LIMITED ENTRY: 



A Fisheries Management Option 



By Kathy Hart 



North Carolina fisheries are at a 

 crossroads, and fisheries managers are 

 pondering which management road to 

 take. 



More fishermen than ever have a 

 commercial license to ply Tar Heel 

 waters for the catch of the day — 

 shrimp, flounder, blue crabs, mackerel, 

 grouper, tuna and others. But the 

 amount of catch netted by these 

 watermen is declining. 



For some species, it's simply a 

 matter of too many fishermen dividing 

 the amount of fish or shellfish avail- 

 able. That's the case with blue crabs. 

 Blue crab populations are healthy, but 

 the catch per crab pot is down because 

 there are too many pots in the water. 



For other species, stocks have 

 declined. These declines are blamed on 

 overfishing, poor water quality and 

 habitat degradation. But the bottom line 

 is this: There are less fish to fill nets 

 and more watermen to catch them. 



How do fisheries managers solve 

 these problems? That's a tough 

 question. They have to consider the 

 resource, the people who make their 

 living from commercial fishing and 

 those anglers who cast a line for the 

 sport of it. 



To give themselves time to 

 consider the possibilities, North 

 Carolina lawmakers placed a two-year 

 moratorium on the sale of new fishing 

 licenses. And they provided the 

 Fisheries Moratorium Steering Com- 

 mittee a $225,000 grant administered 

 by N.C. Sea Grant to study manage- 

 ment options and to derive better data 

 about people who fish within North 

 Carolina's management jurisdiction — 

 coastal rivers, sounds and ocean waters 

 up to three miles offshore. 



One management option that is 

 sure to provoke consideration and 

 debate is limited entry. In a limited 

 entry system, resource managers limit 

 the number of fishermen or vessels on 

 the water, the amount of gear used or 

 the quantity of fish caught. Ultimately, 

 limited entry management seeks to 

 maximize a fisherman's profit while 

 also managing the resource. 



Other nations and states are already 

 using this management tool. And at a 

 recent conference organized by Sea 

 Grant's Jim Murray, a series of experts 

 — fishermen, economists, resource 

 managers and academics — provided 

 examples of limited entry management 

 systems. They described how the 

 systems were established, how they 

 functioned, how they were changed in 

 response to problems and what benefits 

 they offered. 



Frances Christy, a fisheries 

 economist and noted author on limited 

 entry, says limitations are a must in 

 most U.S. fisheries. Without them, 

 fishermen tend to overfish a species 

 beyond the point that it can replenish 

 itself by reproduction. Then stocks 

 decline, economic waste occurs because 

 of overcapitalization, and conflicts 

 escalate among user groups. 



In nonlimited fisheries, "fishermen 

 operate in their own best interest," 

 Christy says, often ignoring what is best 

 for other fishermen and the stocks. 



Miles Mackaness, a South Atlantic 

 wreckfish fisherman, offers this 

 example of his fishery before limita- 

 tions. Wreckfish, a large, grouperlike 

 fish, is caught by hook-and-line at 

 depths up to 2,000 feet in the Atlantic. 

 A few watermen pioneered the fishery 

 in the late 1980s. Then the fishery 

 exploded and fishermen flocked to it, 

 hoping to make an easy dollar, 

 Mackaness says. 



Almost overnight, more than 100 

 large boats were leaving docks outfitted 

 with expensive gear. Quickly, they 

 glutted the market with catch, prices 

 dropped and many went bankrupt 

 because their expenses exceeded their 

 revenues. 



First, the South Atlantic Fishery 

 Management Council tried to control 



the problems through gear and season 

 limitations. But that didn't work, 

 Mackaness says. 



Then the council devised an 

 allocated quota system. Managers 

 divided the total allowable catch — 

 2 million pounds — among those 

 watermen who could prove a history in 

 the fishery. Fishermen were issued 

 catch coupons for an allotted quota. 

 They could use the coupons to fish or 

 sell them to others. 



As a result of the allocation system, 

 the size of the fishery has stabilized, 

 prices don't fluctuate as much, stocks 

 are healthy and watermen fish when 

 they please, no longer trying to outfish 

 their competitors. 



Now watermen have an ownership 

 in the fishery and a stake in its future, 

 Mackaness says. And that makes a big 

 difference in how they approach fishing. 



"It's very easy to maintain a stable 

 business this way," Mackaness says. 

 "People care more. They invest more in 

 safety equipment; they care more about 

 their crews. 



"They care more about the re- 

 source," he says. "We put our own 

 spawning season closure in. The 

 government didn't have to tell us to do 

 that. We wanted to do it for the stocks." 



Christy agrees with Mackaness' 

 assessment. He says limited entry has 

 three benefits. It gives fishermen a 

 reason to conserve the resource for the 

 future. The sale of quotas, gear certifi- 

 cates or licenses produces revenue for 

 the government that can be used to beef 

 up management, enforcement and 

 research. And it allows the marketplace 

 to allocate among competing users. 



The goal of limited entry, Christy 

 says, is to limit government involve- 

 ment and to allow fishermen the 

 opportunity to manage themselves. 



1 4 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1995 



