MOVING FORWARD

The Use of Fixed Gear as a Basis for Property Rights Management - F. T. Christy
Some Ideas on the Future of Property Rights in the Fisheries - U. Wijkström
The Way Forward - P. P. Rogers

The Use of Fixed Gear as a Basis for Property Rights Management - F. T. Christy

IMARIBA, 2853 Ontario Road NW#619
Washington DC 0009, USA
<[email protected]>

1. INTRODUCTION

In the future, the outlook for fisheries management is good. Property rights are likely to be available for most fisheries and, even though there may be many imperfections in the rights, they will provide the basis for improvements in the derivation of net benefits from the resources. The challenge for fishery administrators and other stake-holders is that of reaching that stage as expeditiously as possible and with minimum imperfections.

There are several tasks that need to be undertaken including: political decisions on the distribution of wealth through the provision of exclusive use-rights; administrative decisions to devolve management authority to the local level (user groups or communities); and actions by governments to provide the incentives and conditions that will encourage fishermen to take control of the resources.

The last item holds some opportunities that have not been given much consideration so far. There appear to be three kinds of motivation that can lead to collective behaviour by communities, or groups of fishermen, who already have exclusive use rights, or to their assertion of exclusive use-rights (Christy 1993). These include: (a) equity, (b) efficiency and (c) enhancement. The desire to achieve equity among community members can induce collective behavior when individualistic behavior threatens the stability of the community. This generally depends upon the community already having asserted a territorial use-right. The other two motivations may be effective in inducing the development of property rights.

Efficiency, in the sense of producing and capturing a net gain, can be important. The net gain can be in the form of economic rents, as in the historic case when the feudal lords in Japan asserted exclusive rights to an area of the sea for the purposes of taxing the fishermen. Or it can be within a traditional community when controls are exercised as a means for ensuring that there will be ample fish for a future feast. There are also situations where groups of fishermen agree to mutual controls in order to ensure satisfactory market prices. Attempts to acquire market control may be quite common. However, in some countries this may be prohibited through anti-trust legislation and dismantled when discovered. Since the costs to economies of open access to fisheries may outweigh the costs of price-fixing, consideration might be given to allowing, or even encouraging, such collective action to take place. Rules might be specified to prevent the worst aspects of monopoly-pricing from taking effect.

A third motivation is that of the enhancement of yields from a fishery resource. Where the yield from a stock can be increased by an investment of some kind, this investment will not be made unless the investors can receive a satisfactory return. To receive a satisfactory return they will have to be assured of a right to a sufficient share of the stock. Although aquaculture is a prime example of this, there are many other situations which provide an incentive for a user, or group of users, to claim some form and degree of exclusivity.

I suggested that governments could take advantage of the efficiency and enhancement motivations to facilitate and encourage communities, or fishermen groups, to move towards systems of property rights and to take on management responsibilities. A means for doing this would be through the use of fixed fishing gear devices and techniques such as gill nets, trammel nets, pots, fish traps, artificial reefs, fish aggregation devices, longlines and others. In general, there has been a tendency for governments to prohibit or impede the use of some of these gears, largely because the principle of open-access has predominated. The history of this is discussed briefly and is followed by a description of some of the kinds of devices and gears that might be employed. It is, of course, obvious that only certain kinds of fisheries lend themselves to the use of this approach and that mobile gear will still have an important role. But it may be that the opportunities for the use of fixed gear are larger than is generally considered. These opportunities are discussed in terms of their use as a basis for property rights management and as a means for reducing fishing and management costs.

2. HISTORY

The history of opposition to the use of fixed nets is long. One of the most interesting examples is found in the Report of the Baird Commission in 1871 and 1872 (Baird 1873). This report stated that “the supply [of fish], which formerly greatly exceeded the demand, now, to a certain extent at least and in some localities, has failed; and the impression has become prevalent that the fish themselves are diminishing, and that in time some kinds, at least, will be almost or quite exterminated... The cause assigned by those who complained most... was the multiplication of ‘traps’ and ‘pounds’ which captured fish of all kinds in great numbers and, as was supposed, in greater quantity than the natural fecundity of the fish could make good year by year...”.

