A new study by researchers from the University of California Santa Barbara, the Environmental Defense Fund, and the University of Washington concludes that adopting “rights-based fishery management” (RBFM) would not only help fish populations recover, but would mean more money for fishermen, reports The Christian Science Monitor.
The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, applied various bioeconomic models to a database of 4,500 fisheries around the world and “found that health and productivity are not mutually exclusive.”
Instead of racing each other to catch the most fish, fishermen under RBFM adhere to a “catch share system,” in which they are guaranteed a certain percentage of the total haul. If the number of fish rise, then a fishermen’s allocation rises, too—giving fishermen an incentive to not overfish. The RBFM approach also cuts the cost of fishing, since fishermen don’t have to go to such great lengths to be the first to reach a catch. And as the quality of the fishery increases, fishermen get to charge more for a better product.
“Applying sound management reforms to global fisheries in our dataset could generate annual increases exceeding 16 million metric tons (MMT) in catch, $53 billion in profit, and 619 MMT in biomass relative to business as usual,” the authors of the study told the Monitor. “We also find that, with appropriate reforms, recovery can happen quickly, with the median fishery taking under 10 [years] to reach recovery targets.”