ITQ debate:  Discards, high-grading dilemma

 

Most of the controversies surrounding individual transferable quotas (ITQs) have to do with money — fairness and “equity” in allocation — and social effects, such as the concentration of profits into just a few hands.  But one widespread concern is mostly biological: discarding and high-grading. 

Proponents of ITQs assert that this management option will significantly reduce discards because fishermen will adjust their ITQ “portfolios” to accommodate the mix of species that
they catch. 

Opponents of ITQs believe that fishermen will waste even more than they do now, especially in the form of regulatory discards, because it will be impossible to match on paper with what winds up on deck.
We started this open dialogue on ITQs in the June CFN, pointing out at the time that, as individuals with opposing views on this management strategy, we’d hope to provide information rather than opinion.  In the July CFN, we discussed the contentious initial allocation of quota shares.

In this installment of our series, we look at one of the most vexing points of dispute in the ITQ debate:  discards and high-grading.

 

Wasting good fish

Discards, of course, have always existed.  Fish that were too small to market, too perishable, not worth the ice, or undesirable for any reason wound up going back over the side. 

Even the most simple and straightforward conservation regulations always seem to involve discards.  The most common examples are sizes, seasons, protection of egg-bearers, and are based on the simple principle of letting fish grow to maturity and reproduce.

And a certain amount of discarding has always been tolerable if the benefits are far greater than the costs, either economic or biological.  Sometimes, circumstances make those costs unacceptably high.  Recall the yellowtail flounder debacle in Southern New England in the late 1980s.

In the present regulatory mess, the problem has gotten much, much worse.  We now discard fish that is over quota (state or federal), over trip limits (state or federal), undersize, out of season, caught by— or just on board— a vessel with certain types of fishing gear.  The list of bad reasons to waste good fish goes on.

An outgrowth of this travesty is high-grading:  taking fish out of the hold and deep-sixing it while replacing that fish with another that is more valuable.  Twice the fishing mortality for the same dollar of economic benefit to the industry and the consumer.

 

No regulatory discards

One of the most difficult messages to get through to fishery managers is that people fish harder and longer when they are forced to discard, to compensate for what they had to discard.  That, in turn, makes for still more discards. 

It is safe to say that fishermen regard this regulatory discard as the very worst byproduct of current fishery management.

Could ITQs do anything to improve this situation, or, as some believe, would ITQs make discarding and high-grading even more of a problem?  It would be useful to look at other examples of ITQ programs and see what might work here in the Northeast.  It may be far more useful to try to anticipate and prevent a program that would be disastrous. 

However, any such examples must be viewed with caution, because nearly every praise or criticism of existing ITQs is coming from the winners or losers in those programs.  It takes a certain amount of time and distance to provide truth and objectivity about ITQs, and that time and distance does not yet exist anywhere.

Every fisherman, economist, and anthropologist who has written about ITQs so far has tipped his hand to his own substantial bias.

 

Lobster irony

That being said, it is probably true that the lobster fishery is the one in New England that is most technically (if not politically) suitable for ITQ management.  The irony of the lobster fishery is that high-grading and discarding are the foundations of managing this fishery.  Size limits and the return of egg-bearers to the water are both forms of high-grading and discarding. 

The key element here, of course, is that discard mortality is virtually nonexistent in this fishery — it is the ultimate     catch-and-release fishery plan.

Some lobster fisheries, notably Western Australia and Florida, use transferable traps as a surrogate for ITQs.  Transferable traps instead of ITQs may present their own special problems of enforcement and effective biological management, but there is little difference between the two when it comes to the discard issue.

 

Transferable DAS

But scallops and all mixed-trawl fisheries (not just Northeast groundfish) present an enormous challenge if ITQs are not going to make the present discarding mess even worse.  What does a fisherman do when he catches a fish for which he has no appropriate piece of paper?

Some have suggested transferable days-at-sea (DAS) as the right approach for these fisheries.  But an overwhelming problem would still exist with a transferable DAS plan. 

It will always be true that individual species will have their own specific quotas or target total allowable catch (TAC).  When that TAC is caught, landings of that particular species will be prohibited or curtailed and discards will result, as people continue fishing and discarding the overquota species. 

As long as some quotas are open, or people still have days-at-sea, fishing will continue.  And fish that cannot be landed will still be caught.  Simply going out and buying more days-at-sea would not cure this problem, and might just make it worse.