This voluminous report (over 800 pages) contains testimony of numerous fishermen from New England, divided between those using traps, weirs and other fixed gear and those using handlines and mobile gear. Although Baird did not recommend abolition of the fixed gears provided that there were closures during the spawning season, the testimony was largely in opposition and often emotional. “Even supposing, for the sake of argument, that these wholesale methods of taking fish (traps, weirs, etc.) do not, on the whole, injure the fisheries, by what right does any man, or set of men, take all the fishes of the sea which they can catch as his or theirs? Have the public no rights? Has not every individual some rights which these monopolists are bound to respect?... See the hundreds of thousands of barrels of fish which they testified annually to have taken in their traps for market at home and abroad, for fertilizing phosphates, for bait for the mackerel and cod fisheries, the profits of which they pocketed, and to which they had no legal or moral right if their modes of fishing deprived the poorer fishermen of what was legally and morally theirs” (George Palmer in Baird 1873). It is interesting to note that Mr. Palmer identified three “monopolists” (the William L. Bradley Manufacturing Co., the Pacific Guano Company of Wood’s Hole, and the Cape Cod Railroad Company). This is not dissimilar to the three villains identified by Greenpeace in their diatribe against factory trawlers: Tyson Foods, Inc., ConAgra, and KPMG Peat Marwick (Greer 1993).

Another example of the opposition to the use of fixed gear can be found in the history of salmon traps in Alaska and Washington State. Although such traps are highly efficient ways for taking most of the salmon in Alaska (though not all strains), “the traps were legislated out of existence in Puget Sound by 1935 and in Alaska in 1959” (Crutchfield and Pontecorvo 1969).

The struggle in New England, and elsewhere, between users of fixed and mobile gear was generally a struggle that can be characterized in various ways. It might be considered a struggle between corporations and individual fishermen; between those with relatively easy access to capital and those without; or between capitalists and workers. My hypothesis is that the use of fixed gear attracted those with capital because they assumed, perhaps tacitly, that they would acquire a de facto property right to the site for the gear, and that the property right would allow them to capture satisfactory returns from their investments. Those with mobile gear were opposed not only because the fixed gear might interfere with their fishing activities but also because the implicit property right would attract big business. Under the condition of open-access, the opponents to fixed gear tended to win the battles and fixed gear has usually, though not always, been banned.

3. KINDS OF FIXED GEAR, DEVICES AND TECHNIQUES

I include a wide variety of devices and techniques within the heading of fixed gear. Many of these, described in the Baird Commission report, are still used today. These include nets, such as gill nets and trammel nets fixed to the bottom; fish traps, weirs, pounds and fykes also fixed to the bottom; longlines and trot lines; and pots for lobster and bottom fish. For my purposes other devices should also be included such as artificial reefs and fish aggregation devices (FADs). All of these are site specific and fixed in place.

Various kinds of fish can be taken by these kinds of gear. The relative efficiency of different gears is presented below in Table 1. As can be seen, gill nets, tangle nets, longlines and traps can be used for a wide variety of types of fish (although it should be noted that for some uses, e.g. squid, the gears are not fixed in place).

Artificial reefs and FADs are not fishing gears, as such, but they serve to attract fish to specific locations. The former tend to primarily attract demersal species, and the latter to attract pelagic fishes. The latter are increasingly being used in tuna fisheries.

It is useful to cite some examples of the ways in which fixed gear and devices have provided a basis for property rights. Much has been written about the lobster trap fisheries in Maine and the ways in which the local fishermen have worked out a rudimentary system of property rights. In the Philippines, tuna fishermen use FADs (payaos) to attract the fish. Recognizing that placement of these in too close proximity to each other would be mutually damaging, they agreed among themselves with regard to their placement. This implies that the user-group has acquired a form of exclusive use right, since such agreements would not work if “outsiders” were to enter with their own FADs. In India off the state of Kerala, artificial reefs have been implanted by fishing communities (Kurien 1991). In one community, the reef was constructed by a group of fishers who then controlled access, limiting it to those who had invested in the construction. However, in another community, the investment was made by the community as a whole on the basis of “whatever each one can give happily”. In this case, access to the reef was open to all community members. The difference in approach by the two communities reflected religious differences but the critical point in both cases was the use of a fixed fishing device as a basis for claiming property rights; by a user group in the former situation and a community in the latter.

4. ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES

Fixed gear and devices will not, of course, work in all fisheries. In some cases this may be for technical reasons; e.g. variable movements of the stocks from year to year; being located in deep waters and not responsive to aggregation devices; size of the individuals, etc. In other cases, the economic aspects may be important.

