Lob STER WARS
Lob STER WARS
On a small island off of the coast of Maine, lobstermen are shooting at each other (Lobster wars rock remote Maine island, Clarke Canfield, Associated Press Writer). Much like urban gangbangers, they are fighting over profitable territory. And just like their urban counterparts, the territory under dispute is “un-ownable” or for the lobstermen, un-ownable under current state laws. But, just as with the gangbangers, they are enforcing their property rights themselves. With both street territory and fishing territory, agreement as to ownership or property rights reduces conflict and violence.
When property rights are under dispute, conflicts arise. When property rights are not enforced by a more powerful authority, such as the state, these conflicts are not settled in courts with lawyers and judges, but in the streets or the seas with AK-47s or 12-guage shotguns. This is especially costly in human lives. It also causes people to invest in weapons and armor and shooting skills rather than in boats and fishing skills.
The violence in the Maine lobster fisheries is nothing new. J.M. Acheson (Capturing the Commons: Devising Institutions to Manage the Maine Lobster Fishery, 2003) discusses how gangs of Maine lobster fishermen restrict access to what they consider their territory by cutting lobster trap lines, so that they cannot be retrieved. Ahceson notes that in areas where gangs defend their territory, the lobsters were bigger and more pounds of lobsters were caught per trap.
Property rights are the rules of the game, telling us who gets to make what decisions in what circumstances. Different property rights result in different outcomes. Certain property rights regimes allow who ever gets there first to rule. For instance, open access fisheries where the fish are considered private property only after being caught, can have disastrous results. Think for a moment about a population of fish where anyone can take whatever fish they can catch. As long as the fish can be sold for more than it costs to catch the fish, a profit is available to fishermen, more people become fishermen, prices of fish drop and costs to fishing rise. As more people turn to fishing and total fishing effort intensifies, the population of fish drops. This continues until the prices drop far enough and the costs to the fishermen rise enough, that it is no longer more profitable than other ventures for these fishermen and the number of fishermen levels off.
There is just one problem with all of this. The fishermen, as individuals, do not bear all of the costs of their actions. There are two distinct cost categories that we should recognize.
One of these costs is the cost of catching or harvesting the fish. These costs are born completely by the individual fishermen. This includes not only their fuel, boat, and fishing gear, but also the cost of their time spent fishing.
Another cost of catching or harvesting fish is the cost of reduced populations in the future. When the future populations of the fish drop, it becomes more costly to catch the same amount of fish. This cost from increased future scarcity is sometimes called “scarcity costs.” In the case of open access fisheries, this scarcity cost from of a reduced future population is borne by all of the fishermen, as a group–it is shared, so that each fisherman only faces a small part of their own costs. This also means that all of them face costs imposed on them by the rest.
What happens when costs are borne individually is that the action is only undertaken when the benefits of the action exceed the costs. But when someone bears only a portion of the costs of their actions, they do more of that action than they would if they bore the entire costs. So, when fishermen harvest so much that the fish population decreases, no fisherman connects their fishing activity this year with the falling fish population and the rising difficulty of catching fish next year. Also, each fisherman recognizes that even if he reduces his fishing this year to make fishing more sustainable, other fishermen will just catch what he did not, nullifying his individual efforts toward sustainability. Under these circumstances, no fisherman has an incentive to cut back on fishing, and the population of fish dwindles.
While the defense of territory by these lobster gangs increases the incomes of lobstermen and moves lobster fishing toward sustainability, it could be pushed even further toward sustainability and the level of violence and destruction of traps could be brought down if Maine would follow something that we do in Louisiana with oyster production. Louisiana leases areas to oystermen, establishing state recognized property rights. While the state cannot always be there to enforce leases rights against encroachment (and theft), the oystermen are backed up by the state. Anyone caught tampering with oysters on a leased bed face state-enforced penalties. While oystermen do often have to protect their own property, they clearly have an advantage by being backed up by game wardens, sheriffs, and the courts. They do not have to point guns as much as they would if they had no recognized claim.
-MC
September 30th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
I understand the conflict of this article and realized it is a reality in this time. You mentioned the same thing that happens in Maine with lobsters happen with oysters in Louisiana. Also, I know this happens in Louisiana with crawfish. I know someone who puts out crawfish traps in a local bayou in an area that is leased to him. This is how he makes a living. Although this area is leased to him and him only he often goes out to check his traps to see that they have been ran already. Knowing how upset he gets about this I can understand how people in Maine end up using violence to settle the problem, because that’s what my friend would probably result to if he ever caught the people that were running his traps. I don’t think that the government can do anything to stop this besides sit and wait watching people to steal, which is impossible because there is too much space to cover. People are going to steal no matter what laws or fees are put into place.
