Bulletin

Issue: May/June 2007

Research

Are the world’s fisheries in crisis?

No, says a Norwegian expert in fisheries economics

We often hear about the world crisis in fisheries. Looking at the aggregate figures, Professor Rögnvaldur Hannesson, of the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration, Bergen, has another explanation.

‘What we see is stagnation,’ he says. ‘World catches of wild fish have not increased since 1990. We have apparently reached the limit of what can be taken out of the oceans.’ This means that stocks are still being renewed but there is no room for complacency.

They could collapse because of mismanagement. And mismanagement is certain to occur if problems involving jurisdiction on the high seas are not addressed.

Professor Hannesson, a visiting scholar at La Trobe’s Institute for Advanced Study, was in Australia recently to look at economic issues related to the tuna fisheries of the Western Pacific. He is collaborating in this research with La Trobe economist, Dr John Kennedy.

‘This is a very interesting case,’ Professor Hannesson explains. ‘The problem of the high seas in tuna fisheries is a difficult one because the tuna migrate so widely. The small island states of the Pacific are not in a good position to control resources. What happens if you give authority to them? They have no fishing industries of their own.’

Most of the harvesting is carried out by distant fishing nations such as the USA, Japan, Taiwan, China and Korea which pay for access. No limits have been set on their tuna catches. So far, the capacity of the stocks has been such that there is enough to accommodate all those who fish. The total catch has been increasing.

‘Sooner or later it will not be able to increase any more,’ the fisheries economist warns.

The tuna situation in the Pacific illustrates a major problem with the way fish stocks are controlled internationally, he says. Each coastal nation has an exclusive economic zone of two hundred miles with the power to set quotas and control stocks.

Most of the world’s fisheries are within these zones, giving nation states the opportunity to maximise efficiency and promote good fisheries management as a way of preserving the value of their rights. If fishing companies overstep the mark, nation states have the authority to seize boats.

Outside these zones, on the high seas, jurisdiction lies in the hands of the flag state, the state in which a boat is registered.

‘This doesn’t work,’ says Professor Hannesson. ‘Many states are small and poor.

Places like Belize and Liberia just keep a boat register to earn money. These are merely flags of convenience.’ He recommends that jurisdiction be extended over the entire ocean. Two hundred miles is an arbitrary distance, he says, that evolved in the 1970s. ‘We should carve up what is left. Close all the loopholes. No country will have an incentive to control fish stocks unless it has an exclusive right to exploit the resources.’

Coastal countries could extend their zones half way across the ocean. Australia, for example, could have the right to exploit resources half way to India.

Professor Hannesson has written widely on the topic and consulted on fisheries for the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, OECD, World Bank and the governments of Iceland and Norway. In 1998 he participated in a review of fishing quotas in the United States.

It is the job of the fisheries economist to provide estimates of how much stock should be taken out and how the industry should be organised. Some countries like New Zealand, Australia and Iceland have total control of their fisheries. In other cases, fish stocks are shared because they migrate between different economic zones. To manage them effectively, the countries must agree to set limits to how much fish will be caught.