LICENSING THE SMALLER COMMERCIAL FISHERIES 139 



pressure by manipulating openings and closures and by 

 the separate allowable harvests for the north and south 

 coasts. Southern areas have been more heavily exploited, 

 but many of the licensed vessels are too small for north- 

 ern waters and cannot be enlarged because of the vessel 

 replacement restrictions. 



This fishery lends itself to a progression from the pres- 

 ent limited-entry licensing system to one based on indi- 

 vidual catch quotas and, ultimately perhaps, to maricul- 

 ture leases, in this respect, it is similar to the abalone 

 fishery, though there are important differences: the man- 

 agement structure for the geoduck fishery has not evolved 

 to the extent that it has for the abalone fishery; and geo- 

 ducks are much longer lived and less responsive to 

 enhancement. 



Much can be gained from progressing immediately to a 

 quota licensing system for this fishery, especially with 

 respect to fleet rationalization and improved harvest dis- 

 tribution. I therefore propose the following measures be 

 taken immediately: 



61. Initial 10-year geoduck quota licences should be 

 issued in 1983 to owners of liceascd getKluck \essels 

 that reported landings of geoducks in 1980 or 1981. 

 The quota for which each licensee is eligible should he 

 related to his reported landings in those years. 



62. A total allowable catch should be calculated for each 

 of the zones and a reserve set aside for appeals. 



63. Licensees should be required to select tiK' zones in 

 which tlieir quotas will apply, and the new licences 

 should be issued accordingly. 



64. The management practice of closing areas should be 

 discontinued; and, subject to consenation require^ 

 ments licensees should be free to take their author- 

 ized catches whenever it is nK)st advantageoas to do 

 so. 



For the longer-term development of this fishery, the 

 Department, in consultation with the geoduck licensees 

 in each zone, should begin to identify appropriate geo- 

 duck management areas and their sustainable yields, with 

 a view toward identifying mariculture lease areas for 

 licensees' quotas in future. 



The transition to quota licences will have several 

 important benefits: it will eliminate incentives to overex- 

 pand fishing capacity; it will facilitate management and 

 regulation of the catch by areas; and it will afford greater 

 security to licensees. Geoducks are harvested by divers 

 using a slow and easily controllable process, which, cou- 

 pled with large stocks relative to annual harvests, will 

 enable licensees to meet their harvest targets exactly. 



Licensees will be able to pace their harvesting to best 

 advantage, avoiding the competitive haste that has neces- 



sitated manipulating area openings and closures to 

 achieve the target harvests and has led to occasional 

 overharvesting of .some areas because of difficulties in 

 monitoring catches. Abolishing the restrictions on vessels 

 would free tho.se whose small boats coniine them to 

 southern waters to acquire the quotas and vessels that 

 would enable them to utilize less heavily exploited north- 

 ern stocks. 



Individual quotas for this fisher>' present some special 

 problems, however. First, geoducks (unlike abalone) are 

 landed fresh and are delivered almost daily to shore facil- 

 ities scattered along the coast; and this obviously compli- 

 cates the task of monitoring landings. However, virtually 

 all geoducks are exported through less than 10 processing 

 companies, and this will facilitate surveillance of catches. 



Second is the problem of dark flesh. Some geoducks 

 have a dark outer skin, and although this does not affect 

 the taste of the product it makes them difficult to market. 

 Attempts to solve the problem by scrubbing away the 

 dark colour by hand or by jets of water have been only 

 partially successful. Processors have sometimes refused to 

 buy dark geoducks and fishermen have been forced to 

 dump them. Fishermen attempt to avoid beds with high 

 proportions of dark geoducks, but where this is not suc- 

 cessful they are typically dumped, with few, if any, survi- 

 vors. 



Obviously, if quotas are based on the total stock and 

 licensees fill their quotas while discarding all dark geo- 

 ducks, the total demand on them will be excessive. A 

 solution to this problem is not obvious, but it is not one 

 that is unique to a quota system. If dark geoducks prove 

 to be unmarketable, estimates of the harveslable stocks 

 and allowable catches should be reduced by the propor- 

 tion of the stock that is not interchangeable. 



TUNA 



Albacore tuna range widely over the north Pacific, and 

 Canadian waters host them sporadically in the summer at 

 the most northern migrator\' extreme. They are found 

 within Canada's 200 mile limit and in international 

 waters further offshore. 



High costs and unstable prices have discouraged Cana- 

 dian fishermen from pursuing this species vigorously. 

 Landings over the past five years have declined, although 

 there are indications that vesselowners in the troubled 

 salmon fishen,' might be attracted to tuna in the future. In 

 1981. 46 Canadian trollers landed 200 tonnes of tuna, 

 fetching an average price of $2,000 per tonne (91 cents 

 per pound). 



Although supporting biological data for albacore is 

 scant, it is estimated that a total allowable catch in the 

 range of 100 to 240 thousand tonnes could be sustained 



