Subject Stock Stewardship Shares Letter to NEFMC Date Mon Jan 24 2005 14:42 Author Dick Allen (rba@FisheryConsulting.com)

Dear Council Members: The New England fishing community and the Council are clearly interested in the potential for sector allocations to improve the management of the region's fisheries. I'd like to suggest that stock stewardship shares would be preferable to catch shares in any allocation program. The difference is that a share of the fish stock creates a conservation incentive and the ability for shareholders to conserve in a way that is not possible with catch shares. The primary impediment to fishery conservation is the disincentive for any individual or group to leave fish in the water, knowing that someone who did not make a comparable sacrifice will either catch the fish left behind, or benefit equally from the conservation investment. Catch shares do not eliminate that problem - any person or group that does not catch their share will find them-selves sharing that investment with the entire fleet. Under a catch share system, when a stock assessment shows an improvement in the stock, the increase will be distributed among all of the sectors, despite the fact that one sector may have left fish to grow and reproduce while another did not. Catch shares give someone the right to catch fish, but not to conserve fish. Experience has shown that sector allocations have two significant problems. First, with catch shares rather than stock stewardship shares, no one can conserve more than the uniform standard, despite the fact that some sectors may wish to conserve more. The second major flaw creates a double whammy, and perhaps a triple, for sectors that stay within their catch quota compared to those who do not. If one sector exceeds its catch quota, other sectors automatically pay a price in reduced availability of fish. They also pay a price when the stock assessment shows that the stock is lower than expected and all sector shares must be reduced. In the worst case, sectors that did not exceed their quota may be required to pay back the overage that was taken by someone else. Stock stewardship shares overcome these problems by allocating portions of the fish stock, rather than the catch. A catch share implies that there is a certain fish stock in the ocean that produces that catch. The stock can be apportioned in the same way that the catch is. The stock in the ocean is affected by two categories of impacts: non-human and human. The only quantifiable human impact on a stock is the catch, including discard mortality. So a sector's impact on the stock that produces its catch share can be measured by its catch, factoring in discard mortality as is done now. The impact of non-human factors is the same on all of the stock shares within a common biological stock. Stock stewardship shares give a sector greater responsibility and accountability for maintaining the health of the stock, rather than simply staying within a catch quota that is determined by someone else. A sector can build up its stock by catching less than a uniform standard might allow, and be assured that the surplus will not be automatically distributed to other sectors as it would in a catch share system. The scientific basis for stock stewardship shares was developed by Canadian fishery scientist Stratis Gavaris in a 1996 article in the Canadian Journal of Fisheries. It can be accessed at: http://ginkgo.cisti.nrc.ca/ppv/RPViewDoc?_handler_=HandleInitialGet&journal=cjfas&volume=53&articleFile=f96-088.pdf&calyLang=eng As Gravaris sees it, a portion of a population would be "endowed to the care of a group of like-minded fishers and identified as an EMU (Elementary Management Unit). This achieves the objective of attributing value to uncaught fish and partitioning that value in a manner that limits the impact of decisions by an EMU on others." Essentially, Gavaris suggests the creation of bank accounts in which Mother Nature makes all of the deposits and the account holder decides on how much to withdraw and how much to leave in the account to collect interest. Rather than applying the total catch against the total stock, each sector's catch is applied against its stock stewardship share. Traditional stock assessments are used to track any difference between what Mother Nature actually did to the stock in the ocean, compared to what she was expected to do by the model that credits the stock accounts with deposits in the form of recruitment. I believe that Stratis Gavaris provided a scientifically sound method for resolving some of our most difficult fishery policy issues. Stock stewardship shares are a natural complement to sector allocations. They hold the promise of eliminating much of the bickering that would otherwise accompany the perceived impact of one sector on another. I hope that you will consider making stock stewardship shares the basis for sector allocations. If this concept gains traction, I would further suggest that sector operating agreements be viewed as stock stewardship contracts, in recognition of the conservation incentives that will be created under such a system. Thank you for your consideration of these ideas. Dick Allen 35 Bliss Rd. Wakefield, RI 02879 (401) 789-1463

Subject Trevor Kenchington Response 1 Date Tue Jan 25 2005 14:04 Author Trevor Kenchington (tk@FisheryConservation.net)

