Managing Stocks: What Makes Lobster Succeed While Groundfish Fail?

James AchesonDepartment of Anthropology

and School of Marine SciencesUniversity of Maine

LL Bean/Surace Colloquium Series, University of Southern MaineSeptember 16, 2013

Introduction

In the Gulf of Maine groundfish management is a failure. Stocks are at all time lows.

Lobster management in Maine is highly successful. Lobster stocks are at historic highs.

Two explanations:• Management• Biological and ecological factors

Groundfishery Characteristics

• Groundfish –12 species of bottom dwelling fish (e.g., cod , haddock, hake, pollock, redfish, etc.)

• Caught with ottar trawls and gillnets• Gear highly unselective

• Huge mortality• Big bycatch

• Very heterogeneous industry technologically, economically, socially and culturally

Groundfishing Gear: Ottar Trawl and Gillnet

U.S. Groundfish Regulations

• Fisheries Conservation and Management Act (FCMA) passed in 1976

• Many plans put into effect from1977 to present: a three month quota plan, Interim Plan, and the Atlantic Demersal Fisheries Plan with 18 amendments and 44 frameworks.

• Have tried everything from quotas, size limits, and gear limits, to limiting days at sea, rolling closures, etc.

• Some cut effort very substantially, e.g., Amendment 7 cut effort 80% over Amendment 5 levels.

• All failed.

Groundfish Industry Decline

• Stocks still fell from 1976 to present• Number of boats in Maine and N.H. fell

from 343 in 1978 to 50 in 2012.

New England Groundfish Catches (cod, haddock, yellowtail flounder)

Groundfish Management: Four Points

1. Fishermen very unhappy. Every change in a plan resulted in lawsuits. Ugly meetings.

2. Groundfish industry factions never agreed.

3. A lot of cheating. Up to 25% of fish taken illegally.

4. Management plans developed slowly. Extreme bureaucratic complexity.

• An inshore trap fishery. About 5,600 licenses in Maine. Fishermen use an average of 560 traps.

• Traditional territoriality

Lobster Industry Characteristics

History of Lobster Management

• Lobster management always based on protection of juvenile lobsters and reproductive stock. First laws passed in 1870s making it illegal to take egged lobsters and small lobsters.

• “Pirate” Ethic: Before 1930 a lot of violation of laws. Small lobsters taken and breeding stock destroyed.

• Lobster Bust: Stock failure in late 1920s leading to very low catches. 40% of fishermen went out of business between 1928 and 1932.

Maine Lobster Catches

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History of Conservation Ethic

• Lobster bust convinced many fishermen of need for more stringent legislation.

• Over the past 140 years several types of rules were passed: min. size protected juveniles; max. size protected breeding stock; no taking egged females; V-notch program (voluntary effort to protect breeding females); escape vent law; biodegradable panel in traps

• Co-management law with coast divided into 7 management zones (1995).

• All passed with substantial industry support.• All enforced by wardens and industry.

Lobster Regulations

Lobster Management Zones

Explanation

Why was lobster industry able to provide itself with conservation rules and groundfish industry could not? Two aspects:

1. Biology and Technology • Groundfish gear highly unselective—when groundfish come to

the surface they are dead because their swim bladders break.• Lobster traps highly selective. Can pull traps to the surface

and take out small lobsters, egged or V-notched females and oversize lobsters and throw them overboard unharmed.

2. Interactive Social and Economic Factors• We have modeled these to pinpoint the factors producing high

quality conservation rules.

KEY POINT OF MODEL:

When b/n > c, a fisherman has an incentive to follow a high quality conservation rule even if no one else does.

Now suppose b/n < c. A fisherman has no incentive to follow the high quality conservation rule if no one else does, since (1/n)b – c < 0, which he would get from following a lesser quality rule.

The key question is what determines the benefits and costs, the b and the c?

Factors Influencing Costs and Benefits

Our game theory model points to four factors influencing costs and benefits distinguishing the lobster and groundfish industries.

1. Discount Rate: affects people’s assessment of future gains.

• Groundfish industry: a lot of cheating, falling stocks, and management plans not working people assume future catches will be low. Groundfishermen want to take stocks now. • Lobster industry: has a history of success. Stocks and catches are going up willingness to sacrifice present catches for better future catches.

Factors Influencing Costs and Benefits

2. Transaction Costs. Small, homogenous communities with a long history, a lot of social capital, and a lot of social interaction will be more likely to be able to provide themselves with rules.

Lobstering communities have these traits.

Groundfishing industry does not have any of these traits, is highly heterogeneous. (Elinor Ostrom 1990, 2000, 2002)

Factors Influencing Costs and Benefits

3. Number of people adhering to a rule. •Lobster industry: good compliance.•Our model shows that if a population starts out with nearly all fishermen having a “pirate” ethic, evolution will lead to a population with all having that ethic. •If most have a conservation ethic, over time, the vast majority will come to have that ethic.

Factors Influencing Costs and Benefits

4. Historical events moving people from one equilibrium to another.

• Lobster industry had the lobster bust—a truly traumatizing experience.

• No such conversion happened in the groundfishing industry despite declining catches, boats going out of business and ever-tightening regulations.

• Groundfishermen know that stocks have been over-exploited, but are not willing to invest much to bring them back.

Upward and Downward Spirals

Several interactive factors affect management over time:

• Lobster: New law → increased catches → reinforces fishermen’s world view → more enforcement.

• Groundfish: Regulations → declining catches → fishermen conclude management failure → cheating, lack of support for rules.

Lessons

• Have selective gear to:– Minimize by-catch– Minimize environmental damage(Note: Politically impossible to get acceptance for

selective gear in groundfish industry at present)• Conserve stock in vulnerable parts of life cycle

– Juveniles– Reproductive stock

Acknowledgements

Research on which this presentation is based was supported in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation (James Acheson, PI), “Evolution of Norms and Conservation Rules in Two Fisheries,” grant number BCS-0821968.