However, as far as I know, the comparative economic advantages and disadvantages between fixed and mobile gear have not been examined for most fisheries. With regard to shallow water traps, trot lines, and trammel nets, it would seem that they would have lower capital and fuel costs than mobile gear used for the same stocks. Pots for lobsters and crabs are already in common use. Pots are also used for some fin-fish and may be advantageous for others. There are relatively high capital costs for the implantation of artificial reefs but they produce high returns. The establishment of FADs is generally not very costly although maintenance costs may be high. But they significantly reduce search costs and, thereby, fuel consumption. Although these are speculations at best, they indicate that there may be many fisheries which could be conducted through the use of fixed gear and fixed devices more efficiently than through the use of mobile gear. Certainly, it seems that further analysis of comparative advantages would be desirable.

Table 1: Indexes of efficiency/selectivity

(1 = low index, 5 = maximum index)

Gear type/ Target species	Demersal fish	Small pelagic fish	Large pelagic fish	Shrimps	Molluscs	Crustaceans	Squid	Flatfish
Bottom trawl	5	2	0	2	1	1	1
Mid Water trawl	3	4	2	1	0	0	2	0
Beam trawl	3	1	0	1	1	1	0	5
Shrimp trawl	3	1	0	5	1	1	0	3
Danish Seine	5	2	0	1	0	0	1	3
Purse Seine	2	5	5	1	0	0	3	0
Dredge	0	0	0	0	0	5	0	2
Jig/Handline	3	3	2	0	0	0	5	0
Gill net	3	3	3	0	0	0	0	0
Tangle net	3	3	3	3	3	0	4	3
Long line	3	0	3	0	0	0	0	2
Trolling	0	3	4	0	0	0	0	0
Traps	3	1	2	1	4	1	0	0
Hand collection	0	0	0	0	3	3	0	0

(from Smith, in press)

The current paradigm shift from open-access to property rights does not, at present, seem to have had much effect on thinking with regard to the use of alternative gears and the opportunity for the use of fixed gear within property rights systems. Fixed gear has received little attention because the condition of open-access is largely based on the concept of gear mobility and because the open-access mentality continues to dominate fishery management.

However, I suggest that there are considerable opportunities for facilitating the enlargement of property rights systems through the use of fixed fishing gear and devices. Governments could first determine those situations where fisheries can be efficiently conducted through the use of traps, stake nets, pots, FADs and artificial reefs. They could then identify and plot the sites for the use of these gears and techniques. Exclusive use-rights to these sites could then be allocated, by various means, to fishermen groups or communities. They can be auctioned off, leased, or granted to the users. A proposal along these lines was made to the Maldives government with regard to the use of FADs in the tuna fisheries (Christy et al. 1981).

Once acquired, the holders of the rights would then be responsible for determining how the rights should be used. They would essentially assume much of the management authority, making decisions on how much of what kind of gear to use; rate of use (closed seasons or days); who will do the fishing; how to distribute the benefits, revenues or products and how to ensure compliance within the community or group. The government would still have some responsibilities. The primary one would be ensuring the integrity of the groups’ exclusive rights and preventing intrusion from outside. But it may also have to impose some regulations for stocks that migrate between sites, to prevent excessive use by any one group.

In order to proceed with this suggestion, there needs to be a major change in attitude with regard to fixed gear. This change is emerging as governments turn to consideration of property rights in fisheries. Perhaps this conference will help in expediting the change.

6. REFERENCES

Baird, S. 1873. Report on the Condition of the Sea Fisheries of the South Coast of New England in 1871 and 1872. GPO: Washington.

Christy, F. 1993. Enhancement, efficiency and equity TURFs: experiences in management. In: FAO/Japan Expert Consultation on the Development of Community-based Coastal Fishery Management Systems for Asia and the Pacific. FAO Fisheries Report, No. 474. Suppl., Vol. 1. Rome, FAO. pp. 143-156.

Christy, F., L. Christy, W. Allen and R. Nair 1981. Maldives: the management of fisheries in the exclusive economic zone. FI: GCP/INT/334/NOR. FAO, Rome. 99pp.

Crutchfield, J. and G. Pontecorvo. 1969. The Pacific Salmon Fisheries: A Study of Irrational Conservation. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press. 220pp.

Kurien, J. 1991. Collective action and common property resources rejuvenation: The case of people’s artificial reefs in Kerala State. In: Indo-Pacific Fisheries Commission. Papers presented at the symposium on artificial reefs and fish aggregation devices as tools for the management and enhancement of marine fishery resources. Colombo, Sri Lanka, 14-17 May 1990. RAPA Report 1991/11. FAO. Bangkok. 440pp.

