RATIONALIZING THE SALMON AND ROE-HERRING FISHERIES 117 



25. Licensees should be permitted to replace their vessels 

 with vessels that already carry commercial Ashing 

 licences, subject to the established foot-for-foot and 

 ton-for-ton replacement limits. Herring gillnet licen- 

 sees should be free to replace their punts with other 

 punts without restriction. 



26. The Pacific Fisheries Licensing Board (proposed in 

 Chapter 8) should be asked to consider wliether a new 

 vessel replacement policy is needed after 1993 and to 

 recommend accordingly. 



These proposals will enable any vesselowner who 

 wishes to replace his vessel, or whose vessel is destroyed, 

 to replace it with another vessel, as long as the replace- 

 ment meets the size criteria and is not newly constructed. 

 The fleet-reduction program should ensure a ready sup- 

 ply of already-licensed commercial fishing vessels over 

 the transitional period. 



After the transitional period, the Pacific Fisheries 

 Licensing Board can respond to needs for adjusting fleet 

 size and structure by increasing or decreasing the capac- 

 ity it licenses in each sector through allocating new 

 licences. This will afford an effective means of controlling 

 the fleet. Coupled with the proposed royalties, elimina- 

 tion of subsidies and vessel replacement controls, these 

 arrangements should ofl^set tendencies toward fleet 

 expansion. 



LONG-TERM POSSIBILITIES 



The set of proposals in this chapter is an attempt to 

 break the logjam in fleet rationalization. They are ambi- 

 tious, but they are manageable, and 1 see no piecemeal 

 measures that offer much promise. The measures sug- 

 gested are designed to provide the framework of govern- 

 mental regulation and to engage the industry in trying to 

 improve its own structure and performance. 



But I want to emphasize again that these licensing 

 arrangements will need continuing adaptation and devel- 

 opment. If my proposals are followed through, we can 

 expect that in 10 years the fleets in the salmon and roe- 

 herring fisheries will be much smaller and will be enjoy- 

 ing increased economic returns. They will be controlled 

 by much more satisfactory licensing arrangements that 

 will identify a group of licensees with each of the three 

 management regions. But it will not be an ideal fleet. 

 Unless available catches increase dramatically, some sec- 

 tors will need further reduction, especially in the herring 

 fishery, but also probably in the salmon fishery as tech- 

 nology develops and new innovations for producing and 

 harvesting are introduced. Moreover, the composition of 

 gear types in the fleets will need to be altered with time. 



As I explained earlier, the basic approach to regulating 

 fleets through restnctions on vessel dimensions is inade- 

 quate for the long run. Indeed, the changes I propose in 



this chapter for these two major fisheries do not lead to 

 such a durable system as those I propose for smaller 

 fisheries in the next chapter. So, in implementing the rec- 

 ommended changes, the fishermen and the government 

 should also begin to consider subsequent steps. These will 

 have to be geared to the changed circumstances of that 

 time, but some possibilities deserving examination are 

 these: 



i) Individual catch quotas. Individual quotas of the 

 kind I propose for other fisheries in the following 

 chapter would be more diflScult in the salmon and 

 roe-herring fisheries, but with smaller fleets licensed 

 by gear, and with area licensing, the possibilities will 

 be much more feasible, especially for herring. The 

 United Fishermen and Allied Workers Union has 

 developed ideas along this line for the roe-herring 

 industry, though in my opinion their suggestions 

 could be improved by relaxing the proposed rigid 

 equality of nontransferable quotas and the require- 

 ment that all licensees continue to fish each year." A 

 system closer to that I propose in the next chapter 

 for the food and bait herring fishery may well afford 

 a feasible means of promoting rationalized fishing. 

 With gear licensing and catch allocation, such a sys- 

 tem need not be introduced all at once; the most 

 suitable sectors, such as the gillnet sector of the roe- 

 herring fisher\ in the .south zone, could be attempted 

 first. In the salmon fishery, the troll sector in certain 

 areas probably oflTers the most promising opportuni- 

 ties: and with experience with quotas in other fisher- 

 ies, the fishermen are likely to react to this approach 

 more receptively than they have hitherto. Washing- 

 ton State trollers are already investigating such a sys- 

 tem. 



ii) Cooperatives. In principle, the roe-herring fishery 

 lends itself well to a cooperative of fishermen within 

 a gear sector and area. The cooperative itself could 

 organize an efficient fishing plan, dispatching the 

 number and kind of vessels required to take the 

 catch and dividing the returns among the members 

 according to their shares. This might be combined 

 with an individual catch quota system, which would 

 be the basis for determining shares. Groups of 

 salmon fishermen, such as gillnetters, who tradition- 

 ally fish a particular estuary, might find it advanta- 

 geous to establish similar arrangements under sub- 

 zonal licensing. 



iii) Pocket fisheries. With other changes in fisheries 

 management and administration proposed elsewhere 

 in this report, we can expect that potential benefits 

 from issuing a limited number of fishing privileges to 

 harvest small stocks in specific areas will increase in 

 future. This arrangement could of course be linked 

 with fishermen's cooperatives. 



