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Catch Shares for Fishermen May Save the Fish

Caption: Globally, there are 148 fisheries that are managed under variations on a management scheme called Individual Transferable Quotas (ITQs). ITQs work by allocating a dedicated percentage of a fishery’s total allowable catch to individual fishermen, communities, or cooperatives. The value of shares increases when a fishery is well-managed and the fish population is abundant. ITQs are common in New Zealand, Australia, and Iceland, where this form of ‘catch shares’ dates back to the 1980s. Many fisheries in the Gulf of Alaska transitioned to ITQs in the 1990s with successful results. [Please note: Costello et al. only analyzed the 121 fisheries that transitioned before 2003]. This image relates to an article that appeared in the Sep. 19, 2008, issue of Science , published by AAAS. The study, by Dr. Christopher Costello and colleagues at University of California, Santa Barbara in Santa Barbara, Calif. was titled "Can Catch Shares Prevent Fisheries Collapse?"

Credit: Image courtesy of COMPASS

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