Fair Fish: Fair Access To Fish

FISH FAIR FISH: Fair Access to Fish Fact Sheet • September 2009

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AIR FISH is about making sure U.S. fish are managed for the long-term benefit of the fish, fishing communities and all of us in the United States.

Fish Are a Public Resource

Privatization — Just Say NO

Fish in U.S. ocean waters are what is known as a public trust asset. This means that everyone in the U.S. has the privilege to enjoy the fish in our oceans — whether you fish for them, swim with them or just like to know they are out there.

When the government establishes catch-share systems, they are often poorly designed and can grant private businesses almost complete control over access to the public’s fish. Catch-share systems designed in this way are more accurately titled “fishery privatization programs.”

Government’s Role Is to Manage Your Fish

Fishery privatization starts when the Government distributes catch shares for free. The government gives away the valuable catch shares to businesses that have been involved in the fishery in the past. Allocations are made in proportion to each participant’s past “catch history.” While this may sound like a fair means to divide up fish, this often rewards those that fished the fastest and hardest, had the least concern for the environment and lobbied hardest for privatization and personal gain.

The federal government is given the great responsibility of managing fish in U.S. waters for the benefit of all of us. Its role in managing fish can be generally explained using two concepts — “conserving the fish” and “sharing the fish.” “Conserving the fish” is about deciding how many fish can be caught now, while making sure there are still enough left for the long term. “Sharing the fish” is about deciding who can catch the fish.

Conserving the Fish To “conserve the fish,” the federal government recently decided to introduce an annual catch limit (ACL) for all federally managed fish. An ACL is exactly what it sounds like — a limit on how many fish can be caught each year. These catch limits are designed to help rebuild depleted fish stocks and end overfishing, while still allowing some take of fish for use as seafood and other products.

Sharing the Fish One way to “share the fish” is to allocate some of each ACL to individual fishermen. These pieces of ACL, often called “catch shares,” are simply the ability to catch a percentage of the ACL for a particular fish (e.g. permission to catch 1 percent of the Gulf of Mexico red snapper ACL).

Choose Wisely When It Comes to Fish A catch-share allocation approach can take one of two paths. If designed poorly, catch-share management systems can result in privatization and problems. If designed well, they can lead to fishery management in the public interest.

Once distributed, the catch shares are then fully tradable — meaning recipients can sell them or lease them for profit. As time goes on, a small group of people or corporations can purchase control over access to the entire fishery.

In many cases, access privatization rewards the most environmentally harmful fishing methods and highest bycatch, destroys small coastal communities and displaces independent fishermen and related small businesses that provide local jobs. Access privatization also relies heavily on taxpayer funding and subsidies, and private catch-share “holders” often push down crew wages to maximize their profits. Right now, the Obama administration is promoting privatized catch-share systems as our primary fishery management tool in the United States.

FAIR FISH: A New Fishery Management Approach — Good for the Fish, Fishermen and Public. With many popular wild fish populations depleted and an ever-increasing demand for seafood, the United States needs a common-sense approach to fishery management. Our fishery management must maintain public control of our fish and allocate access to them in the public interest and on fair terms to fishermen. We need “FAIR FISH.” Under FAIR FISH, when the government wants to allocate fishery access by means of ACL units (i.e. catch shares), it would rent these directly to eligible entities — such as community fishing associations and independent fishermen — on just terms. Even if a rental payment to the public is small, charging resource rent establishes the logic that everyone in the United States has the right to benefit from the productivity of the fish that belong to them.1 Rental revenues can be invested (in other words, recycled) back into better fishery and ocean management (for example, restoring wild salmon runs). The federal government has adopted a similar “cap-rent-recycle” approach for allocating access to other federally managed assets, such as timber. Importantly, a FAIR FISH approach provides flexibility to change fixed-term agreements when they expire. For example, they can be competitive (based on who uses the fishing gear with the least environmental impact, or who provides the most local jobs) or non-competitive (such

as direct allocations to communities that include specific requirements, like using fishing methods that cause less habitat damage). The FAIR FISH cap-rent-recycle approach is a fair and equitable approach. Privatization is not.

International Experience Namibia, one of the world’s top 10 fishing nations, has implemented the FAIR FISH approach with great success (see the Food & Water Watch fact sheet on Namibia). Iceland, another top fishing nation, went down the access privatization path in the 1980s, and is now looking to change to a FAIR FISH approach. In 2007, the United Nations Human Rights Committee ruled that the Icelandic quota system violated international law, specifically the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, because the system forced fishermen to pay money to a privileged group of citizens, known as the catch-share “sea-lords,” who held the nation’s fishing rights. Even the United States has shown hesitancy going forward with access privatization. From 1996 to 2002 there was a Congressional moratorium on the establishment of such catch-share systems. The United States should learn from international experience and choose the FAIR FISH path to fishery management to benefit fish, fishermen and the public. To learn more and become involved in our FAIR FISH campaign go to www.foodandwaterwatch.org/fish.

Endnote 1

Support Unit for International Fisheries and Aquatic Research. Resource Rent as a Central Concept in Fisheries Management: The Case of Namibia. April 2004. http://www.onefish.org/global/ archive/sifar/DfID_Keysheets/WBPolicyBrief09_2.htm, accessed June 2009.

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