Gill Nets Don't Overfish, People Overfish

In 1995, the Louisiana State Legislature passed a law backed by the Gulf Coast Conservation Association (GCCA) to ban gill nets in Louisiana's saltwater fisheries. As both a citizen and a local economist, I want to preserve a healthy commercial fishing industry here, and as a recreational fisherman who gets a thrill out of having a redfish zip line out of my reel, I want to preserve a healthy fish population. These two goals are compatible. In fact, a healthy fish population is necessary for a healthy fishing industry.

Everyone wants to prevent overfishing. Overfishing jeopardizes how we live in our community, both the way some of us support our families and the way some of us play with our families. If fishing pressure is so intense that the value of the catch dwindles, there are too few fish to catch for either recreation or commercial uses. This puts both bait shops and fish processors out of business.

The GCCA is right that gill nets are very efficient, and if too many fishermen use these nets in our waters, the waters will be overfished. This does not mean that nets should have been banned. Banning efficient technologies reduces the fishing pressure by raising the costs of commercial fishing, putting the commercial fisherman out of business. In the Bering Strait, gill netters were only allowed to use sailboats with their nets, because motors were deemed too efficient. In what other industry would we ban the most efficient technology? If we better understood the reason for overfishing, we might come up with better ways of preventing overfishing.

A fishery is an example of what economists call a common property resource. With common property resources, we all "own" the resource, but none of us is really responsible for the resource. The problem with common property resources is that if we all have access to the resource, no one has an incentive to increase or even maintain the value of the resource.

Do you remember the story of the Little Red Hen? She planted wheat even though the other animals wouldn’t help her. She was willing to do the planting and the rest of the work because she knew that she could keep those who wouldn't help her from enjoying the bread she made. But what if she couldn't have kept the other animals from eating the bread? She would have stopped planting wheat and baking bread.

This is the problem with most fisheries. Oyster fisheries in Louisiana don't suffer from overfishing, because oyster fishermen are able to lease oyster beds (and keep everyone else from harvesting their oysters). Many coastal states don't lease oyster beds. In those states, anyone who is able to harvest oysters is legally allowed to. This is one of the reasons Louisiana is a leading oyster producer.

The point of all of this is that free access to a resource encourages overuse and depletion. Private oyster beds are not overfished, private grazing land is not overgrazed, private forests are not overlogged, and private catfish ponds are not overfished. But how can we convert something like the Gulf or an estuary into a private fishery like a catfish pond? In 1954, Scott Gordon suggested that if a single company were given the sole right to fish in a particular fishery, that fishing company would have the incentive to maintain the fish population, since overfishing destroys the company’s most important asset. Since the costs of overfishing fall completely on those who make the decision of how much to fish, overfishing reduces the firm's value. A single fishing firm would fish only to the point that gives them the greatest value of their fishery over time. Monopolizing market access converts the common property resource into private property. If there were two licensed fishing firms, they would each try to get as much of the fish before their competitor was able to catch them. The more commercial fishing licenses issued, the greater the overfishing problem. As long as fishing is profitable, people enter the industry, driving fish prices down and costs up. As the number of licenses granted increases, overfishing becomes a greater problem.

A sole-licensed fishing firm could easily be formed by creating a corporation, by issuing corporate stock to commercial fishermen in proportion to the values of their 1993 and 1994 catches that they reported on their income taxes. The corporation could then employ some (but not all) of the current fishermen and their boats, but would reduce the total fishing pressure to maintain the value of the fishery. While this fishing company would have a local monopoly on commercial fishing, which would increase the incomes of local fishermen, the sufficient competition from fisheries around the country would be enough to keep prices from becoming too high.

It is open access that is at the heart of the problem, not the efficiency of the nets. To paraphrase the National Rifle Association, nets don't catch too many fish, people catch too many fish, and people catch too many fish because we have set up the rules to allow nearly open access to our fisheries. We can set up the rules to reduce access to our fisheries and at the same time increase the incomes of our commercial fishermen.

Dr. Morris Coats, Professor of Economics, Nicholls State University, Thibodaux, LA 70310

The opinions expressed by Dr. Coats are his own and not necessarily those of Nicholls State.