Fisheries management

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high-value species ahead of collapse – on the assumption that if they don’t,

someone else will.

The problem of this gold rush approach is compounded by over-capacity

– there are too many large boats catching too few fish, which leads to illegal

fishing (fishing above quota or during the closed season, for example) to avoid

an economic shortfall. Indeed, the illegal harvest has become a central factor

in the economic equation.

Fishermen catching tuna through sustainable methods such as trapping stand

to lose the most should stocks collapse. Unlike the huge industrial purse

seiners, which will move on to other fish or to other seas, the small-scale

and traditional fishermen will lose their livelihoods when the fish run out. It is

estimated that there are around 500 jobs directly associated with trapping

in Spain and 800 in Morocco. In the trap sector, bluefin tuna catches have

already dropped by 80 per cent over the last five years.

The impact of a collapse extends beyond the fishermen themselves to

processors, suppliers and others who are dependent on the fishing industry

for employment or income. In more remote areas where alternatives are

limited, unemployment and economic hardship can lead to social problems,

dependence on welfare, or displacement.

e) Present the market instrument “Individual Transferable fishing Quotas” (ITQ) and illustrate with the example of Iceland (complete with your own research on Internet)

Individual transferable quotas (ITQs) are a type of catch share system, which is a tool used by some governments to manage fisheries, a version of what are now popularly called “catch shares”, a regulatory tool that some governments use to control fishing.

ITQs are designed to give their owners exclusive and transferable rights to a given portion of the total allowable catch (TAC) of fish. Authorities establish a TAC for a given species and then divide this total among the individual fishers or firms in the form of individual catch quotas, usually as a percentage of the TAC.

Since the establishment of perfectly transferable, durable ITQ property rights in 1991, the Icelandic economy has experienced a prolonged period of high economic growth. Annual growth rates from 1985 to 2006 are illustrated

in Figure 3.

During the 15-year period from 1991 to 2006, real economic growth in Iceland has averaged 3.8%.

Alterations in the structure of the economy, especially the great expansion of certain new sectors of the economy (particularly that of financial intermediation) strongly indicate that the increased availability of financial capital, which the ITQ-system was instrumental in creating, has much to do with the recent high rates of economic growth.

f) Figure out the design of an ITQ if it were to be implemented for the regulation of red tuna fishing in the Mediterranean sea (main characteristics). What would be the advantages of this instrument and the impediments to its implementation.

The ITQ system in relation to Bluefin tuna fishing in the mediterranean:

Some features:

- A new minimum landing size that matches the sexual maturity of the species;

- An expansion of the closure of the fishery to guarantee a strong, immediate and enforceable decrease in the fishing effort on the population;

- An independent observer scheme both on board tuna fishing vessels and in the farms to record and report the catch. This is vital to ensure that under-sized fish are not caught and the quota is not exceeded, and that the information needed to sustainably manage the fishery is available. The Mediterranean tuna fishing industry has clearly demonstrated that without independent management they do not follow the rules or report the true nature and extent of their catches

The system of the ITQ, which allows creating at the same time a shape of appropriation deprived of the resource and a market of fishing rights, which would assure the optimal allowance of this resource. As any instrument of management of peaches, eco labels and ITQ can show themselves useful and effective according to the context of their implementation; but these two instruments lend themselves easily to potentially dangerous misappropriations for developing countries.

Presented as a new technology of the management of peaches, the ITQ call nevertheless too a number of reserves. It is advisable first of all to underline that unlike eco-labels, the ITQ does not establish a really new instrument of management of peaches. Actually, the ITQ presents limits, in terms of success in the inventory management, well known of the biologists of peaches: their efficiency supposes at the same time a just evaluation of the available resource and the absence of fraud. But especially, the ITQ raises a double problem of equity: in the first place at the time of the initial allowance of the quotas, and secondly because the system of repurchase of the ITQ favours the concentration of the quotas in possession of armaments

Moreover these illegal catches above the agreed quota largely occur in the Mediterranean Sea. Several countries hide or falsify their data and scientists have not been able to assess the stock because basic data is missing or unreliable, just a few investors are now controlling the benefits of what was previously a common resource shared by fishing cultures all around the Mediterranean Sea

To conclusion, the ITQ system is hard to implement because we must avoid illegal catches which would distort the statistics for the years