers have endorsed rights-based fishery management as a key ingredient for successful management and rebuilding fisheries, in practice the results are mixed and success varies by geographic region. Rights-based approaches such as individual transferable quota (ITQ) provide a necessary help to the important task of rebuilding fisheries, but we assert that they are sometimes less effective due to the human component of the system. Specifically, we examine the issue of setting an appropriate total allowable catch (TAC) in Individual Transferable Quota (ITQ) systems. ITQ are designed on the premise that economic ownership is sufficient incentive to entice fishers to be stewards of the resource. However, an excessive short-term orientation and an affective risk response by fishers can overwhelm feelings of ownership. In such cases, fishers and fishing communities can exert sufficient pressure on TAC setting and reduce the effectiveness of ITQ fisheries toward rebuilding fish stocks. Based on our analysis that draws on cognitive psychology, short-termism, and affective risk, we suggest heightened and wider democratic involvement by stakeholders in co-managed ITQ fisheries along with potential pilot tests of government-assisted financial transfers to help in transitioning ITQ fisheries to sustainable states.

Precarity, Indigeneity and the Market in Māori Fisheries

This paper contributes to debates on growing inequalities in the maritime domain by using the concept of precarity to interrogate the market in Māori fisheries. To understand the particularities of this ocean precarity, I draw attention to the interrelated dynamics of dispossession, as it occurred historically in Māori fisheries through various economic orders, and indigeneity, as it articulates with both alienation and the reclamation of fishing rights. I argue that the incorporation of Māori fisheries into an Individual Transferable Quota system has generated a “political ecology of the precarious,” positioning socio-natures as working against ecological demise at the same time as contributing to it. This transforms the ancestral guardianship relationship between people and their sea, exacerbates colonially-created dispossessions and hardens divisions between economic and cultural spheres, or commercial and customary fisheries. However, precarious conditions may also be conceived of as mobilising phenomena, giving rise to attempts to breach these divides.

Collective Rights–Based Fishery Management: A Path to Ecosystem-Based Fishery Management

Fishery rents may be dissipated across margins not well defined or controlled by an individual transferable quota system. Collective rights–based fishery management (CRBFM), where catch rights are held by a group, can sometimes generate greater benefits and can also address external impacts of the fishery. I discuss potential failures of individual quotas and how these problems were addressed by CRBFM institutions. I then focus on the role of CRBFM in addressing environmental and social impacts external to the group of fishers, such as bycatch, habitat impacts, and spatial conflicts. The review suggests that CRBFM can effectively address both intrafishery and external impacts, provided there is sufficient incentive to do so, including maintaining access to preferred markets or the threat of further regulation. However, CRBFM can create moral hazard and adverse selection problems, and successful CRBFM institutions generally have homogeneous membership with well-aligned interests and/or formal contracts with monitoring and enforcement provisions.

Investigating trade-offs in alternative catch share systems: an individual-based bio-economic model applied to the Bay of Biscay sole fishery

An individual-based bio-economic model is presented and applied to the Bay of Biscay sole (Solea solea) fishery to investigate alternative quota management systems from a multicriteria perspective. For this study, the model integrates several institutional arrangements related to catch share management. The current French co-management system with nontransferability of quota is compared with an alternative individual transferable quota (ITQ) system in a context of transition to maximum sustainable yield. Trade-offs between ecological and socioeconomic impacts are highlighted and the effectiveness of governance scenarios is discussed in regard to the challenge of capacity adjustment. Results emphasize that the introduction of ITQs is expected to reduce by 40% the number of vessels in the fishery. While effectively mitigating the economic impacts of the transition phase to maximum sustainable yield, ITQs are also expected to increase substantially the fishing effort by trawlers, which may cause ecological concerns. The scenarios tested also include the simulation of a decommissioning scheme where subsequent decommissioned vessels are considerably different from the vessels that would lease out their quotas in an ITQ system, resulting in differentiated ecological and socioeconomic impacts between scenarios.

The design of environmental markets: What have we learned from experience with cap and trade?

This article reviews the design of environmental markets for pollution control over the past 30 years, and identifies key market-design lessons for future applications. The focus is on a subset of the cap-and-trade systems that have been implemented, planned, or proposed around the world. Three criteria led us to the selection of systems for review. First, among the broader class of tradable permit systems, our focus is exclusively on cap-and-trade mechanisms, thereby excluding emission-reduction-credit or offset programmes. Second, among cap-and-trade mechanisms, we examine only those that target pollution abatement, and so we do not include applications to natural resource management, such as individual transferable quota systems used to regulate fisheries. Third, we focus on the most prominent applications—those that are particularly important environmentally, economically, or both.

Statutory Property: Is it a Thing?

Over the last several decades there has been a proliferation of property-type rights created by statute, particularly in the environmental management context. A key question has been how to approach these rights on a principled basis, particularly where Parliament has been silent about their precise nature. One response has been to put a gloss on these rights by classifying them as a new category of "statutory property". However, this article suggests that we should recognise that these types of rights are private property. This argument is based on the premise that private property serves a variety of social goals and not only individualistic ones. As a result, the institution of property is flexible enough to cater for the main concern driving this legislative vagueness, which flows from the risk that recognising rights as private property may serve to undermine the purpose for which property is being employed. This article develops this point with reference to legislation setting up individual transferable quota for fish and emissions units for greenhouse gases in New Zealand. It argues that the rights used by these schemes, although not explicitly articulated as private property, should be treated as such. It suggests that, providing the contours of the right have been structured carefully and the boundaries of the right clearly demarcated, it is desirable that the law of property fill in any resulting gaps not addressed by the legislation.