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Giving a man a fish - not teaching him how to do it - may actually be a better way to preserve the world's dwindling fish stocks, according to a new study published in Science on Sept. 19. Scientists and fishermen have known for years that global fish populations are in bad shape. According to one bleak 2006 study, all of the world's major commercial fisheries could collapse by 2048 because of overfishing and loss of habitat. Now a team of economists and biologists say they know one way to prevent the loss of this crucial resource in global waters...
...past, fishing quotas - or the government allotments of set amounts of fish to private parties - have not always won over the hearts of seafarers. But looking at more than 11,000 fisheries worldwide, researchers led by scientists from the University of California, Santa Barbara, found that countries that had effectively privatized their fish stock by doling out quotas to individual fishermen were half as likely to experience a collapse as those that did not. "The idea is that by securing access for individuals or select groups for a long period of time, they have an incentive to steward the resources...
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...