Limited Entry:The Case of the Japanese Tuna Fishery 



E. A. Keeni 



ABSTRACT 



Limited entry has been advocated strongly as an important but as yet usused man- 

 agement tool for U.S. fisheries. Japan has maintained a policy of limiting entry into 

 its high seas fisheries since 1949 and thus has considerable experience of potential 

 value to the use of this tool in U.S. fisheries. This paper presents an assessment of the 

 limited entry system as it has been developed for the Japanese tuna fisheries. At- 

 tention is given to effects on the acquistion of capital and overall allocation of national 

 resources, specific effects on the size and nature of the fleet, pressures to permit ad- 

 ditional entry, and effects on the location of shore-based activities. Special attention 

 is given to problems that were unforeseen at the time of the initiation of limited entry 

 that, with experience, could have been avoided. The paper is based largely on field 

 research conducted in 1963 and 1964. 



INTRODUCTION 



Limitation of the number of craft in a fishery 

 has been advocated strongly as a management 

 tool for American fisheries. The volume of 

 literature in which its usefulness is analyzed, 

 primarily by economists, has become substan- 

 tial and continues to grow. A brief survey of 

 work by Cnitchfield, Scott, Christy and others 

 readily convinces the reader that economic 

 benefits to be gained through its use more 

 than justify its advocates. In the case of the 

 extremely crowded northeastern Pacific salmon 

 fishery, limitation of entry appears to be al- 

 most mandatory if rational management only 

 for maximum sustained yield from the phys- 

 ical stocks is to be attained. Whether one is 

 concerned with maximum sustained yield or 

 with maximum economic return, limitation 

 of entry obviously is a powerful tool and one 

 that deserves greater use. 



As with all powerful tools, implementation 

 and operation of a limited entry system just 

 as obviously is not an easy matter. Fisheries 

 cannot be considered apart from the highly 

 complex human and physical .systems with 

 which they are intertwined. Foreseeing all 

 effects of a major change in regulatory inputs 



is extremely difficult. Decisions once made 

 and institutionalized are equally difficult to 

 change. In light of the complexity of fisheries 

 and of the difficulty with which mistakes can 

 be corrected, it behooves those who would 

 design and implement a system of limited entry 

 to take advantage of actual experience in other 

 fisheries to the extent possible. 



The purpose of this paper is to explore the 

 experience of the Japanese with limitation of 

 entry into one of their major fisheries, the 

 skipjack-tuna fishery.- Much of this experience 

 is, of course, specific to this fishery and is 

 therefore, only indirectly relevant to other 

 fisheries in Japan or elsewhere. Many of the 

 problems grew out of the needs of a rapidly 

 expanding fishery, a condition that is not 

 likely to occur too frequently in the future. 

 However, some generalizations can be drawn 

 from it that can be of use in management of 

 a number of fisheries. A brief summary of the 

 initiation and development of the regulatory 

 system is presented first to show the complex- 

 ity of its development. This provides back- 

 ground for a discussion of the major effects, 

 favorable and unfavorable, that concludes the 

 paper. 



' Associate Professor of Geography, California State 

 University, San Diego. 



- The term "skipjack-tuna fishery" is a direct trans- 

 lation of the Japanese term "Katsuo-maguro g>'0gT,'0." 

 All species of tuna are sought by those in the fishery, 

 not the skipjack alone as the translation might apply. 



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