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Economics

Sustainable fisheries

Nature volume 455, pages 1044–1045 (2008)Cite this article

Fishermen's aims of increasing their catch seem at odds with preserving fish stocks by limiting catch. A study of more than 11,000 fisheries shows that 'individual tradable quotas' can reconcile these goals.

The destruction of the world's major fisheries has been widely documented, with a general consensus that the biomass of top marine predators is now some 10% of what it was half a century ago1. Many of these species — such as the bluefin tuna, Atlantic cod, and swordfish in the Atlantic and Indian oceans — are expected to be extinct within decades. There is therefore great interest in finding ways of managing fisheries that ensure their sustainable use, allowing a fish population to return to earlier levels and providing a secure basis for a healthy and profitable fishery. Writing in Science, Costello, Gaines and Lynham2 present a convincing and thorough analysis of this issue. They suggest that a particular management approach, the use of 'individual tradable quotas' (ITQs), has had dramatically beneficial impacts on many of the fisheries in which they have been implemented.

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Figure 1: Benefits of individual tradable quotas (ITQs).

References

  1. Worm, B. et al. Science 314, 787–790 (2006).

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  2. Costello, C., Gaines, S. D. & Lynham, J. Science 321, 1678–1681 (2008).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. and Wolfram Schlenker is at the School of International and Public Affairs and Department of Economics, Geoffrey Heal is at Columbia Business School, Columbia University, New York, New York 10027, USA. gmh1@columbia.edu wolfram.schlenker@columbia.edu,

    Geoffrey Heal & Wolfram Schlenker

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  1. Geoffrey Heal
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  2. Wolfram Schlenker
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Heal, G., Schlenker, W. Sustainable fisheries. Nature 455, 1044–1045 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/4551044a

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