Catch Shares Key to Reviving Fisheries

New Study Shows Innovative Approach Can Help Solve Overfishing

Posted: 17-Sep-2008; Updated: 29-Jan-2009

Fish populations around the world are in trouble. In the U.S., for example, cod and haddock were once so abundant in the North Atlantic's Grand Banks you could catch them just by lowering a basket in the water.

Not any more. The fish that fueled New England's economy are only a fraction of what they were, and that’s true of many fisheries around the world (see Fisheries in Decline).

New study shows catch shares prevent collapse

But now there is reason for hope. A study just released in the journal Science shows how overfishing can be turned around through an innovative management system called catch shares.

Our Oceans team has long advocated well-designed "catch share" programs as a smart way to manage and recover ailing fisheries. Catch share programs allow fishermen to own shares, or quotas, of the overall scientifically determined catch so they have a direct financial stake in the fishery. They can sell these shares, or buy them from other fishermen. As the fishery recovers, shares grow in value, giving fishermen a vested interest in the health of the ocean.

The study, "Can Catch Shares Prevent Fisheries Collapse?" (full text | abstract), examined more than 11,000 fisheries (a fishery is a population of fish caught commercially) from around the world between 1950 and 2003. It confirms that catch share systems for fisheries can help solve the fishery crisis.  Among its striking findings:

• Fisheries managed with catch share programs dramatically outperformed fisheries without them: they were only half as likely to have collapsed by 2003.
• If catch share systems been in place globally in 1970, only about 9 percent of the world's fisheries would have collapsed by 2003, rather than 27 percent.

Conventional fishery management has failed

Most of the world's fisheries are governed by systems with perverse incentives that actually encourage overfishing.  A combination of decades of poor management and overfishing has had devastating results.

Many fishermen work harder than ever to catch fewer and fewer fish, putting their safety at risk and suffering economic hardship. Global fisheries peaked in 1988 and have been steadily declining ever since.

Restoring our fisheries is critical. About one billion people worldwide rely on fish for at least part of their essential food needs. And the ocean fishing industry employs 200 million people worldwide.

Catch shares are a better way: More results

Our 2007 groundbreaking report showed that well-designed catch share programs (see key findings):

• dramatically reduce habitat damage and bycatch (capture of unwanted species that are discarded as waste),
• improve fishing safety and
• increase profits, among other benefits.

Just a fraction of fisheries in the U.S. are managed by catch shares. A recent success was our work with fishermen and managers to design a catch share system for red snapper in the Gulf of Mexico. Because of the catch share program there, the commercial snapper season in 2007 was open year-round for the first time since 1990. Gulf fishermen now earn 25 percent more for their fish and wasteful discarding of fish dropped at least 70 percent.

Additional resources

• Press release: New Study Offers Viable Solution to Overfishing (9/18/2008)
• Our landmark report: Sustaining America's Fisheries and Fishing Communities (March 2007) - An evaluation of catch share programs: Well-designed systems protect the environment, increase profits and improve safety.
• Catch share programs in action: Restoring ailing fisheries. 

Our regional work:

• Main page: Overview of regional work
• At a Glance: Gulf of Mexico
• Pacific: New Life for a West Coast Fishery (From the September 2008 Solutions newsletter [PDF])