September 30th, 2009 at 4:42 pm
This is an everyday thing in our hometown of Clare Nova Scotia where there are over 11 thousand lobster licenses that are being fished around the province. So I understand where these fisherman are coming from, majority of them have no education, a family to feed, bills to pay, and keep their boat and license in this economic crisis, with low prices for lobster. So what happens is the other boats go and pull up other boats traps leaving the owner of the traps with nothing but dead bait and a family to feed. In small towns people tend to not know how to shut up about their business and the word gets out about who has bigger catches when they get to the warf. So the simple un-educated men do what they know best, resort to violence in an attempt to ward off the other fishermen gouging in their territory. Now I saw you stated that the territory is one that cannot be owned, but there is an unwritten code where the fishermen know the lines on which the others fish and those boundaries are only crossed when a partnership is formed between two boats in order to help each other out in different times of the season… But as I have also seen, every time there is an attack, a boat burned down, a boat sunk, someone crosses the lines and everyone gets their reality check, so unless you really put yourself in the position of these men ”Gangbangers” who try to protect themselves from losing it all… we can’t judge.
September 30th, 2009 at 8:55 pm
The money and effort in this community should not be spent on all this nonsense. There are many other ways to handle this dilemma than shedding blood of fellow fisherman. The views the fishermen are very unclear and need to be thought over for the sake of every one including people that are not fishermen. All this violence affects everyone and how the fishermen’s family’s will make ends meet to survive if something would happen to their father or husband. The competition is very fierce but should not be as violent as it is and should have an alternate way of solving the dispute without killing and ruining families.
September 30th, 2009 at 10:27 pm
I see no difference between lobsters and cocaine. Both are products of nature, must be harvested, and sold for a profit. Okay, maybe there are a couple of variances. After consuming a lobster one’s face does not become numb, and let’s face it, lobsters never inspired a movie about an immigrant who cornered an American empire via savage killings and market domination..starring Al Pacino. There are health risks in the two. When butter is lobster’s most popular complement good, expect your arteries to be as polluted and lethargic as the Rio Grande. Cocaine will just make your head explode. Speaking of Billy Mays, even he couldn’t successfully pitch drug legalization to the U.S. government. Does it really make a difference if uneducated gang members kill each other over a kilo or a crustacean? If drugs were legalized the cocaine business would be less hazardous than lobster fishing! Due to its hypothetical legality more cocaine would be shipped into America and its scarcity would cease, causing its black market appeal to disappear. Instead of Hector and Carlos killing gangs rival to their MS 13 crew, the two would apply for a business liscence, get a government grant, and sell taxed goods that make you feel,well..good. Why try to hide from the police, kill competitors selling a limited supplied product to a limited customer base, hence the gang territories, if one could set up a legal business, pay taxes, make profit, not face prison possibilities and save money by not getting required gang tattoos etc? “But drugs will ruin society!” Well alcohol can be addictive, cause violence and death, but I have never seen my father drunk a day in my life. Its all about choices. Lobster fishing is legal and taxed, but still causes violence. Like most wars, this lobster conflict is caused by limited natural resources. If it would rain lobsters every day in Maine, it does rain alot in Maine, we would not experience this problem. But, since God is not like top management at Red Lobster, we cannot have “all you can eat” lobster…on earth. So what Maine should do is sell “beds”, like Louisiana. Maine should make the Lobster beds really expensive because the demand is greater than the supply, a shortage. This would only make rich investors eligible for the bed purchase. Business history would predict that 2 or 3 major lobster fishing corporations would form depending on the pricing of the beds. The corporations would hire the independent fisherman for a decent wage. The independent fisherman would most likely profit more from corporate salaries than running their own business, paying their own fuel etc. Corporate fishing is capable of making the process of lobster fishing more efficient, due to an elite,educated few managing the operations. Violence would decrease or stop because beds must be officially outlined and even if someone fished on them, corporate employees could report the poachers, be indifferent to the intruders because their investment is not at stake, and not carry weapons on the vessel due to company regulation. I feel sorry for a state that cannot manage its citizen’s better. The most violence you should experience fishing for lobster is actually getting pinched by the lobster. But if I was a citizen of Maine, what would pinch me the hardest is that LOUISIANA solved this problem before you.