Smith, A. (in press). Analysis of selectivity data and comparative fishing experiments. In: Papers presented at the Expert Consultation on Sustainable Fishing Technologies and Practices. St. Johns's, Newfoundland, Canada. 1-6 March 1998. FAO Fisheries Report N^o 588 Suppl. FAO, Rome.

Greer, J. 1995. The Big Business Takeover of U.S. Fisheries: Privatizing the Oceans Through Individual Transferable Quotas. Washington. Greenpeace. 21pp.

Some Ideas on the Future of Property Rights in the Fisheries - U. Wijkström

Fisheries Policy and Planning Division, Food And Agriculture Organisation,
Viale delle Terme di Caracalla, Rome, Italy
<[email protected]>

Colleagues, Friends, Ladies and Gentlemen,

We will all move forwards - into the future. So will fishermen and their families. I will share with you some personal thoughts about their future and in particular about what might happen to fishing rights. What I will say is in no way normative. I will tell you what I expect may happen - in parts based on very tentative exploratory calculations.

The reason for doing this is, of course, that we need to be pro-active instead of reactive. We as public-private managers, bureaucrats and fishermen will influence the context within which fisheries will be carried out. Our influence is likely to be positive if we are prepared, if we have reflected on what seems likely to happen. On the one hand we need to have an understanding of how fishermen react to their environment. And, on the other, we need to have an idea of how the social, economic, political and biological environments of fishermen can change.

Given my rather narrow purpose - to generate an idea of future fish rights - I need only a simple proposition: the one that says that fishermen are keen to obtain secure rights to fishing and that in the event that they do - the fishermen will develop an attitude of stewardship towards the resource. Whether or not the fisherman actually has property rights or not is not all that important. It is important that they believe they do and that outsiders respect that belief.

Thus fisherman are likely ask that their rights - preferably of exclusive access to resources - be protected where they exist and that they be introduced where they do not exist. Are governments likely to agree to improve their rights? And, what will move governments to do so?

In order to develop an idea let us look briefly at the market, at technological developments and at the spread of democracy.

The market

In 1997 just below 6 billion individuals consumed about 90 million tonnes of fish (crustaceans). That is equivalent to an average of just above 15kg (live-weight equivalent) per person and year. By 2015 there will be a bit more than 7 billion inhabitants on earth. At a bit more than 15 kgs/person/year would imply a demand of between 105 and 110 million tonnes for food. However, in Asia, Africa and parts of Latin America economic growth will continue to stimulate an increased per capita consumption. Thus at 17 kg/person/year the supply in 2015 would have to be of the order of 120 to 125 million tonnes for food. Will this much fish be available at that time? The consensus so far seems to be that capture fisheries will not exceed 100 million tonnes per year; and if fish meal production continues at present levels, only some 70 million tonnes would be available for human food.

On Hampton Street here in Fremantle, there is a shop with a large sign proclaiming: “Think fish, think aquaculture”. This message has spread in Western Australia. The Sunday newspaper (14 November, The Western Australian) reported that Fisheries, Western Australia, expects aquaculture production in the state to increase from a value of about $A 10 million per year at present, to $A 200 million by 2010 (pearls excluded). This amounts to a growth rate of just above 30% per year.

It would not be realistic to apply such growth rates to all the world’s aquaculture production. However, if we apply a growth rate of 2.5% per year to the Chinese production (not including aquatic plants) and 5% per year to the rest of the world, then production would reach some 55 million tonnes (again not including aquatic plants) by the year 2015. Adding the capture fishery production of 70 million tonnes we would indeed reach the 125 million tonnes needed to provide 17kg/person/year in 2015.

Aquaculture produce on the average is higher-priced than capture-fishery landings. This means that the increasing share of aquaculture produce in the total production will tend to keep “a lid” on fish prices overall. But, there will be little room for any increase in real prices. Capture fishermen will try to differentiate their fish from those of aquaculturists in order to achieve higher prices for the wild produce. However, it seems likely that capture fisheries will generally need higher productivity, which - at stable prices - means higher CPUEs, in order to survive. Thus, they will be dependent upon the rebuilding of stocks, and that will be possible only if the access to the resources is controlled and reserved for some fishermen only. Fishery administrators and managers agree with this argument.

