Operational tools and adaptive management

The transfers in the incentive schemes, ( z0
*, 0*)
, can not be decided unambiguously. In
contrast to the two other cases, where the “new” stakeholder to get a say in the management
of the fishery under consideration was somehow “subordinate” to the authorities, the two
principals in this case are symmetric, also in respect to their opportunity to “tax away” the
fishers‟ resource rent. Hence, it is no longer obvious that the authorities are the only principal
that can profit on regulating the fishery. The relatively high certification fees of the MSC
show that this organisation also acquires a share of the resource rent. How the division of the
resource rent between the authorities and the MSC is decided is a question for further
research.
The sardine purse seine fishery is heavily regulated on the input side, encompassing
regulations of mesh size, gear type, limited licensing, seasonal and area restriction and days at
sea. On the other hand there are only a few output regulations, and to these count individual
quotas, bycatch regulations and minimum landing size. The fishery benefit from the general
fuel tax exemption, which encompass all fishing vessels.
The MSC is an organisation which to an increasing extent must be taken into consideration by
fisheries around the world. It has been claimed that with increasing consumer focus on safe
and sustainably harvested fish products it will in the future not be a question of whether the
fish products should be ecolabelled or not, this will simply be a consumer demand (Jesper
Raakjær, IFM, personal comment). Sustainable fishing activities are also the aim of the
fisheries regulations in the CFP, set by EU and member state authorities. Hence, one could
ask whether the MSC now does the job for the regulating authorities and that the regulations
set by these authorities become superfluous? The analysis above indicates that when a new
stakeholder, such as the MSC, enters the scene, the authorities will change their regulations
and these will be more lenient with respect to punishing effort, and thus harvest. However, the
aggregate of the regulations, including the MSC certification and authorities regulations, will
imply a higher “regulation” pressure on the fisheries compared to before the organisation
entered the scene. If it is right that certification will become a consumer demand directed
towards all fisheries in the future then the costs of being certified (by any certifier) will come
on top of other costs in the fisheries thus making effort and thus harvest more expensive.
3.4.4 Summary
One aspect of ecosystem based fisheries management is to let new stakeholders, affected by
the activity of a specific fishery, get a say in the management of this fishery, in addition to the
management executed by the authorities.
Applying a common agency model we have shown that introducing a second principal in the
management of a specific fishery definitely changes the optimal regulations of the authorities
compared to when they were the sole manager. When the new principal has interests that
induces her/him to tax effort applied in the fishery, this always implies that the authorities
reduce their tax rate (or increases their subsidy rate). However, the reduction in the
authorities‟ tax rate is not as high as the tax rate introduced by the new principal, and hence
the net incentive scheme (the aggregate of the two tax/subsidy rates) is higher compared to the
tax/subsidy rate offered by the authorities alone.
As long as the new principal holds economic interests towards the fishery the optimal
tax/subsidy rate of the authorities and the new principal are mutually dependent upon each
other, which means that both principals take out a share of what the other principal puts into
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