The Spot Prawn Fishery: A Status Report - Earth Economics

The Spot Prawn Fishery: A Status Report
management system would be easy. Anyone and
everyone could fish; fishing capacity and effort
would not need to be constrained in any way.
However, spots prawns, like all fisheries, do have
clear biological limits, and recognition of these
limits must be reflected in distribution and management
regimes. A failure to limit the privilege or
capacity to fish will result in overfishing, ecological
collapse, and market failure. The market cannot
detect the ecological limits of the fishery, which
is why we need regulation.
Determination of fair distribution systems is not
a science. Distribution decisions are often guided
by social wants, economic bottom lines, and cultural
needs or ethics and values. All of these factors
are difficult to balance and quantify in the
decision-making equation. Nevertheless, the difficulty
of making these decisions cannot be used
to ignore things like biological limits or scientific
uncertainty, thereby easing the challenge or
diminishing the unpopularity of any decision
that needs to be made.
There many different ways in which fair distribution
and democratic management can
be achieved. Ultimately, the best system is one
that reflects and grows out of the context—economic,
social, ecological—within which a given
fishery is rooted. The spot prawn fishery currently
employs a range of options for distributing fishing
privileges. These include open access, trip limits,
limited entry, and gear restrictions, among others.
In order for fair distribution and democracy to be
attained in the spot prawn fishery’s regulation and
management, the following should be considered:
2.1 Control Overcapitalization
Systems to better control and manage overcapitalization
and fishing effort should be instituted in all
regions, and should be applied to both commercial
and recreational fisheries. These systems
should strive to be equitable so that benefits and
costs are distributed as equitably and fairly as possible
across fishery participants. Mechanisms that
will allow effort to continue to be ratcheted down,
if need be, should be part of the system.
Controlling burgeoning effort is important for
obvious ecological reasons. It is also important for
economic reasons. Derby fisheries pose a problem
for processors and the market. Flooding the market
with product interferes with supply and
demand systems, and may also affect the desirability
of a particular product or source. Derbies
tend to strain processing capacity, leading to
wasted or inferior product.
2.2 Create a System of Economic Incentives
Economic incentive systems play an important
role in fair distribution and the development of
democratic and efficient management. Incentivebased
instruments are a fundamental component
of sustainable management because they have
the capacity to correct or prevent the type of
market failures that often compromise the longterm
viability of fisheries. Economic incentives
can be used to: ensure that externalities are properly
accounted for; overcome the “tragedy of the
commons” by assisting in the equitable delineation
of property rights; correct myopic time discounting;
manage under conditions of uncertainty
or incomplete information.
Incentive-based systems can take any number of
forms, and in order to be effective will ultimately
need to consider the context and characteristics
of the fishery to which they are being applied.
The spot prawn fishery should consider the use of
a green tax. A green tax would serve to ensure that
resource flows from the environment to the economy
are sustainable, while also creating incentives
for fishers to develop fishing technologies, techniques,
and processes that minimize the ecological
impacts of fishing.
Related to this, an incentive system should be
developed that would reward the stewards of the
spot prawn resource and ecologically sound fishing
behaviors. Preferential quota allocation is an
example of this type of incentive system that has
been discussed at length in fishery management
circles. Finally, in order for any incentive system
to be effective, illegal fishing activity must be
severely penalized. Monitoring and enforcement
systems must be sophisticated and well-funded
so that illegal fishing and “bad stewards” are not
inadvertently rewarded.
2.3 Foster Collaboration and Cooperation in
Decision-Making and Management
Collaborative or cooperative natural resource
management is an idea that has gained considerable
currency in recent years. Collaborative management
consists of formal or informal arrangements
between individual or groups of fishers,
other stakeholders, and the various levels of government
responsible for the management and conservation
of marine fisheries and the environment
(Ostrom 1990, White et al. 1994). Cooperative man-
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