Total fleet days-at-sea might be matched to the TAC for one species, but overall conservation of a multispecies mix would require a lowest-common-denominator approach — the lowest overall number of DAS would inevitably be the result.

When all is said and done, transferable days-at-sea is really just consolidation, not an ITQ program.

 

Selectivity or shutdown

Perhaps there is a lesson from the “Closed-Area Access Program” developed by the scallopers to address the bycatch and discard fears voiced by National Marine Fisheries Service, the New England Council, and a lot of groundfishermen.  What emerged, without ever getting labeled as such, was an individual fishing quota (IFQ) program both for scallops and the bycatch that went with it.

The scallopers were successful in modifying their fishing gear and practices to avoid most of the yellowtail flounder that had once been a valuable part of their total catch. 

Think about the politics for a moment.  Just a few years before, the scallop fleet was outraged that it was being “allocated out” of the yellowtail business when groundfish Amendment 5 went into effect.  But, with the incentive and reward of access to rich scalloping grounds, ways to cut the yellowtail catch were quickly and effectively devised.

There is another way of thinking
about this. 

The scallopers were presented with two options:  get more selective or get shutdown.

Groundfishermen, on the other hand, have the two options of “get more selective” or “discard what you can’t land.” 

That “discard option” was taken away from the scallop fleet when it went into the Closed Area.  It still exists in the groundfishery, because the only way we have found so far to really prevent groundfish discards is to close what are becoming unacceptably large areas.

 

Buy quota

Is it possible that ITQs offer another alternative?  If groundfish species were managed under ITQs, fishermen would have a third alternative — buy quota to cover their expected or realized catches.

The same option to discard would be there, if the fisherman chose not to buy the corresponding quota, but the chances are pretty good that most fishermen would wind up buying quota instead of discarding salable fish year after year.

Additionally, the “discard option” in the groundfishery has a tenuous existence at best.  Remember the scallopers.  An observed level of yellowtail catch, including discards, would have shutdown the fishery. 

With the direction we all see of fishery management, the groundfish fleet will soon lose that alternative, and will be facing the choice of selectivity or shutdown. 

Remember that this series is not intended to advocate or oppose ITQs, but just to ask if there are aspects of ITQs that might be an improvement on the nightmare we have now, a nightmare that will only get worse. 

Could ITQs, in effect, prevent fleetwide shutdowns, or even more extensive closed areas, by allowing fishermen to purchase quota and land what they are now discarding?

 

Many options

A number of reports on the discarding issue, especially in multispecies fisheries, are available. The most comprehensive is the book “Fish Futures,” which concentrates on the Australian and New Zealand experience, and has references to other ITQ fisheries.  Several options for dealing with the problems that arise when the catch does not match the quota holding are presented in this book.

The list of policy options includes:

l  Quota balancing.  A fisherman has a specified period of time after he lands his catch to acquire the matching quota.  There is usually a limit, expressed in percentages, on the extent of allowable overage.

2  Carry-unders and Carry-overs. A percentage of a fisherman’s quota can be “carried over” to the next season, or an overage can be subtracted.

3  Deemed value.  A variable tax is levied on overages, designed to encourage landings but to discourage targeting.

4  Substitution.  Uncaught quota for one species can be used to compensate for overage in another species.  This has the effect of reducing bycatch in a targeted fishery by reducing the targeted fishery itself.

5  Surrender.  The ultimate tax,
allowing landings but no revenue.  This has been suggested by some fishermen who would rather see fish going to charitable causes than wasted.  And,

6  Basket quotas.  Based on the assumption that some species normally mix, a fisherman targeting one of those species must have quota for certain other species.

Remember, though, that many other countries devote substantial resources to observer coverage, data collection, monitoring of landings, and enforcement.  Some of these measures could be put into place regardless of whether the fishery was under an ITQ approach.  But it does seem that the first two options have a better chance of being accepted — and feasible — than the others.

Any ITQ program means fewer boats and fewer jobs.  It is easy to talk about “buying quota.”  But that means that someone else is selling quota and getting out.  The same is true for buyouts, consolidation, or widespread bankruptcy resulting from pure politics, like a ban on certain gear or a no-take zone.  Or maybe it’s all politics.

 

Jim O’Malley is the executive director of the East Coast Fisheries Federation and Dick Allen is a lobster fisherman
from Wakefield, RI.