Dick, Thank you for copying your message to me. Perhaps you could distribute this response to anyone else you sent yours to, aside from those on your "to" list? In your message, you wrote: > The scientific basis for stock stewardship shares was developed by Canadian fishery scientist Stratis Gavaris in a 1996 article in the Canadian Journal of Fisheries. It can be accessed at: http://ginkgo.cisti.nrc.ca/ppv/RPViewDoc?handler_=HandleInitialGet&journal= cjfas&volume=53&articleFile=f96-088.pdf&calyLang=eng As I have told you before, Stratis came late to this idea. So far as I can tell, it was first proposed by John Caddy (then with FAO in Rome) in the early '80s, though I came up with it quite independently at about the same time and suggested a variant (specifically designed for the redfish fishery on the Scotian Shelf) in my 1984 thesis. Canada's DFO greeted that suggestion with the complete indifference that it no doubt richly deserved. (So far as I can tell, Stratis' proposal has received about the same level of official recognition as mine did.) Scientists squabbling over priority aside, it would probably be best to give the idea the name which John coined for it, "Biomass Allocation", since that captures its essence and clearly distinguishes it from IFQs and other families of management measures. [Ralph Townsend, who has also discussed the same topic, termed these allocations "Bankable ITQs", while Stratis called them "Population Rights". I'd suggest that those are preferable to your "stewardship shares", though still not as informative as Caddy's term.] When it comes to practical application, rather than the theoretical ramblings of the four of us, I would make a few points: I suggested a form of biomass allocation for the redfish fishery because it is suited to the peculiar dynamics of that species and that fishery. There are a number of pertinent peculiarities but, most importantly, redfish are very long lived. Thus, a decision to fish conservatively this year can allow increased catches of the same year-class a few years into the future. For most other northwest Atlantic resources, rewards of present conservation that are taken more than a few years into the future cannot be taken from the present year-classes (since mortality will have depleted them). The future gain from present pain will have to be taken (in part or in full) from the progeny of the conserved year-classes. Yet, for most of our fisheries, scientists are unable to clearly demonstrate a relationship between present spawning biomass and the recruitment which results from it. Thus, we would have no firm basis for saying how much any one sector's present constraint contributed to an increase in the biomass of future generations. Arbitrary rules could, of course, be developed for rewarding more conservative sectors with larger shares of future year-classes but arbitrary rules are never ideal in fisheries management. A degree of arbitrariness would in any case be needed in the allocation of biomass within present year-classes. That is: In a perfect system, we would monitor the natural mortality of fish left in the water by each sector, along with the growth of the survivors -- and hence we would determine the biomass "owned" by each sector at the start of each fishing year. Obviously, that isn't possible, let alone practical. A biomass allocation system in which changes in the allocations were calculated annually by scientists would very quickly become mired in disputes over data, analyses and interpretations. To make biomass allocation work, there would have to be pre-agreed schedules for mortality and growth rates, which would be used for the allocation book-keeping even if they did not perfectly agree with biological reality. Such a system could be set up easily enough, except that the schedules would have to be negotiated at the same time as the sizes of the initial allocations were hammered out. I am inclined to doubt whether the New England Council could deal with those, highly-contentious, negotiations in any reasonable time frame, while also carrying the massive load which it currently faces. My third point derives from a project that I did for John Caddy in the mid-1990s (which I think I have told you about before). John had me develop a computer model suited to testing the biomass-allocation idea. It was an initially-simple spreadsheet model which grew so vast that contemporary computers took tens of minutes for each re-calculation. (My 1998 machine can re-calculate it in seconds. A modern computer would do it before the operator could finish hitting the "enter" key.) With that computation problem, we never did much with the model beyond building it. However, in the testing phase I did discover one unexpected but rather important effect of biomass-allocation systems, which would be particularly crucial in U.S. fisheries management. If NEFMC were to allow some sectors to have biomass allocations, they would not (at least initially) be allowed to overfish in the short term against a promise to be more conservative later. Such allocations would only be useful to those sectors which chose to take less than their share of the optimum yield now, in return for increased future benefits. yet the optimum yield is, by definition, the catch obtained by fishing at a rate that maximizes net benefits to the nation. Thus, biomass