seriously deplete the stock if it is repeated in the following year. Growth overfishing is much easier to ccrribat. Beverton and Holt (1957) ^ advocated maximising the yield per recruit b y reducing the mortality of young fish with prescribed minimum mesh sizes.
In general these aspects of fisheries biology are the subject of broad agreement between the fishery scientists of states fishing the North Atlantic. The transnational consensus has, since 1902, been created and maintained within the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES), a forum of European fisheries scientists. Fisheries research is usually government-funded, because of the individualistic nature of the fishing industry and the prevalence of small proprietors. Such a long history of international co-operation in the collection and interpretation of data might be expected to form an effective bulwark against politicisation of international fisheries questions, but there are areas of uncertainty, and in these areas states can harness the opinions of scientists as mere anmunition in their struggle with other states for scarce resources. Little is known, for instance, about the effect of fishing directed at one species upon other ccmnercially-valuable species. It is possible that the removal by fishing of the adults of a species high up the food chain may stimulate the survival, both o f its prey species and of juveniles of the target species, v»hose bicmass conversion rate will be greater than the older adult fish taken. On the other hand, fishing directed at prey species will yield a greater weight of snaller and therefore less easily-processed fish, but will depress the stocks of predator species. It is difficult to understand the precise relationship between species, since sane change their target food as
they grow, and seine are cannibalistic. Moreover, directed fishing for one species can yield a by-catch of other species, and where the adult of a target fish is snail, like sandeels or Norway pout, the mesh size necessary to ensnare its adult will catch undersized specimens of most of the other species of carmercial value.
Eooncmic aspects
There are special attributes of fishery economics which stem partly frcm these biological factors. Classical economics assumes that the application of additional resources to the production of a good will necessarily increase aggregate production. In a fishery increased effort does not add to the size of the resource. Thus new entrants to the market will raise costs for all producers, because of the decline in catch per unit of fishing effort. In a High Seas fishery the fact that most fisheries are appropriated neither by states nor by individuals means that while there still appear to be profits to be made further entry will occur. In addition differences in fishermen's costs between states and the fact that seme governments subsidise their fishing industries mean that sane entry ma y occur even when sane fishermen are making losses. Successful vessel owners may invest in better catching technology, vhich by increasing fishing capacity has the same effect as new entry. Thus economic rent will disappear from an uncontrolled fishery.
Classical econanics also assumes that, in the event of a rise in costs, inefficient producers will drop out of the market. In practice, even if sustained losses are being made, it is difficult to persuade fishermen to leave a fishery, since the adjustment costs involved in leaving the industry may be still higher, owing to the
need to amortise a sophisticated vessel and/or processing plant and to find alternative anployment. This constitutes a problem in the model shown in Figure 2.1, which assumes that costs are proportionate to effort, whereas there are high fixed costs such as debt servicing which bear no relation to effort. Regions where fishing is important are often areas with few other employment opportunities. The vagaries of year-class recruitment, as well as hope for a change in the political regime governing the fishery, may also deter fishermen frcm leaving the industry. The number of boats primarily directed at fishing a particular stock is thus much less variable than recruitment to that stock. When a fishery has been built up over a succession of above-average recruitment years, returns per unit wall fall dramatically as poorer cohorts recruit, and yet individual fishermen m a y be reluctant to leave the fishery ^ .
If fishermen's costs cure unrelated to the biological yield curve, so are fish prices, which are determined partly b y supply and partly by consumer preferences. Scarcity induces high prices which further exacerbate biological overfishing. As an example, the UK landed price par tonne of sole in 1967 was sixteen times as high as that for herring, with the result that sole were highly prized and heavily fished. Fish prices vary between states, partly as a function of distance frcm fishing grounds, but also because of differences in national taste. According to a papier prepared for the White Fish Authority, "the Germans generally prefer redfish and saithe, the Dutch plaice, the French whiting, the Scottish haddock whilst the
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English would choose cod" . Whilst this is obviously a simplification, these general preferences mean that price ratios between species vary considerably between states, and fishermen of all North-West European littoral states indulge in exporting seme
fish, sometimes morely by landing wet (unfrozen and unprocessed) fish directly at a foreign port. In a situation where domestic fishermen are suffering losses, such clearly visible imports can be the cause of deep resentment, with the accusation of "dumping" on the assumption that the foreigners are also making operational losses.
