This has occured in the Puget Sound sahnon 

 fishery where the success of the conservation 

 program produced such an influx of boats and gear 

 that only two or three days fishing per week can 

 be allowed and it is estimated that no more than 

 half the gear now in use could harvest the catch, at 

 a saving of perhaps 40 percent of the gross value of 

 landings.'^ In addition, the "lengthening of in- 

 season closures reduces the flow of information to 

 the regulatory commissions and leads inevitably to 

 unbalanced harvesting of the different races that 

 make up the exploited stock," thereby reducing 

 the total sustained physical yield and adding to 

 aggregate fishing and management costs.' * 



Area closures are subject to similar objection 

 from an economic point of view because "given 

 seasonal variations in the availability of fish", they 

 "frequently become merely limitations on fishing 

 time."'' "If fish migrate freely over an entire 

 fishing area, with the same size composition of the 

 population throughout, area closures would be 

 completely ineffective except as they reduce effi- 

 ciency by forcing the fleet to incur higher costs to 

 reach open areas."'* 



The prohibition of specific types of fishing gear 

 and appliances may be beneficial to the extent 

 that it prevents the infliction of losses on others 

 (through excessively destructive action) or exerts a 

 desired selectivity effect. It may also be a neces- 

 sary supplement to mesh size regulation. But, in 

 general, restricting the use of specific types of 

 fishing gear seems always to drift into regulation 

 by deliberate imposition of inefficiency on the 

 fleets involved. There "can be no rational defense 

 of a technique that maximizes the inputs required 

 to produce any given output, which is the essence 

 of gear restriction, in its manifold forms, as a 

 control device."" Furthermore, "the extraordi- 

 narily bad record of compliance and enforcement 

 [of conservation regulations] in the Alaska salmon 

 fishery can be traced in large part to the resent- 

 ment provoked by the economic absurdity of 

 many of the efficiency-reducing measures that 

 have been adopted over time."^° 



The overall catch limit "is by all odds the 

 simplest and most direct way of controlling fishing 

 mortality."^' "In analyzing its economic effects, 

 however, it becomes evident that the quota device 

 is a complex technique, operating primarily as a 

 limitation on fishing time, with secondary effects 

 on area distribution of fishing effort, and-in some 

 cases— on the numbers and type of vessels and gear 

 employed."^ ^ Again, if a total catch limit suc- 

 ceeds in attaining its conservation objective, it will 

 induce increased fishing effort. Under these cir- 

 cumstances, no single nation or fleet has any 

 incentive to decrease its fishing effort because it 

 has no assurance that every other nation or fleet 

 will do likewise. Each nation or fleet, therefore, 

 seeks to gain the biggest share of the increase in 

 fish population and the potential net economic 

 gain is dissipated. 



The regulatory commission usually reacts to the 

 increasing fishing effort by shortening the fishing 

 season. For example, the Pacific Halibut Commis- 

 sion succeeded in restoring the halibut yield and 

 was able to increase the total catch limit by about 

 25 percent over a period of about 20 years. Yet 

 this induced an increase of nearly 300 percent in 

 the number of vessels participating in the 

 fishery.^ ^ As a result, the season, originally about 

 nine months in length, was shortened drastically, 

 at one time, to 24 days on one major fishing 

 ground.^ ^ 



There are many undesirable effects of such a 

 shortened fishing season. Boats and men must find 

 off-season employment and this invariably involves 

 some loss of labor time and idleness of equipment 

 that cannot be recovered. To get the largest 

 possible share of a fixed aggregate catch, each 

 fishing unit seeks to remain on the fishing ground 

 as long as possible during the open season. This 

 leads it to use the nearest ports on all but the final 

 trip, producing a geographic pattern of landings 

 that will result in the lowest total cost for any 

 given catch only by sheer accident.^ ' 



17 



20 



Ibid. 



Ibid. 



Ibid. 

 ^Ibid. 

 ^Ibid. 



'Ibid. 



21 



23 

 24n 



Ibid 



^Ibid. 



Ibid. 



Templeman and Gulland, Review of Possible 

 Conservation Actions for the ICNAF Area, Commis- 

 sioners Doc. No. 12, Fifteenth Annual Meeting of ICNAF, 

 June 1965. 



Economic Aspects of Fishery Management, at 7. 



VIII-49 