allocations can only benefit those who, in pursuit of their own interests, choose to underfish and hence reduce overall net benefits. That might not be so bad were it not that my model consistently showed that any holder of biomass allocations who harvested less than others would gradually be allocated everyone else's shares. In other words, a biomass-allocation system in New England would result in those who tried to harvest enough to support the maximum net benefit to the nation losing their share of the fishery to anyone who chose to underfish. I doubt that that is an ideal policy objective. It is, of course, very easy to visualize such a system within the rhetoric which supposes that all small-boat fishermen are inherently conservationists, who should be rewarded by just such a transfer of biomass-share, while all corporations owning large boats are resource-rapists dedicated to short-term profit, who should be squeezed out of the fishery. Setting such nonsense aside, however, it is clear that (all else being equal) corporate owners tend to win in any system that offers transferable rights because they have better access to capital and hence are better able to survive present pain for future gain. Under a biomass-allocation system, it is entirely possible that some far-sighted corporation would invest in permits in a sector, use them little if at all, and wait until the entire fishery came into its hands. Owner/operators of small boats are unlikely to be able to wait out the big players, even if we ignore the losses to everyone else that would result from the underfishing. At least, those owner/operators who were dependent of the biomass-allocated fishery would not be able to wait out their rivals. An FMP would, however, have to be carefully written to prevent the entire fishery from gradually accruing to the owners of unused latent permits (including the owners of small boats operating in other fisheries), with all active participants being excluded from the fishery. I am sure that you are not aiming for either outcome but those are the likely results of an incautious application of the biomass-allocation idea. I expect that each of these problems can be overcome and that biomass allocations can and should be added to the managers toolbox, for use in appropriate fisheries. (I still think that the idea would have worked well in the Scotian Shelf redfish fishery of the 1980s, when it was dominated by large companies using large trawlers.) However, we are a very long way from being ready to turn the Caddy/Kenchington/Townsend/Gavaris theoretical concept into something that could be applied to a broad spectrum of fisheries. We need a whole lot more abstract discussion (but not a discussion confined to theoreticians), though it might well be focused on some case studies. After that, we need a few real-world trials to see what new challenges emerge as biomass allocation is put into practice. Which leads me to a question: Is it sensible to look to the New England Council for the development of case studies and/or an early real-world trial? I'd be the last person to dissuade the Council from applying a viable solution to current problems just because it is new and different (particularly when it is a solution that I can fairly claim to have co-invented!). However, NEFMC is struggling to cope with existing and on-going demands, given constraints on staff, budget and simply the time demands on Council members. I would suggest that the development of wholly-new management approaches would be better left to others, until those approaches reach a much more finished state than the biomass-allocation idea yet has. Trevor Kenchington P.S.: I would rather not comment on such matters but I must note that there is also, and quite separately, a major question over the political acceptability, in New England, of allocating biomass. We already hear objections to IFQs on the basis that nobody should own fish before they are caught. Yet IFQs only grant the right to harvest fish. Biomass allocations are a way of privatizing ownership of the living resource on the ocean (even though all participants in the fishery would continue to share access, in contrast to freehold systems). I suspect that that would be deeply troubling to many people. -- Trevor J. Kenchington PhD Gadus Associates, R.R.#1, Musquodoboit Harbour, Nova Scotia B0J 2L0, CANADA Science Serving the Fisheries http://home.istar.ca/~gadus

Subject Dick's Response to Trevor Date Tue Jan 25 2005 14:26 Author Dick Allen (rba@FisheryConservation.net)

Dear Council Members: Trevor Kenchington responded to my message about stock stewardship shares by first expanding the list of scientists who have been involved in the development of the concept of biomass allocation, and then pointing out potential pitfalls as he sees them. I'm happy to acknowledge the contributions made by John Caddy, Trevor, Ralph Townsend, and Stratis Gavaris to a concept that each has called by a different name. Trevor suggested that the term "biomass allocation" would be most appropriate. I still like the term stock stewardship shares, because it emphasizes the conservation incentive that is embodied in the concept. Trevor expressed his belief that the Council workload might preclude consideration of biomass allocations at this time. I would suggest that many of the controversies that