Catch shares involve a complex reallocation of the wealth that accrues from our fishery resources. In the long run, the catch share experiment can theoretically result in quantitative benefits to at least the fishing sector of the industry. However, these benefits will be transferred to a different set of fewer individuals, some of whom may have no connection to local participants. Make no mistake, there will be many losers, and the character of the fishery will change.

Many fishermen will no longer be catching fish — instead they are transformed into brokers, selling a piece of a public resource to which they have been granted a windfall right by a process that many consider inequitable and dubious. But those who are benefitting now will not last long; as the catch share system continues to evolve, they will be gobbled up by larger economic entities.

The state of the catch share system is not surprising because it was rolled out prematurely without the level of analysis, planning, budgeting, and community dialogue that would be expected to be associated with a major federal action. In particular, sensible available alternatives were not analyzed.

The idea that emerged was that the catch share system would replace the extant days-at-sea system, in which the number of days per year a vessel fished was limited. The economic and conservation performance of the days-at-sea system was unsatisfactory. Just for one example, under the days-at-sea system, only about 20 percent of the scientifically allowable catch was taken. Management-mandated underfishing wasted hundreds of millions of dollars of fish.

To what extent is the catch share system better than the days-at-sea system? In a way it is too early to tell. As the first three months of the catch share management draws to a close, it appears that landings will not be materially different from last year. If this is true, the waste of last year will continue.

Read the complete editorial from The South Coast Today.