The Washington Post reports that the U.S. will support a proposal to list Atlantic bluefin tuna on Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. This would have the effect of prohibiting all international trade in this valued fish. A single prized specimen has sold for as much as $175,000 in Japan.
Despite international regulatory efforts under the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas, the number of bluefin tuna has continued to decline. Will a CITES Appendix I listing make a difference? Perhaps, but I’m skeptical. CITES has not been particularly effective at conserving highly valued terrestrial species, which can benefit from conservation-through-use and sustainable utilization strategies, and property-based fishery management systems have proven far more effective than regulatory alternatives. It may be more difficult to apply such strategies to a wide-ranging marine species. Nonetheless, I question whether CITES-based trade restrictions would be more effective than an enforceable quota regime, such as that discussed here. Trade restrictions could also inhibit the development of aquaculture in threatened species, and recent technological advances make it easier to adopt property-based conservation strategies than in the past.
Mike McDougal says:
If a tuna sold for $175,000, they must be special (at least to some people). What’s so great about bluefin tune?
Quote
March 4, 2010, 9:32 amJonathan H. Adler says:
It’s very yummy.
Quote
March 4, 2010, 9:37 amMike McDougal says:
More yummy than the typical tuna?
Quote
March 4, 2010, 9:40 amBen says:
Uh oh. For how much longer will I be able to eat fatty tuna?
Quote
March 4, 2010, 9:41 amJonathan H. Adler says:
Apparently so. It’s also important to note that you can get quite a bit of sushi or sashimi portions out of one fish. A single Atlantic bluefin can weigh over 500 lbs.
Quote
March 4, 2010, 9:42 amBen says:
You aint getting toro in a can of StarKist.
Quote
March 4, 2010, 9:43 amJamison Colburn says:
I’m wondering why or how the relevant parties would actually agree to create a “property” regime in so highly migratory a species? There are some species that are naturally more subject to such regimes — but not a species like GBFT. That seems to demand exactly the kind of “global legalism” that several authors here usually denounce.
Quote
March 4, 2010, 9:47 amSeaDrive says:
I though that under a free market system, the supply would rise to meed the demand indicated by these astronomical prices. Don’t those tuna learn economics in school?
Quote
March 4, 2010, 9:48 amalkali says:
... property-based fishery management systems have proven far more effective than regulatory alternatives.
This is true, and it would really be a great thing if we were able to implement a tradeable quota regime or other property based regime worldwide ASAP for most species so that fish stocks can start recovering.
The question really is whether it is too late to do this for bluefin tuna. The practical difference between enforcing a very very small quota and endangered status (a “zero” quota) is not large.
Quote
March 4, 2010, 10:00 amArthur Kirkland says:
Is there any method that might preserve the bluefin tun that would not involve a diminution of sovereignty — and a level of government (worse, international) control — that runs against every conservative grain (let alone anything approaching libertarianism)?
Besides, isn’t anything “better” than Starkist elitist?
Quote
March 4, 2010, 10:11 amStephen Lathrop says:
I wonder if there is some way to protect tuna by limiting fishing methods.
The Atlantic cod fishery was sustained for centuries, because the cod could reproduce fast enough to stay ahead of a hook and line fishery operated from sailing vessels. Giant diesel powered trawlers then wiped out the cod fishery in a few decades. Similarly, oyster fishing regulations on Chesapeake Bay, which required sail boats, kept the fishery in good shape until agricultural water pollution more or less killed it off at the end of the last century.
The notion that market efficiency is always a good thing can’t be applied to wild resources. There is always more efficiency on tap, and as desirable resources deplete, rising prices prevent a decline in utilization until a collapse ensues.
So-called market based or property based regulation schemes always work by rigging the market, which makes them a surprising choice for free market advocates.
Put the fishermen back in sailboats, with baited hooks and handlines, and have at it.
Quote
March 4, 2010, 10:51 amFrancis says:
“may” be more difficult? Prof. Adler, the source you cite does not have a single ocean fishery being protected by a property-based system. And what court and police force, precisely, will enforce rights of the Russian, Japanese, Chinese, American, Scandinavian, Icelander, Mexican-based fishing fleets? The UN, last I checked, doesn’t have a navy.
Quote
March 4, 2010, 10:57 amJon Rowe says:
This reminds me of my graduate law, LL.M. in transnational law, days at Temple where I read Tuna Dolphin in like three different courses.
I was struck though at how because much of the world is not common law in legal heritage (not England or a former colony thereof), many decisions of international tribunals don’t have “precedential” value.