consume the Council stem from the failure to make explicit allocations accompanied by clear accounting procedures. I would also suggest that the language in the Sector Allocation provisions of Amendment 13 raises similar issues that will eventually have to be dealt with using an approach that approximates biomass allocations. That language states that "If a hard or target TAC allocated to a Sector is not exceeded in a given fishing year, the Sector's allocation of TAC or DAS will not be reduced for the following fishing year as a result of an overage of a hard or target TAC by non-compliant sectors or by non-Sector vessels." We can expect a situation to arise in which one sector has taken less than its TAC, and another sector or non-sector has taken more than the target TAC. We might also have a stock assessment that indicates the need for an adjustment to the TAC, either up or down. How should that adjustment be apportioned, considering the language in Amendment 13? If the adjustment were down, would the compliant sector take the same cut as the non-compliant sector? How much of the needed TAC adjustment could be attributed to the overage of the non-compliant sector, compared to the positive contribution of the sector that took less than its TAC? These are the issues that become relatively straightforward if sector allocations are tracked using the Caddy/Kenchington/Townsend/Gavaris approach. Trevor also expressed concern that biomass allocation might enable one or more well-heeled share-holders to take over the fishery simply by not fishing for a few years. He suggests that the active participants could somehow be excluded from the fishery in this way. As I see it, that would not be possible. Anyone who did not fish on their allocation would be helping the active participants and would have no way to diminish the participation of the active fishermen. Consider a simple example. Assume that Benevolent Harvester (BH) and Capitalist Conserver (CC) each get an initial biomass allocation of 1,000 tons. CC decides to take over the fishery by not fishing on his stock. Let's say that his stock grows by 20% each year because he leaves its surplus production to accumulate. That rate would slow as the stock grew, but that characteristic of natural populations does not affect our example. After 5 years, CC's stock reaches about 2,500 tons. BH keeps fishing at a sustainable rate, thus maintaining his stock at 1,000 tons. BH enjoys the high catch per unit effort that comes with stock abundance. His costs are therefore reduced and his profit is higher. The fact that his percentage share of the total stock has been reduced from 50% to 28% does not hurt him at all - he still has his 1,000-ton stock and he is making money off CC's conservation, not by catching more fish, but by catching them more easily. It doesn't hurt me if another customer of my bank lets the interest on his account accumulate while I take mine out every year. What is it that CC could do to exclude BH from the fishery? Why would CC even contemplate such a strategy? Trevor also asserts that "the optimum yield is, by definition, the catch obtained by fishing at a rate that maximizes net benefits to the nation," and that a shareholder who chose to underfish would be reducing the net benefit to the nation. I'm certain that Trevor is misusing the concept of optimum yield, and how it might be calculated, but this isn't the place to argue that point to any broadly acceptable conclusion. I hope that you will consider the possibility that biomass allocations/stock stewardship shares could help to resolve some of the most troubling issues facing the Council and the fishery management system as a whole. Dick Allen 35 Bliss Rd. Wakefield, RI 02879

Subject Trevor Response 2 Date Tue Jan 25 2005 14:29 Author Trevor Kenchington (tk@FisheryConservation.net)

Dick, I do not want to be drawn into a debate. That is your role, as a Council member, while mine is to provide technical advice. However, I should make a few responses for clarification. You wrote: > I still like the term stock stewardship shares Very well. The Council is already laboring under the confusions of "bycatch" to mean "discards" and "TAC" to mean "quota". Inventing yet another term for biomass allocations won't be anything new! > Trevor expressed his belief that the Council workload might preclude consideration of biomass allocations at this time. Not quite. To re-state my recommendation: By my observations, NEFMC is struggling to apply time-tested management tools to meet the essential, year-to-year requirement to manage New England's fisheries. Once in a while, the Council over-exerts itself to apply something more innovative (though still not entirely novel) to a local situation (e.g. rotation management of scalloping -- though time will tell whether Amendment 10 was a sensible use of scarce Council resources). If that is so, then I doubt that NEFMC is an appropriate organization to take on the task of developing, from scratch, an entirely new management tool, which has been advanced as a theoretical concept perhaps 4 times but which has never actually been applied in the management of any fishery on the planet. > Trevor also expressed concern that biomass allocation might enable one or more well-heeled share-holders to take over the fishery simply by not fishing for a few years. He