Called individual fishing quotas (IFQs) or individual transferable quotas (ITQs), "catch shares" are similar to the tradable privileges in the cap-and-trade regulation of carbon emissions.
Coverage includes the Limited Entry Permit Plan among the eastern Aleut; attitudes, perceptions, and adaptations of New Zealand commercial fisherman during 20 years of individual transferable quotas; state discourses and policies of marine enclosure and fishing livelihoods in Kodiak, Alaska; the transformation of British Columbia's salmon fisheries; the transformation effects of individual transferable quotas in Iceland; potential community impacts of increasing vertical integration in Alaska's crabbing industry; the community quota program in the Gulf of Alaska; and privatizing Northwest salmon.
In 1996, reflecting the combined political potency of all these and other forces, Congress imposed a moratorium on any new systems of fishery rights--or, in the jargon of the trade, on any new system of individual transferable quotas (ITQs).
Before turning to these examples, I wish to suggest that where strong territorially based use rights are vested in a community, or where a producers' organisation represents a community of fishers, Individual Transferable Quotas may be modified according to joint or collective ownership rights.
The US has had significant success in recent years in resuscitating its pollock stocks and increasing the value of pollock products produced at sea through management measures such as limited entry and individual transferable quotas.
In 1986, New Zealand created the best working model for a rights-based fisheries management system by dividing their fish into Individual Transferable Quotas (ITQs).
