Fishing for revenue: how leasing quota can be hazardous to your health

Fisheries management decisions have the potential to influence the safety of fishers by affecting how and when they fish. This implies a responsibility of government agencies to consider how fishers may behave under different policies and regulations in order to reduce the incidence of undesirable operational health and safety outcomes. In the Tasmanian southern rock lobster fishery, Australia, the expansion of the quota lease market under individual transferable quota (ITQ) management coincided with a rise in the number of commercial fishing fatalities, with five between 2008 and 2012. A discrete choice model of daily participation was fitted to compare whether physical risk tolerance varied between fishers who owned the majority of their quota units (quota owners) and those who mainly leased (lease quota fishers). In general, fishers were averse to physical risk (wave height), however this was offset by increases in expected revenue. Lease quota fishers were more responsive to changes in expected revenue than quota owners, which contributed to risk tolerance levels that were significantly higher than those of quota owners in some areas. This pattern in behaviour appeared to be related to the cost of leasing quota. Although ITQs have often been considered to reduce the incentive for fishers to operate in hazardous weather conditions, this assumes fishing by quota owners. This analysis indicated that this doesn’t hold true for lease quota fishers in an ITQ system, where in some instances there remains an economic incentive to fish in conditions with high levels of physical risk.

[1]  D. Bromley.  Purging the Frontier from our Mind: Crafting a New Fisheries Policy , 2005, Reviews in Fish Biology and Fisheries.

[2]  David Festa,et al.  Assessing catch shares' effects evidence from Federal United States and associated British Columbian fisheries , 2012 .

[3]  H. Campbell,et al.  Rent Generation During the Transition to a Managed Fishery: The Case of the New Zealand ITQ System , 1992, Marine Resource Economics.

[4]  Ray Hilborn,et al.  Institutions, incentives and the future of fisheries , 2005, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[5]  Stephen E Roberts,et al.  Britain's most hazardous occupation: commercial fishing. , 2010, Accident; analysis and prevention.

[6]  J. Sutinen.  FISHERMEN'S REMUNERATION SYSTEMS AND IMPLICATIONS FOR FISHERIES DEVELOPMENT , 1979 .

[7]  S. Gaines,et al.  Economic Incentives and Global Fisheries Sustainability , 2010 .

[8]  R. Grafton,et al.  Individual transferable quotas: theory and practice , 1996, Reviews in Fish Biology and Fisheries.

[9]  I. Putten,et al.  Network analysis of a rock lobster quota lease market , 2011 .

[10]  M. Herrmann.  Individual Vessel Quota Price-induced Effects for Canadian Pacific Halibut: Before and After Alaska IFQs , 2000 .

[11]  I. Putten,et al.  Lease quota fishing in a changing rock lobster industry , 2010 .

[12]  Olivier Thébaud,et al.  A retrospective analysis of the effects of adopting individual transferable quotas in the Tasmanian red rock lobster, Jasus edwardsii, fishery , 2009 .

[13]  Benjamin Brooks,et al.  Not drowning, waving! ☆: Safety management and occupational culture in an Australian commercial fishing port , 2005 .

[14]  B. Brooks.  Mapping the risky decision space of commercial rock lobster fishermen , 2007 .

[15]  I. Strand,et al.  Location Choice of Commercial Fishermen with Heterogeneous Risk Preferences , 2000 .

[16]  R. Hilborn.  Managing fisheries is managing people: what has been learned? , 2007 .

[17]  J. Larson,et al.  An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations , 2015 .

[18]  The historical development of fisheries in New Zealand with respect to sustainable development principles , 2008 .

[19]  P. Leung,et al.  Do Fishermen Have Different Attitudes Toward Risk? An Application of Prospect Theory to the Study of Vietnamese Fishermen , 2009 .

[20]  Colin W. Clark,et al.  Incentive-based Approaches to Sustainable Fisheries , 2006 .

[21]  D. N. Edwards,et al.  The elephant in the room: The hidden costs of leasing individual transferable fishing quotas , 2009 .

[22]  R Core Team,et al.  R: A language and environment for statistical computing. , 2014 .

[23]  Barbara Neis,et al.  Fishing occupational health and safety: A comparison of regulatory regimes and safety outcomes in six countries , 2008 .

[24]  Martin D. Smith,et al.  Heterogeneous and Correlated Risk Preferences in Commercial Fishermen: The Perfect Storm Dilemma , 2005 .

[25]  P. Martinsson,et al.  Are Commercial Fishers Risk-Lovers? , 2004, Land Economics.

[26]  Christopher Woodley,et al.  Transition from open access to quota based fishery management regimes in Alaska increased the safety of operations. , 2007, International maritime health.

[27]  J. Bidlot,et al.  User manual and system documentation of WAVEWATCH III R version 4.18 , 2014 .

[28]  W. Alexander,et al.  A Bioeconomic Analysis of Marine Reserves for Paua (Abalone) Management at Stewart Island, New Zealand , 2008 .

[29]  D. Holland.  Are Fishermen Rational? A Fishing Expedition , 2008, Marine Resource Economics.

[30]  S. Brandt.  The equity debate: distributional impacts of individual transferable quotas , 2005 .

[31]  Einar Eythórsson.  Theory and practice of ITQs in Iceland. Privatization of common fishing rights , 1996 .

[32]  T. Essington,et al.  Ecological indicators display reduced variation in North American catch share fisheries , 2009, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[33]  Kevin J. Fox,et al.  Private Property and Economic Efficiency: A Study of a Common‐Pool Resource* , 2000, The Journal of Law and Economics.

[34]  Anita Maurstad,et al.  To fish or not to fish : Small-scale fishing and changing regulations of the cod fishery in Northern Norway , 2000 .

[35]  C. Gardner,et al.  Colour variation in the southern rock lobster Jasus edwardsii and its economic impact on the commercial industry , 2009 .

[36]  R. Connor,et al.  Indicators of the effectiveness of quota markets: the South East Trawl Fishery of Australia , 2001 .

[37]  R. Pelot,et al.  The Effect of Weather Factors on the Severity of Fishing Boat Accidents in Atlantic Canada , 2005 .

[38]  Claire Mayhew.  Fatalities among fishing workers: does size matter? , 2003 .

[39]  M. Bradshaw.  A combination of state and market through ITQs in the Tasmanian commercial rock lobster fishery: the tail wagging the dog? , 2004 .

[40]  Gavin Fay,et al.  Fleet dynamics and fishermen behavior: lessons for fisheries managers , 2006 .

[41]  K. Hartmann,et al.  Does ‘race to fish’ behaviour emerge in an individual transferable quota fishery when the total allowable catch becomes non‐binding? , 2014 .

[42]  M. Gibbs.  Individual transferable quotas and ecosystem‐based fisheries management: it’s all in the T , 2009 .

[43]  B. Husberg,et al.  Is it safe on deck? Fatal and non-fatal workplace injuries among Alaskan commercial fishermen. , 2001, American journal of industrial medicine.

[44]  David C. Smith,et al.  Human behaviour: the key source of uncertainty in fisheries management , 2011 .