suggests that the active participants could somehow be excluded from the fishery in this way. As I see it, that would not be possible. Anyone who did not fish on their allocation would be helping the active participants and would have no way to diminish the participation of the active fishermen. > > Consider a simple example. Assume that Benevolent Harvester (BH) and Capitalist Conserver (CC) each get an initial biomass allocation of 1,000 tons. CC decides to take over the fishery by not fishing on his stock. Let's say that his stock grows by 20% each year because he leaves its surplus production to accumulate. That rate would slow as the stock grew, but that characteristic of natural populations does not affect our example. > After 5 years, CC's stock reaches about 2,500 tons. BH keeps fishing at a sustainable rate, thus maintaining his stock at 1,000 tons. BH enjoys the high catch per unit effort that comes with stock abundance. His costs are therefore reduced and his profit is higher. The fact that his percentage share of the total stock has been reduced from 50% to 28% does not hurt him at all - he still has his 1,000-ton stock and he is making money off CC's conservation, not by catching more fish, but by catching them more easily. It doesn't hurt me if another customer of my bank lets the interest on his account accumulate while I take mine out every year. > > What is it that CC could do to exclude BH from the fishery? Why would CC even contemplate such a strategy? Your theorizing follows exactly the same logic that John Caddy and the rest used when advancing the various versions of biomass allocation (except mine, which dodged the issue by exploiting the particular dynamics of redfish). However, as I stated in my previous message, once I used a quantitative model to investigate what would really happen, the argument that you advance proved to be false. To figure out why and to see whether there are any exceptions, I would have to either dig out long-archived files or else spend a few days on re-running the model. I don't intend to do either at this point. (Though, if anyone wants to take this idea seriously, some model-based explorations would be a good next step. If anyone wants to play around a bit, I dare say that my model could be made available, though it would need clearance from FAO. For serious work, I would recommend getting a skilled modeller to come up with something more sophisticated than an Excel spreadsheet model.) However, although I can't remember what I figured out a decade ago, I'll take a guess at why the model produced the results that it did: In your example, BH and CC are each allocated 1,000 tons of biomass. Since it is a U.S. fishery, OM (Omniscient Manager) sets a maximum harvest rate for each participant at the 20% sustainable level. (Let us also suppose that this fishery's resource is conveniently free of all effects of variable environments.) BH, minding his own business and only wanting to fish in a responsible, sustainable way, sets out to harvest 200 tons per year, confident that OM's calculations are correct and that he will thereby retain his 1,000 ton biomass allocation and his on-going ability to harvest 200 tons annually. CC doesn't figure that it is worth gearing up for just 200 tons, so he stays out of the fishery. But, since OM has conferred on him a biomass allocation, he does expect to reap the benefits of his conservation at some later time. After 5 years, the 1,000 tons that CC has not harvested add to the initial 2,000 ton biomass and the total resource biomass is 3,000 tons,less some amount lost to the various non-linearities in the system. Your 2,500 tons is probably a bit low but let's go with that figure. The trouble is in that missing 500 tons. As biomass builds up, density-dependent effects don't only slow the increase in CC's portion of the resource. They also cut into the production of BH's share. [Actually, in most marine fishery resources, it density dependence isn't the main issue. Because CC isn't fishing, the total mortality rate is lower than expected by OM, the average age of the animals is therefore higher and older fish grow more slowly. But no matter: The consequences for BH are much the same.] So BH's 1,000 tons no longer produce an annual surplus of 20%. BH can continue to harvest 200 tons per year but,if he does, he will see his biomass allocation dwindle. Or he can retain the 1,000 tons by cutting his own fishing -- staying sustainable but by sustaining a higher biomass in the water than OM has found to be optimal. If that is the mechanism (and I am theorizing here, not presenting an analysis of my model's performance), the results are a bit more subtle than my previous report of my memory from years ago. BH isn't doomed to lose his fishery to CC. But he cannot operate independently of the consequences of CC's choices (which was what John Caddy promised that biomass allocations would do). If CC chooses not to fish, BH has the choice of (1) continuing to take his share of the optimum yield and seeing his biomass allocation wither away, (2) trimming his annual catches so as to maintain his biomass allocation in the face of CC's excessive conservation, (3) shutting down and maintaining his percentage share of the biomass as the resource rebuilds towards virgin levels, or (4) some intermediate strategy. I suggested in my