During the last two articles we discussed ways of facilitating scientific understanding of fishing regulations. We suggested that after stripping down the many types of regulations of their specific jargon, it all comes down to the control of fishing mortality. We also proposed that most regulations can be crudely divided into (a) input control regulations (the control of fishing effort) and (b) output control regulations (the control of allowable catch). However there are other control mechanisms which cannot be clearly defined either as input or output controls but which also have the ultimate objective of controlling fishing mortality. In this article we will discuss these other methods. We also discuss very briefly the thorny but critical issue of enforcement and the issue of who should pay for the management of fish resources.

Other control options

Taxation

Taxation has been suggested as a means of keeping fishing effort at a level at which maximum economic rent is maintained, even in an open access fishery. The idea is to devise a tax structure which alters harvesting costs in such a way that for the fishing industry the position of maximum economic rent appears as an economic break-even point. Since economic break-even is the end result of the open access fishery, there is no need for any other controls in such a fishery. The fishing industry will operate at break-even, and the actual economic rent in the fishery will be removed as tax revenue.

Implementation of such a scheme would require a tax structure capable of transforming the fishing industry from a profitable operation to one operating at economic break-even. The idea is an academic one, with little practical appeal. The political obstacles to convincing the fishing industry that for their own good they have to surrender all their profits are obviously insurmountable.

Price controls

The idea behind price controls is similar to the idea behind tax controls, and it's implementation is equally as impractical. The aim is to have a state imposed pricing system which creates artificial economic incentives which drive the otherwise uncontrolled fishery to reach the desired biological state. So for example, prices would come down drastically as fishing effort is increased beyond the maximum economic rent level of effort. The effect, as in (a), is that the maximum economic rent position is transformed into the economic break-even point.

If the state has the power to impose the necessary pricing system mentioned above, it could then reap the economic rents it has deprived the fishing industry of by resale of fish products at market determined prices. Obviously this system cannot work, since the incentive to fish would disappear, and the entire industry would collapse.

Enforcement

A very important issue in the control of marine fisheries is the extent to which regulations can be enforced. It is clear that if the regulations impose an unacceptable economic burden on the fishing industry, or are just plain stupid, the incentive for non-compliance will be very high.

It is a good idea to keep regulations simple, effective and enforceable. Regulations which are too complex to be sensibly interpreted serve no useful purpose, and will be contravened.

Non-compliance can lead to a game of cat and mouse between the fishing industry and the government. The end result of this is probably a loss of potential economic rent and tax revenues. Worse, it can lead to the industry supplying the government with fallacious information about catches and fishing effort, thereby distorting the interpretation of important trends in the resource. This will lead to erroneous scientific advice reaching decision-makers, with undesirable results for TAC decisions.

The importance of enforcement was highlighted in South Africa in 1992, when, due to a bureaucratic error, the old set of fisheries regulations were abolished before the new set had become law, for a period of a few weeks. The result was an unprecedented attack by private individuals from all walks of life on the west coast rock lobster and on the abalone resource, regardless of minimum sizes, berry restrictions, sanctuaries etc. Estimates of damage to abalone sanctuaries reserves put the overall impact as severe. Stories of people with deep freezers packed with undersized lobsters abound.

Another example of the critical position of enforcement in fisheries management is the way that fishermen circumvented the law prohibiting mechanical long-lining, via a loophole in the law in 1991. Despite the ruling and legislation prohibiting mechanical long lining, in September 1991, following poor tunny catches, some tunny fishermen modified ordinary hand-line fishing equipment to enable them to fish for bottom fish. Their so-called hand-lines were actually up to 300 m long, were rigged with up to 200 or more hooks per line, and used standard winch equipment to lift the lines. They were capable of targeting their operation for the same stock of bottom fish, mostly kingklip and hake, that were previously targeted by mechanical long lining.

The four general areas of resource management: the harvesting strategy, the policy on access rights, the control measures, and enforcement of all rules and regulations, must be jointly implemented to achieve maximum benefit from a resource. The management of the fishery will only be as strong as the weakest link in the management structure. This is as true for enforcement as it is for any of the other three areas of management. It is no use having the most scientifically acceptable harvesting strategy in the world, if there are insufficient personnel available to enforce the resultant control measures.

The South African abalone fishery is an excellent example of a situation where the benefits of the resource to the nation is determined by the weakest link, in this case the enforcement capabilities of the Cape Provincial Administration. The catch of abalone by black market operatives is thought to exceed the annual legal catch. In this fishery, the focus of funding and management efforts should therefore be directed at enforcement, since this is the best way of enhancing yields.

Funding

The funding of enforcement should somehow be commensurate with its importance in the management of the resource. It is clear that it does not pay to save money on enforcement. In South Africa, in both the rock lobster and the abalone fishery, the loss of revenue to the fishery through illegal operations is enormous, easily in excess of R50 million rands worth of foreign exchange (assuming 300 tons of illegal catch in the abalone fishery at R70 rand per kilogram, and 750 tons of illegal catch in the rock lobster fishery at R50 per kilogram).

The appropriate allocation of additional funds to rock lobster and abalone enforcement will almost certainly benefit the resource and the fishery. The problem with this however, is the lengthy indirect link between revenues from fishing, to funding for enforcement, via the central tax fund. There are many innovative options for shortening this link. One possibility is to increase the cost of rock lobster recreational fishing permits, and to use the funds from this to finance a special arm for the enforcement of recreational fishing. The same could be applied to the recreational abalone fishery.

In planning the logistics of enforcement, one has to recognise at least three different areas:

Commercial:

Enforcement of commercial regulations requires inspectors to be present at all recognised landing sites whenever commercial catches are landed, to record the landed amounts, the species mixture of the catch, and where necessary to check on compliance with minimum fish size and/or minimum mesh size and other regulations.

Recreational:

Recreational fishing is very difficult to police because of the very large number of participants. It is not possible to record and document the entire recreational catch as is the case for the commercial fishery. Recreational fishing can therefore never achieve much more than spot checks, however the intensity of spot checks needs proper consideration. Enforcement of the public can be greatly simplified by instituting closed areas, closed seasons, minimum size restrictions, bag size limits, and elimination of night-time fishing where appropriate.

Blackmarket:

This requires professional police work. These police should not be recruited from the local community and should be highly trained armed personnel experienced in undercover operations. It would be very useful to quantify the benefits to the resource and to the fishery from effective anti-blackmarket operations. From an analysis such as this, one might conclude, for example, that a budget of R5 - 10 million for a specialist anti-blackmarket team for abalone and rock lobster could easily be justified. This operation may even become funded by a pro-active industry that is allowed to benefit from increased quotas due to effective police work.