the biological characteristics of the fish involved. 

 Those with a high growth rate and relatively short 

 life history present fewer problems in that the 

 population will rebound quickly once excessive 

 effort is curtailed. Long lived, slow growing 

 species, on the other hand, should be developed 

 with considerably greater caution, since serious 

 overfishing may require long recovery periods. 



In any event, the development of a new fishery 

 involves no serious problems of equity, since the 

 limited licenses can be made freely available to all 

 appUcants on an auction or lot system, and no one 

 need be displaced from his existing occupation 

 unless he chooses to do so. 



Much more serious problems arise in mature 

 fisheries in which the threat of overfishing has 

 been ignored or has been met by measures that 

 reduce the efficiency of individual vessels without 

 curtailing their number. In this situation, both 

 sound economics and equity require that any gear 

 reduction program be framed and timed to mini- 

 mize individual hardship and compulsion. This 

 implies that the rate of reduction in fishing units 

 should be geared to the normal attrition of men 

 and vessels, unless specifically accelerated by a 

 program of purchasing and retiring fishing rights 

 by a public agency. Given this ground rule, a 

 practical and legally acceptable program of re- 

 ducing fishing capacity to more sensible levels 

 breaks down into five elements: 



—How should the reduction actually be achieved? 



—How rapidly should it proceed? 



—On what basis should the restricted number of 

 licenses be distributed to individual vessel owners? 



—How should the reduction in gear be distributed 

 among the various types of fishing equipment in 

 use in the fishery? 



—Should the economic gains from cost reduction 

 be apportioned among fishermen, processors and 

 distributors, and Government through market 

 forces alone or should Government intervene? 



A discussion of some of the issues raised by 

 these questions can be found in Sinclair (1961); 

 Crutchfield and Zellner ( 1 96 1 ) ; Royce et al. ( 1 963) ; 

 and report of a working group to ICNAF (1967). 

 The following elements of a proposed gear reduc- 

 tion program for salmon and halibut fisheries 



illustrate the kind of approach that might be 

 followed, though other fisheries would require 

 somewhat different treatment. 



—The number of units of fishing gear of each type 

 should be frozen temporarily at the level prevailing 

 at the last fishing season. However, some reduction 

 in the number of Ucenses available could be 

 achieved immediately by weeding out vessels that 

 have not fished at all during the past two or three 

 years or, as in the recently announced British 

 Columbia gear reduction program, by assigning 

 them small catch quotas only. 



—License fees should be raised to levels which bear 

 a more realistic relationship to the value of the 

 fishing privilege conferred. This would tend to 

 eliminate much of the casual, quasi-commercial 

 fishing, and should be adjusted to reflect differ- 

 ences in physical productivity of different kinds of 

 gear. The license fee should be adjusted upward 

 periodically to allow the public to share in the 

 increasing value of the fisheries as excess capacity 

 is reduced and fishing costs decreased. 



—A revolving fund, serviced out of licensed reve- 

 nues, would permit the State to purchase licenses 

 and gear at a specified percentage of the insurable 

 value of boat and equipment at the option of the 

 owners. Boats purchased under this scheme would 

 be retired or disposed of in such a way that they 

 would not shift the pressure to other heavily 

 exploited fisheries in the area. Fishermen relin- 

 quishing their licenses in this fashion and any 

 other new entrants could participate only by 

 purchasing an existing license. 



—Licenses should be made renewable in order to 

 permit the licensee to invest in vessel and gear with 

 reasonable assurance of continued operation. It is 

 equally important, to insure flexibility and to 

 provide some pressure to keep the most efficient 

 fishermen in the industry, that Ucenses be transfer- 

 rable. Prices at which licenses are sold would 

 provide a continuing check on the economic 

 condition of the fishery. In order to assure 

 statistical control, and to exercise some control 

 over flagrant violators of regulations, license trans- 

 fers would be approved by the State fishery 

 authority. 



—In order to accommodate desirable technological 

 improvements without subjecting the resource to 



VlI-68 