last that these problems could be overcome if enough thought was put into development of the idea. One option might be to guarantee that the biomass allocation of anyone who harvested within 10% of the official OY would have next year's allocation based only on this year's, the standard schedules for growth and mortality, plus whatever recruitment the ocean provided. Anyone who stayed out of the fishery or took no more than a token amount could be given a new allocation based on an assumption that they had taken their share of OY. People who took catches between those limits could find the fruits of their conservation being reduced, pro rata, so as to fit them all within whatever biomass then remained (though there might be excess amounts to share among all players by some formula). That sort of thing could be done but it would clearly be complicated and messy (in its application as well as its design), which isn't what biomass allocation systems are supposed to be. Once again: I do not doubt that biomass allocations could be developed into an effective tool for some fisheries. I do question whether figuring out how to do that is a sensible use of NEFMC's limited resources. Still, I only pose that question. Answering it is for the Council and its Executive Committee. > Trevor also asserts that "the optimum yield is, by definition, the catch obtained by fishing at a rate that maximizes net benefits to the nation," and that a shareholder who chose to underfish would be reducing the net benefit to the nation. I'm certain that Trevor is misusing the concept of optimum yield, and how it might be calculated Then I suggest that you re-read the relevant sections of Magnuson-Stevens and the National Standards Guidelines. While my words were not a direct quote, I think you will find that the ones you quoted above capture the legal meaning of OY. The consequences of underfishing, under a biomass-allocation system, then follow directly. The situation under current management is, of course, different since present DAS allocations are set assuming that not every permitted vessel will participate in the fishery and not all those which do will use all allocated DAS. (At least, scallop management works that way. I assume groundfish management does also.) In that setting, failing to use your allocation only reduces net benefits to the nation if so many people do it that OY is not harvested. There is a quite separate issue of how much underfishing is needed before the cut in net benefits to the nation is enough to worry about. I am only pointing out the qualitative direction of the effect, not its quantitative magnitude. Trevor Kenchington -- Trevor J. Kenchington PhD Gadus Associates, R.R.#1, Musquodoboit Harbour, Nova Scotia B0J 2L0, CANADA Science Serving the Fisheries http://home.istar.ca/~gadus

Subject Dick's Response to Trevor 2 Date Tue Jan 25 2005 15:02 Author Dick Allen (rba@FisheryConservation.net)

Trevor, I'd prefer to cast our exchange as a further examination of the potential for biomass allocations to improve fishery management, rather than a debate. Toward that end, I have created a discussion page on my web site at http://www.lobsterconservation.com/stockstewardshipdiscussion/. I hope to entice you and others to post their comments on this concept using the "add message" button on the web page. I have posted my initial letter to the Council on this subject, and, with your permission I will post your response. I have protected the page from vandals by requiring a password that I will be happy to provide to anyone with a legitimate interest in the subject. Your explanation of the impact of underfishing seems to be based on the same biological principles that cause me to question claims that marine reserves will increase fishery yields. I'd like to exchange additional ideas on how the biomass allocation concept might be applied to one or more stocks of interest to fishermen in the northeast U.S. Our current approach to management is certainly not simple. I believe that an explicit accounting system will be necessary and helpful to the fishing industry and to managers, making it worthwhile to work through the initial complexities. Dick Allen 35 Bliss Rd. Wakefield, RI 02879

Subject Beyond ITQs - Stock Stewardship Shares Date Wed Jan 26 2005 12:31 Author Dick Allen (rba@FisheryConservation.net)

Beyond ITQs - Conceptual Partial Populations and Population Stewardship Shares Conceptual Partial Populations and Population Stewardship Shares Can … 1. Replace the “race for fish” with a “race to conserve;” 2. Transform group punishment into community incentive; 3. Eliminate Lowest-Common-Denominator management; 4. Convert “winner-take-all” political battles into win-win scenarios; 5. Create both responsibility and accountability among fishery participants; 6. Make fishery conservation a worthwhile investment. Why Fisheries Fail Failures in resource management, including fisheries, are often attributed to the presence of “externalities” – the fact that the cost of one person’s actions are often spread out among many other people, while the person that imposes the cost gets all the benefit. When one person increases his fishing effort, for example, that person gets all the benefits of catching more fish, but all of the other harvesters share in the cost associated with having less fish in the ocean. In