Some fish of low commercial value may be found in sufficient concentrations to allow their economic exploitation for "industrial purposes", usually processing into fishmeal for cattle food. The costs of this industrial fishing are lower per unit weight than those of fishing for human consumption, due to part-processing at sea and the absence of need for sorting, gutting, or handling. The British industrial fishery has been small, but causes of unrest among UK fishermen have been losses to the food fishery from the success of the Danes and the Norwegians in industrial fishing, taking large numbers of undersized individuals of "protected” species (see pages 237-240).
Unlike the biologists, fisheries economists favour Maximum Economic Yield (MEY) (Y1,E1 on Figure 2.1) rather than OSY as the goal of fisheries management. This occurs at the point where the difference between total revenue and total cost is greatest. As Figure 2.1 illustrates, Maximum Economic Yield occurs at a lower catch level than does Optimum Sustainable Yield. In practice, fishermen cannot hold catch at that level, because the number of producers is too large for one or two to control the market. Where there is no regulation, additional entrants to a fishery can be expected until total costs equal total revenue (Y5.E3)« In addition, states will often subsidise fish production or export, in order to maintain employment, to gain foreign exchange or to maximise food supplies.
These subsidies encourage a continuation of overfishing even beyond Y3,E3, tending towards the economic and ultimately the biological
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collapse of the fishery. The profitability of fishing can be increased by raising the catch per unit of fishing capacity, thus reducing unit costs.
Although MEY is a perfectly legitimate goal of fisheries management, even had the political obstacles been surmountable it would have been difficult to achieve MEY in practice. A number of problems appear in the application of the model presented in Figure 2.1 in the operational conext of fishing activity. For one thing. Maximan Economic Yield is difficult to determine in an international fishery across the exchanges. More seriously, given the differing goals of econanists and biologists, fisheries management becomes more susceptible to political manipulation. This is worsened by the fact that, as De Meza has pointed out, even for the economist MEY is the correct management objective only if the social discount rate is zero ^ . Figure 2.1 deals with sustained yields, and does not address a dynamic situation so well. A cut in effort will cause the bicmass to regenerate, and is therefore an investment strategy, with current income being foregone in exchange for future income. The higher the social discount rate (i.e. the less value society places on future income rather than current income) the higher is the optimal level of effort and the lower the bicmass. If the discount rate is sufficiently high effort could even be in excess of the OSY level.
In addition the price-taking assumptions of Figure 2.1 are wrong. Fish is an extremely perishable caxmodity, and landed prices for wet fish, at least, react violently to the changes in supply caused b y weather conditions and seasonal changes in fish stock location and
concentration. It is therefore cannon for governments to raise the econanic return to fisheries by intervening in the market for newly-landed fish. Fishing is an industry in which a large number of carpeting undertakings, with an imperfect knowledge of each others' activities, attempt to sell a highly perishable resource to a smaller number of fish merchants, although freezing facilities, where possessed by fishermen, can prevent same fish fran reaching the market at a disadvantageous time. The largest firms in 1967 were expanding their fleets of freezer trawlers, capable of freezing the catch at sea, but the vast majority of fishermen were dependent on the wet fish market. In such a situation the fish merchants possess advantages over the fishermen because of the latter's greater numbers, and the 'landed price' (that received b y the fishermen) can plunmet violently in reaction to a slight oversupply. Seasonal factors like weather conditions and piscine breeding habits mean that there cure great underlying fluctuations in the fish market. State or intergovernmental agencies can intervene b y imposing a minimum price on fish sold for human consumption, and fish which cannot ccmnand this may be dumped or reduced to fishmeal. Such minimum (withdrawal) price schemes reduce the cost to fishermen of oversupply, working against the interests of stock conservation by increasing yield and effort beyond where they would otherwise be.
