Comments on: Saving cod and red herrings

By: Tim Worstall

Tim Worstall — Wed, 02 Feb 2005 18:11:55 +0000

Oh dear.
A whole discussion of fisheries without a mention of the Tragedy of the Commons.
The solution to such problems is to stop the resource being a commons. To privatise it. For fishing rights to belong to individual people and companies, as fields do.
Forget the EU, nations, areas. Resources that are not owned will be over exploited.

By: eulogist

eulogist — Sat, 18 Dec 2004 13:12:42 +0000

@Michael: You are probably right that the Telegraph is among those “with an agenda” (although I also suspect that they know very little about the EU on top of that). Let’s say that I wanted readers to discover that by themselves, rather than providing them with clear-cut answers ;-)

@Dylan: I fully agree with you on both the Grand Banks and Spanish trawlers. But quotas per boat are not the solution as that is what we already have. They do not work well – involve a lot of bureaucracy while still leaving room for fraud, but most of all because of the by-catches: While fishing for species for which your quota is not yet full, it is very hard to avoid catching other fish for which the quota is full. The quota system stimulates fishermen to continue fishing until all their quotas are exhausted and to throw all by-catches overboard. Those fish are not brought on land and therefore not registered, but they are still dead.
Cutting back subsidies on large trawlers is a lot easier than imposing quotas. The amount of EU subsidies for the fisheries sector is *over half* the value of the fish produced… So the Commission has a lot of clout if it is willing to impose conditions (and if the Member States do not prevent it from doing so): there is no way the sector could survive without EU subsidies.

By: Dylan Sherlock from Victoria, Canada

Dylan Sherlock from Victoria, Canada — Fri, 17 Dec 2004 01:40:52 +0000

The EU needs to take a hard look at the damage done to the Grand Banks fishing industry by overfishing (and don’t get me started on those damn Spanish trawlers… -grin-).

Rather than restrict where fishermen can fish, what about quotas (per boat)? It’s the assholes on the big trawlers who are destroying the world’s fish stocks, not “small business” fishermen.

By: Michael D

Michael D — Sun, 12 Dec 2004 14:07:38 +0000

Most journalists simply lack the knowledge to see through such spin…

You are being far too kind to the Telegraph. Their jounalists are very knowledgeable, but the paper’s own position is that the EU is not in Britain’s interest and so nothing, absolutely nothing, positive can ever come out of Brussels. (And, that Brussels is the secret source of most of the countries ills.) In Telegraph logic, proposals that are obviously beneficial can have only come from British scientists.

EU-serf is wrong with his remarks about free markets. One of the problems with using free market economics to manage ‘commons’ goods is that rising prices makes the product even more attractive to those skimming the creme.

About 10 years ago, a proposal was made to close about 25% – 30% of the open ocean, that is, not territorial water, to all forms of commercial fishing. These areas included the breeding grounds. This would leave national governments to manage their own waters as they will – the fish would come to them. It also had the advantage of being easy to police by satellite. Presumeably, it didn’t get anywhere, but I don’t know why.