nfcc: national fisheries conservation center

Obstacles to ITQs
By Michael L. Weber

Ten years ago, I began my acquaintance with Individual Transferable Quotas (ITQs). Bill Fox, then Director of the National Marine Fisheries Service, asked me to prepare a draft agency policy on access controls. With some asking around, I soon obtained two bookshelves full of reports, studies, proceedings, and analyses of this management tool. I was amazed that so much had already been written about something that was so rarely found in the real world. While some reports were replete with economic calculations and others with theoretical discussions of the advantages and disadvantages of this or that kind of access control, few dealt with actual case studies. It seemed an area of interest mostly to economists and fishery management theorists.

As I read and talked with others, I became more and more interested in understanding types of access controls from limited entry and taxing schemes to community management and individual transferable quotas. My interest was sharpened by a desire to find some alternative means of slowing, even reversing the unsustainable pattern of development that marks too many fisheries. Traditional management techniques often had not been successful in doing so. Indeed, traditional management had overseen widespread overfishing and overcapitalization of fisheries.

Many opponents of access controls and lukewarm supporters also worried that until the fishing power of fleets was reduced, inertia would lead to yet more overfishing. While there was plenty of analysis and concern about overfishing and overcapitalization, few people offered ideas on how to reduce fleets, without spending millions of taxpayers' dollars in buyouts of questionable value. Instead, growing concern about excess capacity in fleets dissipated in negotiations over international and national plans and in multi-million dollar buyouts of vessels in fisheries.

As an ardent and long-time conservationist, who believes that almost everything else becomes easier if there are more fish in the water, I was ready to explore any new approach. It was clear to me that ITQs offered an effective tool for enabling some fleets to reduce themselves to levels that were ecologically and economically sustainable. It was also clear that care needed to be taken in designing ITQs so that the public trust was protected and any negative social impacts were minimized. But in the early 1990s, debate over ITQs exploded as the North Pacific Fishery Management Council considered an ITQ program in the halibut-sablefish fishery. That debate, which became increasingly polarized, and the possible consideration of ITQs in the pollock fishery subjected ITQs to an unprecedented level of scrutiny for a fishery management measure with the exception, perhaps, of marine reserves.

In all of the Sturm und Drang over ITQs, little attention was paid to what had actually occurred in the three fisheries where ITQs were in effect in the United States. To me, this empirical evidence was more enlightening than yet more theoretical debates about what might happen if ITQs were applied to fisheries. On working up several sections of Fish, Markets, and Fishermen for Suzanne Iudicello, I read all I could put my hands on regarding the actual functioning of the three U.S. ITQ programs. While there were shortcomings in all the studies, often due to a lack of monitoring, these analyses indicated that the programs worked pretty much as advertised. As with the use of other management measures, each of the three ITQ programs had its flaws, most of which were resolvable.

As Congress began considering reauthorization of the Magnuson Act in the mid-1990s, the debate over ITQs became more heated. In time, the debate grew charged and arguments for and against became ritualistic. Proponents listed the possible advantages of ITQs, and the opponents recited their own litany. National policy on ITQs, which had left much to the determination of the regional fisheries councils, was caught up in a dispute between Washington and Alaska fleets, as well as growing attacks on large-scale fishing operations. By the end of the reauthorization process, positions had become so entrenched that even a massive evaluation of ITQs by the National Research Council, mandated by the Sustainable Fisheries Act, changed few minds a few years later.

The present stalemate is likely to continue, for several reasons. First, the controversy over ITQs is too polarized and positions too hardened and extreme to permit any movement one way or the other. Second, Congressional appropriation of funds for vessel-buyouts in fisheries with influential political support appears to address concerns over excess capacity. Third, Congress has taken on the role of deciding in which fisheries ITQs are appropriate formerly a function of the regional fishery management councils. This is clearest in passage of the American Fisheries Act, which effectively established an ITQ program in the pollock fishery and used millions of dollars of federal funds to help finance a buy-out. Fourth, believe it or not, things aren't bad enough yet. Over the years, commercial fisheries in the United States have shown a remarkable ability to limp along at marginal levels.

Finally, until all the talk about reducing excess capacity gets down to action, the need for a range of tools, including ITQs, will not be salient. That time may be approaching. On the Pacific coast where I live, the Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council recently released a draft strategic plan for groundfish, whose condition is very poor, to say the least. Among other things, the plan calls for reducing the groundfish fleet by 50 percent. That's much easier said than done.

Michael L. Weber is a freelance writer and consultant on marine conservation policy. In 1999, Island Press published Fish, Markets, and Fishermen, which Mike wrote with Suzanne Iudicello and Robert Wieland. In Spring 2001, Island Press will be publishing Mike's review of the evolution of federal policy and practice on marine fisheries since 1940.