0.19 Natural capital: fisheries  (Page 6/14)

1. Excess capacity in world’s fishing fleet a problem aggravated by government subsidies to fishing. Some countries have blundered into the ridiculous situation wherein the costs of government subsidies to fishermen exceed the total value of the annual catch.
2. Institutional Problems - lack of tradable property rights in fishing. This is slowly changing now as we have seen, due to ITQs.

How serious is the problem?

• In Europe 88% of fish stocks were overfished by 2008
• In the North Sea – 93% of Cod caught before they can breed
• In Indonesia in the Java Sea there has been a growing scarcity of edible fish. .
• In Peru, pacific current (Humboldt current) fisheries are under increasing strain.

Market-based and regulatory approaches are required if overfishing is to be reduced.

We note that market-based solutions do not always work. But why do you think that governments (Presidents, Legislators, and Bureaucrats) favor regulatory mechanisms, while disdaining market-oriented approaches to environmental ecological or other problems, even when the market oriented measures work?

Market-based approaches involve less concentration of power in the hands of Presidents, Legislators and Bureaucrats. And once a regulatory program is adopted it tends to have eternal life, with vested private and public interests in continuing the program. In the U.S., for example very few federal regulatory programs enacted in the past 50 years have been allowed to expire.

Market-oriented measures can help, but market solutions to overfishing are not any kind of panacea; often regulatory measures are also required.

Consider again: Fish stocks are a common property resource. Commercial fisheries will always overfish unless they are restrained by either regulation or changes in property rights to fish. Why will commercial fishers overfish in the absence of restrictions?

Their focus everywhere – in New England, in Alaska, in Java Sea etc. is essentially short -term in nature. Commercial fishers have long basically demanded the right to “cut off their fingers, one at a time.”

What does this mean? It means:

“Fish the resource until it is gone”. Much of the overfishing problem is due to illegal fishing. Illegal fishing involves taking fish from areas that have been closed to fishing to prevent collapse of fishing stocks. (This was a severe problem in Lake Victoria in Africa).

Fraud, in mislabeling of fish for sale has been another issue involved in overfishing of certain fish species. Example: Bluefin Tuna fishing has been banned in many areas because Bluefins are endangered. So fishermen who catch Bluefins simply label them as another type of tuna and sell on markets. Bluefins are extremely valuable fish. In Japan in 2013, a 489-pound Bluefin sold for $1.8 Million. ( The Telegraph , January 6, 2013). Retrieved from: http://www.businessinsider.com/bluefin-tuna-sells-for-record-breaking-18-million-2013-1.

The extent of illegal fishing worldwide is significant. According to Science , illegal fishing amounts to about $23 billion per year Science , “To Fight Illegal Fishing, Forensic DNA Gets Local”, December 10, 2010, Vol. 330, p.1468. , or about one-fifth the total global fish catch of $136 billion in 2013.