I have been reading the agreement that fisheries ministers agreed to this week and I thought what do successful fisheries have in common. What makes a fisheries a success? Well, after having read about what is working, and what is not, there seem to be around 21 basics ideas for making your fisheries work.
But, these rules are common to any resource management. Many have tried to ignore them, and they have always failed. And, there is no equations, or modeling. If you don’t get the basic management model right, not much else will right.
21 Basic Laws of Success in Fisheries
1. Keep the Politicians involvement as small as possible. If fisheries management is determined by the political whim of ministers or the closeness of an industry to a minister things will not work out.
2. Make sure new ideas and new blood enter the industry. Industry’s that don’t change and develop often don’t have new people entering it. Those industry’s tend to commercially die.
3. Don’t make the industry the livelihood of last resort.
4. Provide the market what it wants – and that means in Europe sustainable fish
5. Keep a watchful eye on regulatory capture – get rid of the fishery ministry and stick it somewhere else in government – and preferably a very small department
6. Keep the fishermen out of the talks – do we let the oil industry sit with ministers doing climate change talks ?
7. Get rid of subsidies – end subsidies that are harmful immediately and phase out the rest within a strict schedule
8. Follow scientific advice in setting the amount to be caught. If you do, the size of the fish population grows, and if you don’t the population tends to fall.
9. Introduce property rights – no fisheries under Individual Transferable Fishing Quotas has seen a depletion in stock size.
10. Close down failing fisheries. If a firm does not make a profit, it will eventually be closed down. Many countries fisheries bring in far less than they cost to manage and subsidize. If an industry creates a loss to the country (and only exists because of subsidies) it is cheaper to close it down.
11. Think about Sammy – don’t forget about the impact of fisheries on turtles, sharks, and birds.
12. Use the technology that avoids the by catch of turtles, fisheries, and habitat.
13. Use the technology of the 21st century and not the 19th century. Just as fishermen use state of the equipment to catch fish, they should use state of the art equipment to make sure the rules are followed.
14. Allow some parts of the sea to be free from fishing – create protected areas that allow a secure place for fish and other marine life to breed and prosper.
15. Combat Illegal Fishing – fishermen who commit illegal fishing need to be banned from fishing. Too often, illegal fishing is not dealt with low fines that act as little or not deterrent.
16. You can’t ignore the law of supply and demand, so when you fishermen ask for extra quota, and there is no market for the fish, they can’t be surprised when the price goes down, often to a greater extent than any benefit they have got from the ext a quota.
17. Fisheries debates seem to occur without any knowledge of the law of cause and effect. If we discard 50% of the fish in the sea we can’t be surprised that the total stock go down. If we fish out the breeding stock before they have a chance to breed, we can’t be surprised that the amount of young fish coming through is too few.
18. When we overfish some unintended consequences happen. The marine world is full of complex interactions, many of which we don’t understand. So, when we overfish the cod in the Baltic Sea we allow the algae blooms to proposer.
19. Mankind has been trying to ignore the laws of nature for a few hundred years. We have not been able to beat this golden law. Populations don’t survive decimation, or at least not in a healthy way. So, it makes little sense to wipe out the young generation by fishing them in their first few years of life.
20. True wealth is when you are living of the interest of the interest of your capital. In many fisheries we are eating away at the natural capital. Some fisheries are living off the interest from the interest of the capital. That is a better long term financial solution.
21. You can not grow and proposer if you don’t want to. A farmer can not improve his land and crops without investing in improving the soil and seeds. If he does not, he will fail. Any business that does re-invest and seek to improve the quality of their product and service year on year and provide the market what it wants will fail. Many fishermen are doing that. Providing the market sustainable fish, other are going up the value chain and provide their fresh product direct to restaurants, others marketing their own product, often made easier my new technology. They are prospering. But, too many hope their friends in government will pay for their business as usual. Business as usual no longer exists, the world is too small and fast changing place.