A Critical Review of the Individual Quota as a Device in Fisheries Management.
- Resource Type
- Article
- Authors
- Copes, Parzival
- Source
- Land Economics; Aug86, Vol. 62 Issue 3, p278, 14p
- Subject
- FISHERY management
PROPERTY rights
FISH stocking
FISH populations
FISH farming
INTERNATIONAL competition
FISHING
- Language
- ISSN
- 00237639
This article focuses on the individual quota as a device in fisheries management. From the start it was recognized that fisheries problems were related to absence of individual property rights in the fish stock. Nonexclusiveness of access robed fishing operators of the incentives to husband the resource leading almost invariably to excessive levels of exploitation. The fugitive nature of most fish stocks, together with the multiple resource use of their water habitat, made it usually impractical if not impossible to solve the problems by dividing the fish stocks into discrete units for which effective property rights would be assigned. One form of fisheries output limitation indeed has long been used by both national and international management properties. They have frequently sought to meet conservation objectives by imposing a total allowable catch in fisheries subject to heavy exploitation pressure. With secure quota, a country would no longer have to strive for its share of the international harvest by increasing its fleet capacity in competition with other countries with other countries doing the same.