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The management of a fishery
Whether the regime operating over a fishing ground is a territorial or a High Seas one, most sizeable fisheries, other than shellfish, cure essentially transnational. The lifecycle of most fish includes migration, which with the dispersal of pollutants means that even a fishing ground wholly within a state's Territorial or Internal Waters
is not inmune from the activities of the nationals of other states.
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Viewed in this light, regional fishery organisations are essentialfor a sustainable fishery, and the distinction between the areas landward and seaward of a state' s fisheries limits should only be whether regionally-agreed regulations are enforced by coastal states or flag states. In practice, of course, flag states vary in the zeal with which they ensure that their fishermen comply with such regulations.
The tools available for fisheries management fall broadly into two types. Firstly there are tools which are aimed at eliminating growth overfishing, in other words those which attempt to maximise the yield per recruit b y preventing the taking of undersized fish. Secondly there are tools intended to prevent recruitment overfishing, authoritative actions constantly to adjust fishing effort to a level appropriate to yield either OSY or MEY, whichever fishery managers are aiming a t . The choice of goal depends on whether a state' s principal concern about fisheries is their role in regional economic development, in which case MEY, which aims at maximising producer's surplus, is appropriate, or whether strategic issues like food supply or the creation of the largest possible pool of trained mariners and of vessels are central to state strategy, in which case OSY is appropriate. Either way, since a fish stock fluctuates, fisheries management tools are aiming at a moving target.
The first category of management tools is generally easier to implement than the second, since such tools are necessarily non-discriminatory, and involve an equality of treatment between vessels of all states. In addition the prevention of growth overfishing tends to increase aggregate catches, and thus involves no
individual sacrifices. The principal tool in this category is the prescription, after Beverton-Holt, of minimum mesh sizes for
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"protected" species, e.g. those of ccumercial value. There is amuch greater variety of tools for depressing fishing effort, b u t they are harder to introduce since they usually impose restraints on fishing, and therefore require close intergovernmental co-operation.
There are a number of alternative means of increasing yield p e r unit effort, of which the significance was well understood in 1967, but in spite of their availabilty to the Atlantic Fisheries Carmissions (see pages 1 25 — 131), they had not been used. One is to reduce the number of vessels as catching technology, and hence fishing capacity, improves and to limit entrants to a fishery by the use of licences. Such a method had been used b y the International Halibut Ccnmission in the Pacific during the 1930s, and had successfully rehabilitated a declining fishery, guaranteed the earnings of those engaged in it, prevented overcapitalisation and provided a rent for management. Although this would have had adverse effects upon employment numbers, it would have secured the livelihood of those remaining in the fishery. Since it could be interpreted as a limitation of H i g h Seas freedoms, however, the states constituting the Ccmnissions did not see this as an option. A more politically acceptable yet econcmically wasteful means of increasing yield per unit effort is to reduce the number of days available for fishing. Closed seasons, and the limitation of fishing to certain days of the week, have been used by a number of fisheries authorities. Econcmically these limitations are wasteful, and their only saving is in operating costs. By curtailing available fishing time, they reward vessels which can take a large catch speedily end can therefore cause overcapacity, leaving vessels and men idle vhen not permitted to
fish. The resultant overcapitalisation makes it hard for the
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industry to cover costs. Moreover if closed seasons fail tocoincide with an open season for the same species elsewhere, they can prevent the steady flow of fish required b y processing operations. A system untried on a large scale was that of limiting catches by imposing national quotas within a scientifically-determined Total Allowable Catch. This approach presented both legal and political difficulties. Firstly it would amount to a limitation of state freedoms on the High Seas. Secondly, a political consensus would be required sufficient for agreement on unevenly distributed sacrifices based upon estimated stock sizes, with further disagreement on the optimum size of TACs.
Notes