122 LICENSINC; llll SMAI I I K ( OMMl R< I \l I ISlll RIIS 



ten) applied to this long-csiahlislicci lishcry has been 

 exlrenielv troublesome and badly managed. In spite of a 

 limited-cntry system intended to prevent it, the licensed 

 fishing capacity has expaiuied alarmingly. At the same 

 time. K)th the available catch and prices have fallen 

 sharply. Submissions made at the public hearings reveal 

 that the administration of" fishing licences has been unsat- 

 isfactory to those engaged in the fisher*' as well as to 

 those excluded. 



B;K'k^r«HiiKl 



The halibut fishery is one of the oldest on this coast, 

 and the stcKks among the most valuable.' It has a long 

 history of regulation. By the early 1920s, it had become 

 obvious that the major stocks off northern British Colum- 

 bia and Alaska were being severely depleted by 

 overfishing. In response to this, and because of the trans- 

 K^undary nature of the stocks, Canada and the United 

 States jointly signed the Convention for the Preservation 

 of the Halibut Fishery in 1923.' 



Under this convention, the International Fisheries 

 Commission was created. (It was renamed the Interna- 

 tional Pacific Halibut Commission in 1953.) The commis- 

 sion was made responsible for recommending regulations 

 to both governments for improving the biological man- 

 agement of the halibut fishery. Under the convention, 

 Canada and the United States signed a declaration of 

 intent to comply with the regulations recommended by 

 the commission, which itself had no power of enforce- 

 ment in either country. 



The initial conservation measure imposed under the 

 auspices of the commission was a three-month closure. 

 This proved to be inadequate, and in 1930 the commis- 

 sion was granted greater powers which enabled it to set 

 catch quotas by area, to regulate gear and to close nur- 

 sery areas. Since then, the commission has set a total 

 allowable catch for each of three administrative areas in 

 the North Pacific. However, because the commission 

 itself had no authority to regulate participation in the 

 fishery,'' the fleet expanded under unrestricted entry. 

 Thus, the fishing season had to be progressively short- 

 ened to a few weeks per year.' Nevertheless, for some 

 years the commission's policies appeared to be succeed- 

 ing in restoring the stocks. 



The evolution of the halibut fleet is a vivid example of 

 how an open-access fishery operating on valuable stocks 

 will tend to attract excess capacity. The first result was 

 stock depletion, which is the problem that the commis- 

 sion was set up to deal with, and did so with some suc- 

 cess. But as the stocks were rebuilt and the value of the 

 halibut increased, the fleet expanded. Progressive short- 

 ening of the season meant that the fleet was idle most of 

 the year. Shore facilities had to cope with the whole catch 

 in a short period, leading to increased capacity, higher 



costs and instability of operations. Nearly all the catch 

 had to be fro/en, and the fresh market, which brings 

 higher prices, could be served only briefly during the 

 fi.shing sea.son. And, of course, with all this excess capac- 

 ity and cost, returns from these highly valued resources 

 remained low. 



Recently, two events have put new pressures on the 

 industry. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, catches 

 declined dramatically as did the apparent size of the 

 stocks, due partly to environmental changes but mainly 

 to incidental catches of halibut by foreign high seas trawl 

 fleets. Because of the longevity and late maturation of 

 halibut, the stocks take many years to recover, and they 

 remain in a depressed condition today. The stocks off 

 northern British Columbia, which depend on young fish 

 migrating from the north, have been recovering particu- 

 larly slowly, and there is growing anxiety about their 

 apparent displacement by large populations of dogfish. 



The other event was the declaration of 200-mile fishing 

 jurisdictions by Canada and the United States toward the 

 end of the 1970s. Initially, fishermen who had been oper- 

 ating in the other country's waters were permitted to con- 

 tinue to do so, but disagreements and conflicting pres- 

 sures led to termination of these arrangements. As a 

 result, U.S. fishermen were excluded from fishing within 

 Canadian waters in 1979, and Canadian fishermen were 

 phased out of the Alaskan fishery by 1980. The impact on 

 U.S. fishermen was relatively light, but because two- 

 thirds of the Canadian halibut catch had been taken in 

 U.S. waters off Alaska, the impact on Canadian fisher- 

 men was substantial. 



The government took several steps through an Alaska 

 Halibut Relocation Plan to minimize the dislocation 

 caused by the curtailment of Canadian access to Alaskan 

 halibut fisheries. Longline vesselowners who failed to 

 meet the entry qualifications for new limited-entry hali- 

 but licences (explained below) were offered compensa- 

 tion for their longline gear. Those who had fished mainly 

 in Alaskan waters and had licences to fish in other fisher- 

 ies were encouraged to retire their halibut licences in 

 exchange for compensation for their halibut gear and a 

 vessel-share grant. Alternatively, these fishermen could 

 relinquish their halibut licences in return for a vessel and 

 gear conversion grant to enable them to enter the 

 sablefish fishery. Of the 54 vessels excluded from Alaska 

 and eligible for these grants, 16 surrendered their halibut 

 privileges under the scheme; the remainder received hali- 

 but licences. 



Limited Entry 



As long as Canada and the United States had no agree- 

 ment on sharing the catch, neither could benefit from 

 controlling the expansion of its fleet: any limit placed by 