Quote
March 4, 2010, 10:57 amSeaDrive says:
Often tried, rarely successful. It’s a political matter, and politicians are not good at time frames longer than their current term. Large fishing companies seem to get their way more or less like all the other lobbies.
Limitations on fishing boats are often defined in ineffective ways, e.g. by limiting length but not beam or displacement. The boats change shape and get more expensive to run, but industry capacity remains more than adequate to overfish the resource.
Quote
March 4, 2010, 10:58 amJon Rowe says:
I remember that can of worms (or can of Tuna) was at issue in the notorious Tuna Dolphin case.
Quote
March 4, 2010, 12:10 pmJonathan H. Adler says:
A few responses to some of the points made above:
First, limits on fishing methods have been tried repeatedly and always failed. Increasing the inefficiency of fishing just leads to increased effort. The above cites discuss some of this as well.
Second, there are quite a few ocean fisheries managed through ITQ regimes, just not deep ocean fisheries. (See here.) Because catch-share systems are based on catch, and not territory, they are actually a better fit for migratory and deep-ocean species than most available alternatives. (That may be faint praise, but were stuck without any perfect solutions.)
Third, there are examples of resource users using contractual arrangements to reduce the catch of fish species that would otherwise have been subject to overfishing. I discuss some of the historical examples in this article. (See also here.) The point is that various contractual rules can be used to create de facto property rights in a common property resource.
Fourth, the primary technical problem to this sort of approach has been enforcement, but this has greatly diminished. It is much easier today to monitor the catching, landing, and sale of species like tuna than it has even been, and the ultimate enforcement requirements for this sort of regime are no more difficult than those to enforce the CITES regime. The big difference is that under a catch-share regime the quota owners have a stake in the viability of the system, and so have an interest in ensuring stronger enforcement. Quota value tends to reflect estimates of fishery sustainability (that is, when the total catch goes down, the quota value goes up), and in several catch-share fisheries we have seen quota owners invest significantly in enforcement efforts to protect the value of their shares. Under a regulatory regime, there is no such incentive, and governmental agencies must expend all of the enforcement effort on their own.
Finally, the real obstacle to this sort of approach is political. Getting various governments to agree to this sort of regime is tough, and much tougher than implementing a regime that would be less onerous and more effective than the regulatory alternative.
JHA
Quote
March 4, 2010, 12:34 pmStephen Lathrop says:
My impression had been that the Chesapeake Bay sail power limitation was a long-term conspicuous success until water pollution collapsed the oyster resource. Perhaps I’m mistaken. Do you have information to the contrary?
If not, my suggestion is to put the cod, haddock, and halibut fisheries back into sail-powered vessels and have them go back to catching the fish by methods that have already proved sustainable for centuries.
There will be fewer fish on the market (which is the point), the fish will cost more (which is inevitable, and good for fishermen), and with modern boat construction, navigation, and communication, the modern sail fishery would (probably) prove less dangerous than in the past.
As long as you permit fishermen to exploit fisheries by using tools with sufficient power to destroy the resource, you can hardly be surprised when that happens. No amount of ideological jiggering is likely to fix the fundamentals—too much fishing power equals declining fisheries.
That will probably be true even under rigorous enforcement or exotic schemes of allocation, because everybody associated with the process, fishermen and regulators alike, will have an incentive to maximize the “sustainable” yield as close as possible to the most optimistic estimates. Natural fluctuations will always be on the low side, ensuring long term decline. Surely everyone can see that is what’s happening now.
Quote
March 4, 2010, 1:18 pmJonathan H. Adler says:
Mr. Lathrop –
I suppose you could try all that, or you could just do what’s actually worked for a large number of fisheries and impose real catch-share systems. We also have lots of experience with policies that place limits on boat size, net type, etc., and they’ve had no positive effect. Unlike many other areas of environmental policy, we have fairly clear evidence of what actually works here.
JHA
Quote
March 4, 2010, 3:11 pmSarcastro says:
Cap and Trade, but for fish! Plus, everyone agrees on anthropogenic global de-fishening.
Might a fish-flesh tax be a better policy, as parallels the carbon tax?
[Not sure if this post is serious]
Quote
March 4, 2010, 3:42 pmDerHahn says:
No, they work by making otherwise invisible externalities visibile so that they are included in the decisions made by market participants without demanding a specific course of action by any particular participant. It’s not surprising that this frustrates statists who just know the best way to fish is with a cane pole (cue ‘Mayberry RFD theme).
