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.A28 rRiDu. August 16, 1991 



:i|e tPft^Iimgtom f 0, 



AN INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER 



How Many Fish? 



IN THE 1960s and early 1970s there was a 

 huge increase in foreign fishing off U^. 

 shores. The fisheries were depleted, the U.S. 

 catch was much reduced, and in 1976 Congress 

 stepped In. For the purpose of fishing, It extend- 

 ed the a2-mile territonal limit to 200 mile.": and 

 ordered the foreign boats out of the new lone 

 except with permission. To rebuild and sustain 

 the fisheries, it then tried to tame the new 

 frontier by setting up a system of federal regula- 

 tion. Lots of luck. 



The regulation was not to be direct; regulation 

 even then wis a mildly dirty word. The law 

 aeated eight je^onal councils mainly drawn 

 from the fifhing 'industry itself. These qoasi- 

 publlc panels were required to develop fishery 

 manflgf.ment plans for each species or broader 

 category of fish offshore. Each plan was to set 

 out an 'optimum yield' (OY) and the regulatory 

 means of achieving iL OY was mushily defined, ai 

 is Congress's way, as the ainount of fish that 

 would be of 'greatest overaD benefit to the 

 Nation,' but taking into account how many fish 

 the biologists thought could be safely caught and 

 still leave each spedes room to reproduce and 

 sustain itself. AH plans had to be approved by the 



secretary of commerce. ■ ^ 



What sounded orderly and impressive enough 

 on paper has in too many fisheries turned out to 

 be a failure in fact. Forei^ overfishing has been 

 suppressed — but domestic overfishing has re- 



placed it. In some cases the self-regulatory mech- 

 anism has performed as it should, but in others 

 neither the councils nor the commerce secretar- 

 ies meant to back them up have been tough 

 enough. The National Fish and Wildlife Founda- 

 tion estimates that 14 stocks, representing about 

 a fifth of the stocks oSshore, are currently 

 "overexplolted." It says that nearly a third o( 

 stocks have dwindled rather than flourished since 

 the advent of regulation (for another fourth, this 

 information is not available), and that 10 of the 

 ovcresploited fisheries arc so far gone that it 

 would take them five to 20 years to recover if 

 there were no fishing at all. 



Two broad possibilities have been sketched for 

 reform. One is to stiffen the existing system, 

 have the secretary if not the weaker councils 

 crack down, with Congress in reserve to legislate 

 sustainable vlelds if they aren't Imposed adminis- 

 tratively. The other is to change the system by 

 limiting entry and somehow introducing owner- 

 ship to the fisheries on the likely theory that if 

 fishermen are given a salable share in the re- 

 source they will be more will'mg to conserve it. 

 But how and to whom to limit entry? That is thr 

 problem, of politics as well as design. 



The current rteimen is too wea k. An impor- 

 tant part of the food supply, a natural resource 

 and an industry all three are wasting as a result; 

 the government needs to shift the incentives to 

 save them Instead. 



