Individual Fishing Quota - Effectiveness

Effectiveness

In 2008 a large scale study concluded that ITQs can help to prevent collapses and restore declining fisheries. While nearly a third of open-access fisheries have collapsed, catch share fisheries are only half as likely to fail.

This new study expanded a global database of more than 11,000 fisheries from the Sea Around Us Project that spans the years 1950-2003. A 2006 study by Boris Worm of Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia and colleagues using the original dataset projected widespread global fishery collapse by 2048, assuming that traditional management techniques would continue to predominate. Worm commented, "This study gives us a solution to work with in fighting the global fishery crisis." The study acknowledges complicating factors such as that the same readiness to change that triggers a change to ITQs may also lead to other beneficial changes, such as bycatch limits.

In 1995, the Alaskan halibut fishery converted to ITQs, after regulators cut the season from about four months down to two or three days. Until the change, the catch was frozen at sea, because the market could not absorb so much fresh product at once. Today, the season lasts nearly eight months and boats deliver fresh, undamaged fish at a steadier pace and sell it at a significantly higher and profitable price.

Not all fisheries have thrived under ITQs, in some cases experiencing reduced or static biomass levels, because of factors such as:

• TACs may be set at too high a level
• Migratory species may be overfished in parts of their habitat not covered by the TAC
• Habitats may incur damage
• Enforcement may be lax