To save fish, offer shares of the catch

You can buy a share of a race horse, a luxury jet and of course a corporation. Now a new study indicates that offering shares of fisheries creates a safer, more profitable and environmentally sound way to fish.

The study by Environmental Defense released Wednesday comes as the world’s fisheries are under extreme pressure. A 2006 study in the journal Science predicted the world’s fish and seafood populations will collapse by 2048 if current trends in overfishing and habitat destruction continue.

One way to reverse this trend is to institute a system known as catch shares, in which the total amount of fish allowed to be taken in a given fishery is capped and fishermen are given a share of the fishery’s quota, the study said.

“The fishermen then have control over when they go out and how much time they spend fishing, and that lets them become much better fishermen,” David Festa, director of the oceans program at Environmental Defense, said in a telephone interview.

“One of the things that fishermen don’t want to do is waste time and money when they’re fishing.”

Currently, regulators aim to avoid overfishing by limiting the length of the fishing season and requiring certain fishing techniques, figuring that each person who fishes will be able to catch a certain number of fish a day, Festa said.

But most current regulations don’t limit the number of fish that get to the dock. This encourages fishermen to rush out early in the season and get as much as they can, with no responsibility for limiting their catch.

This results in overfishing, lots of bycatch -- the inadvertent taking of fish besides the target species -- and degradation of the marine environment, Festa said.

The study collected data on fisheries that use the catch shares approach in which individuals or fishing communities get a percentage of a fishery’s total allowed catch. Those shares can be traded among fishermen but the total catch is limited.

Examining information on nearly 100 such fisheries and doing in-depth analysis on 10 in North America, the researchers found bycatch was reduced by nearly half, revenues per boat increased by 80 percent and safety improved dramatically in fisheries with catch share regimens.

In one fishery in Alaska, the switch to catch shares meant there were some 53 million fewer fishhooks left in the water, Festa said. This happens because those who fish can be more precise and deliberate, rather than hurrying to sow an area with hooks or nets to take advantage of a season that might be shortened by regulators.

Under the catch share system, Festa said, “The job of regulators changes from trying to manage every aspect of fishermen’s behavior to keep them from catching too much fish to simply