Technological developments

The market, however, is not all. Technology will continue to modify the context within which fisheries are carried out. It is clear that technological developments will make it easier for fishermen to increase their CPUEs. But developments in the technology of communications, computation, etc. will also make it easier to see further, faster and with more accuracy at sea and below the sea-surface, and at a declining cost. This will affect the costs that society bears in order to make certain that holders of fishing rights respect their obligations. These costs will decrease. This, in turn will make it more economically feasible to grant stronger fishing rights to fishermen.

The democratic process

Finally a word about public policies. Open market economies are now gradually becoming the norm everywhere. They seem to prosper most where there is political democracy. In many political democracies there is a tendency towards devolution of powers to regions, districts, municipalities and towns. There would not seem to be any reason why fishing communities could not benefit from this devolution. So in summary, I believe that overall there are good prospects for a general strengthening of fishermen’s rights of exclusive access to fish resources.

So far I have spoken about fisheries taking place within EEZs. What about fisheries outside the EEZ, fisheries on the high seas? How to control fisheries on the high seas? It is clear that for control to come about all nations must agree to the control scheme. They are likely to agree if the scheme is such that it preserves their possibility to participate and ensures that no nation - or group of nations - threatens the continued existence of the flora and fauna of the oceans.

I would not be surprised if such a scheme took the form of a “Global High Seas Fisheries Corporation”. All UN member nations and fishing entities would be invited to become shareholders of the Corporation; shares in which could be freely traded amongst governments. The Corporation would have two tasks - to ensure that fishing operations on the high-seas do not threaten the oceanic eco-systems, and that they earn as high a net income as possible. The Corporation would not itself undertake any fishing operations. It would sell, lease, and franchise the rights of fishing to the highest bidders. All the expenses of the Corporation should be paid for by revenues obtained through income from the sale of rights to conduct fishing operations. Naturally such a Corporation could not be established overnight - a transition period - probably measured in decades - would be necessary for its introduction.

Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you for your attention.

The Way Forward - P. P. Rogers

Fisheries WA, S G I O Atrium, Level 3, 170 St George's Terrace
Perth, WA 6000 Australia
< [email protected]>

I would like to offer a few of my thoughts as we move from the Core of Fishrights99, the Fremantle Conference, to the Workshop sessions.

Over the last three days and, indeed, over the past week, I have heard a great deal of discussion about the issues facing a variety of communities - be they:

i. the communities of regulated users such as commercial and recreational fishers, community and conservation interests

ii. indigenous or aboriginal communities

iii. virtual communities

iv. or even communities of regulators.

How we move forward, as I think we know, is up to each and every one of us. It is clear that the diversity of communities demands innovative thinking and solutions to achieve concrete and clearly enunciated objectives.

As Bonnie McCay asked today, how can all resource users come together as a new community which drives the change from “traditional” management to broader, more holistic, more adaptive, and more collaborative systems of stewardship, guardianship and management?

To be very practical, we need to try to get a handle on our “Scott spiders”, our “Rights-Characteristics star-bursts”, and to fully understand the importance of what is drawing us towards ITQs as one of the forms of property rights used in fisheries management.

One way of doing this is to come together in technical consultations that focus on particular aspects of the discussions we have heard these past few days. In fact, this is exactly what we are going to do in the next two days with the Workshops on co-management, globalization, and applied, legal, and local community issues. But this is not enough. These discussions are only a beginning.

So it is with great pleasure that I am able to announce that, already, northern and southern hemisphere countries have come forward with the offer that they, during the next three years, are willing to host 3-day technical consultations where they could then use the gathered participants for another two days after the consultations themselves, to work on both global and local issues.

The topics identified at this point, and in no any particular order of priority, are:

i. social implications and responsibilities
ii. historically disadvantaged stakeholders
iii. duties and responsibilities of industries
iv. legal foundations
v. initial allocations and
vi. economics.

So it is with this thought that I also put forward the challenge that - having had these consultations and generated an explicit understanding of the objectives and priorities we want to achieve - we should return here in four years (and, yes, I am very well aware that this is very soon) to again share the knowledge and information of these additional experiences.

We want your views and directions on how best to do this, so please take the opportunity while you are here to convey your suggestions to Ross Shotton and Rebecca Metzner. I believe this will allow us to continue to move forward together so as to ensure that we do, in fact, have fish for our future.

To those of you who are leaving the Conference at this time, I wish you speedy and safe journeys to your destinations. For those of you who are staying, I look forward to your continued and active participation.

To conclude, it is with these thoughts that, as we move from the core to the Workshop portions of this Fremantle Conference, I thank you for the past few days and look forward to the next two days and to the next few years.