Word: catchings
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According to Costello, fisheries, or areas where a certain kind of fish is caught, represent a textbook example of a tragedy of the commons - the classic economics metaphor for a shared resource that is ruined because of competition between users. Giving fishermen catch shares - also known as Individual Fishing Quotas (IFQs) - doesn't dampen competition for fish, but manages it by essentially making fishermen stakeholders in a fishery. Costello explains that IFQs, which can be bought, sold or traded just like stocks, discourage overfishing by giving fishermen a vested interest in preserving the future health of the resource...
Despite growing evidence of their effectiveness, catch-share programs are still a relative rarity. Only 121 of the more than 11,000 fisheries Costello and his team studied were using the system. But Gunnar Knapp, an economist at the University of Alaska, says the idea of privatizing fish is catching on as fishermen realize that it may be the best way to protect fish - and their own jobs...
Take Alaska's halibut fishery, which began a catch-share program in 1995. At the time, the halibut season had become a 48-hour scramble to catch the most fish allowed by law, according to Linda Behnken, director of the Alaska Longline Fishermen's Association and a commercial fisherman in Sitka since 1982. "No matter what the weather was, everyone with a line and hook was going out," says Behnken. "And this is Alaska. The weather gets bad here. Boats went down. Lives were lost." Things got even worse when the fishermen all returned with their catches at the same...
Since the introduction of catch shares, however, Alaska's halibut season has gone from one or two short days to nine months. Fishermen are also less likely to risk bad weather, pushing fatalities down 15%. And because the market is no longer flooded with halibut one week out of the entire year, the price of fish has increased fourfold. "IFQs have made fishing safer," Behnken says. "And it's better for the resource...
...kill diamondback terrapin turtles. In a 2004 report titled An Ocean Blueprint for the 21st Century, the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy found that at least 267 different species were affected by derelict fishing gear, including 86% of all species of sea turtles. "Fishing gear is intended to catch things, so if it gets lost, it can catch and kill things for extended periods of time," says Criddle...