searching for solutions to environmental problems, economists seek to internalize the costs and benefits associated with the use of natural resources. If resource harvesters pay the full costs associated with their activities, and reap the full benefits, they will attempt to minimize costs and maximize benefits. Population stewardship shares and conceptual partial populations have the potential to simplify and improve fishery management, in part because they internalize costs and benefits associated with fishing. Stratis Gavaris, Conceptual Partial Populations, and Elementary Management Units In a 1996 article in the Canadian Journal of Fishery Science, Stratis Gavaris suggested that the fish stock could be partitioned into “conceptual partial populations” that are “entrusted to the care of individuals or groups of fishers operating under common rules…” He called these groups of fishers elementary management units or EMUs. According to Gavaris, EMUs would “earn a share of recruiting year-classes according to the relative magnitude of the spawning potential of their partial population, which reflects their success at stewardship of the population share entrusted to their care.” Thus the term population stewardship shares. The difference between a state-by-state quota or a sector TAC (Total Allowable Catch) and a population stewardship share is that a population stewardship share is a share of the population itself, not a predetermined catch share of an overall TAC for the stock. A state or sector would be responsible for the health of its share of the resource, not just responsible for keeping its catch within its share of a TAC prescribed on the basis of the health of the entire stock. Eliminating the “Lowest Common Denominator” Approach State by state quotas and sector shares of an overall TAC do not provide an incentive for a state or sector to be more conservative than the standards that went into the calculation of the TAC. With apportioned TACs, if one state or sector were to leave a portion of its share in the water to conserve, the benefits of that conservation would be distributed among all states or sectors, diluting the benefits to the state or sector that did the conserving. By basing each sector’s future share of the recruitment into the fishery on the spawning potential of its conceptual partial population, Gavaris creates a “race to conserve” rather than the “race for fish” that is generally associated with TAC management. Each sector would reap the benefits of its success and pay the price for its failure. This contrasts with the “group punishment” character of the present system, which requires all sectors to cut back when stock assessments demonstrate that “someone” is catching too much and conserving too little. More or Less Complex? Given the unmanageable complexity of our current approach to fishery management, the question immediately arises whether a system of population stewardship shares would be more or less complex. In fact, population stewardship shares could simplify fishery management. Much of the complexity of the current system arises from a mismatch between the natural complexity of the fishery and the artificial complexity of the fishery management system. Gavaris attributes part of the failure of the Canadian system to “limited scope and flexibility to accommodate local circumstances or to permit diverse implementations of the strategy.” Fishery Models, Stock Assessments, and Management Guidance The first step in simplifying fishery management is to recognize that there are two distinct scientific components of fishery management. One (stock assessment) is essentially backward-looking and the other (characterized by egg- and yield-per-recruit models) is forward-looking. The management system generally fails to make a distinction between these two components, as is reflected in statements to the effect that a decision on a management strategy must wait for the latest stock assessment. The problem with this approach is that management is always behind the curve, responding to what has already happened, rather than planning in advance how to use the available fish. Political Advantages Population stewardship shares do not require artificial lines in the ocean and they do not require complete agreement on management policies. State by state quotas could simply be converted into population stewardship shares. States could allocate their shares among competing user groups on the same basis as they do now. Catch reporting provides information on how a state or a sector is managing its conceptual partial population. The management unit can choose whether to use quotas, trip limits, days at sea, or other management tools, but its success will be measured by the quantity and size distribution of its removals from its partial population. Rather than the current “winner-take-all” approach to management, competing management philosophies need not fight to the finish – each can demonstrate its benefits as a distinct management unit. Everyone understands why banks don’t debit the accounts of all customers when one has an overdraft. And everyone doesn’t get a credit when one person makes a deposit. Some folks let their interest accumulate and compound, while others don’t. Why shouldn’t fish be managed with the same logic?

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