ENVIRONMENT: For Troubled Fishing Industry, Less Is More

By Stephen Leahy Reprint | | Print |

Stephen Leahy

BROOKLIN, Canada, Dec 11 2007 (IPS) - Catch less fish. Make more money. Could this be the solution to the global overfishing crisis?

Australian economists writing in the current issue of Science magazine think so.

Reducing fish catches in the short term will bring fishers big profits later. And that profit potential may finally persuade an intransigent fishing industry to agree to lower catch limits, they say.

"Bigger stocks mean bigger bucks," says co-author Quentin Grafton, research director at the Crawford School of Economics and Government at the Australian National University (ANU).

"Our results prove that the highest profits are made when fish numbers are allowed to rise beyond levels traditionally considered optimal," Grafton said.

More than 75 percent of all fisheries are either fully exploited or heading for oblivion, according to a U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation report last year. The total global fish catch has stalled for decades despite far more sophisticated fish-finding technology – airplanes and satellites – and fish-catching equipment.

Current fish quotas set by fisheries managers in most region of the world assumed that harvesting costs are independent of, or proportional to, the available fish stocks, Grafton and colleagues said.

In reality, when fish are more plentiful and thus easier to catch, fishers don&#39t have to spend as much on fuel and other costs to fill their nets, resulting in higher profits. The researchers tested their theory on four different fisheries by plotting revenue and profit curves against fish biomass. In all cases, letting a stock rebuild was far more profitable than continuing to fish until little was left.

"Conservation promotes both larger fish stocks and higher profits," said Tom Kompas, director of the International and Development Economics Programme at in ANU.

"The debate is no longer whether it is economically advantageous to reduce current harvests – it is – but how fast stocks should be rebuilt," he said.

How long fish harvests have to be reduced depends on the species and current conditions, Grafton told IPS. For Northern tiger prawn, four years is enough and is currently being done in Australia. Slow-growing species like the orange roughy require a reduced harvest for 25 to 40 years.

Selling or granting future "harvesting rights" will assure fishers that they will benefit from agreeing to reduced harvests, he said: "By reducing their catch now, they will more than make up any temporary financial losses with increased profits in the future."

However, in many parts of the world, direct and indirect subsidies are keeping fishing boats, especially trawlers, in the water. Such subsidies run to the hundreds of millions of dollars if not more for the construction, operating and fuel costs of fisheries vessels, port infrastructure, storage and processing facilities.

"Fishing subsidies don&#39t make any sense. They distort both the ecology and the economics of fishing," Grafton said.

If governments want to support their fishing industries, why not pay them not to fish and let the stocks recover. And in the future, the fisheries will be profitable again and won&#39t require subsidies, he said.

In fact, governments can afford to pay compensation for not fishing by borrowing from future taxation on the substantially higher future fishing profits.

The World Trade Organisation (WTO) is looking at new rules to ban several types of fisheries subsidy payments, especially those that boost fishing capacity or create other incentives to fish. The first full discussion of these rules is expected to take place this week from Dec. 12-14.

"The question is, will the WTO seize or squander its opportunity to stop global overfishing?" asked Courtney Sakai, campaign director of the marine conservation group Oceana.

"Reducing overfishing subsidies now is essential for abundant fisheries in the future," she said in a statement.

And if the Australian economists are correct, more abundant fisheries will mean more profits for fishers. Australia has already changed its harvest strategy to reflect the profit-maximising stock calculation.

"Most fishers I&#39ve explained this to get it," said Grafton.

The key to getting agreement to fish less is a guarantee of long-term harvesting rights so they can personally benefit from increased future fish stocks.

"It means means bigger profits and more fish in the sea," he concluded.