Quote
March 4, 2010, 4:02 pmJonathan H. Adler says:
Sarcastro –
At the risk of taking you too seriously, catch-share systems have a superficial similarity to cap-and-trade, but also some fundamental difference. The biggest difference is that the value of property rights in the form of catch shares are directly tied to the well-being of the underlying common resource. This aligns the interest of the catch share owners with the sustainability of the resource. In cap-and-trade for pollutants, however, this connection is severed, so incentives are not aligned in the same way. To make this more practical, in New Zealand, ITQ owners have an incentive to make sure other ITQ rights holders don’t cheat and overfish, and have an incentive to invest in ensuring that the total catch limit is set at a sustainable level, as overfishing lessens the value of the ITQs. Under carbon cap-and-trade, emission right owners (as rights owners) have no incentive to encourage enforcement of the overall cap or to ensure that the cap is sufficeintly restrictive. A consequence of these differences is that total catch limits in catch-share systems are more likely to be set by valid ecological criteria to ensure a maximum sustainable yield, whereas the cap set under a cap-and-trade is more likely to be subject to traditional political pressures.
JHA
Quote
March 4, 2010, 4:10 pmCal Attny says:
Hmm sounds like the makings of a film:
Toro, Toro, Toro
Quote
March 4, 2010, 4:10 pmSarcastro says:
[No, that was quite interesting. Believe it or not, there is an intellect here. occasionally. The economics of how a carbon market is distinguishable from a fish market is exactly what I was curious about.
I’m a bit skeptical about how directly the above incentive differential works in the real world, but one cannot deny there is a true and palpable difference between the two markets.]
Quote
March 4, 2010, 5:18 pmOrenWithAnE says:
JHA, supposing arguendo that the biologists are correct that the current tuna catch (X) is unsustainable and will lead to collapse whereas some lower catch (Y) is sustainable. Suppose further that you were convinced that the long run utility of not collapsing the stock is economically favorable (technically speaking, the present value of each marginal catch above Y is less than the present value of the future catches made possible by letting that one go).
How would you go about correcting the tragedy of the oceanic commons with regard to this market failure?
Quote
March 4, 2010, 5:29 pmgullyborg says:
the thing about the $175,000 price — just because there are some people with a lot of money willing to spend it, doesn’t mean the product is actually “worth” it compared to alternatives.
and now i recommend you all go watch “The Freshman” — Matthew Broderick at his finest!
Quote
March 4, 2010, 5:37 pmJonathan H. Adler says:
Ideally I’d adopt a catch-share system for all fisheries within territorial waters and pursue an international agreement to establish such systems for deep-ocean fisheries. If that didn’t work, I’d look for other means of achieving a similar reform (much like the use of contracts to create property rights in fisheries discussed in some of the papers of mine I’ve linked above). The problem, as the empirical literature demonstrates, is more political than practical. I’d also make sure not to adopt policies that would foreclose or discourage the development of substitute’s for ocean-caught bluefin tuna, such as the efforts to develop tuna aquaculture mentioned above.
What’s interesting is that we can observe this difference empirically, and it was only after researchers observed these differences that people began to understand the difference.
JHA
Quote
March 4, 2010, 6:04 pmGuy says:
Another step in the tuna’s plots for world domination.
Quote
March 4, 2010, 6:31 pmU.S. Backs Bluefin Tuna Trade Ban | Latest news on Fisheries, Agriculture and Forestry - News on Fisheries, Agriculture, Forestry and Enviornment says:
[...] deep ocean fisheries. (See here.) Because catch-share systems are based on catch, and...Source: The Volokh Conspiracy Filed under: Ocean Fisheries Leave a comment Comments (0) Trackbacks (0) ( subscribe to comments on [...]
SeaDrive says:
Perhaps catch and release...
Quote
March 4, 2010, 9:01 pmArthur Kirkland says:
I thought this was a libertarian blog.
Quote
March 4, 2010, 9:59 pmStephen Lathrop says:
The steps I suggested not only worked, but worked for centuries, delivering an unimpaired resource to the market, and wealth to whomever had the skill and the will to compete. That was all done within a context of economic liberty.
If I understand you, the steps you suggest create taxi medallions for fishermen, manipulating the market by closing it to all but preferred participants, or those who will pay a preferred participant. The door to political meddling is opened, and there is no long-term evidence such methods can work. The fundamental problem of too much fishing power for the resource is left in place, to be mitigated in theory by collective forbearance from people whose short-term economic interests, individually and collectively, favor cheating. Cheating, of course, comes at the expense of long term economic interest, but that’s the problem now, isn’t it?
Quote
March 5, 2010, 7:49 am