The Impacts of Catch Share Management on Fishing Patterns and Productivity of New Hampshire Groundfish Vessels

In one year, the federal northeast multi-species ground fish fishery completely transformed from an effort controlled management system to an output controlled quasi-catch share system.  The effort controlled system limited vessel specifics, areas fished, amounts of fish landed per day, and the number fish able days per year.   The output controlled system sets a hard annual catch limit (ACL) of ground fish, allocates shares of this ACL to fishing cooperatives called "sectors" as an annual catch entitlement (ACE), and allows trading of ACE between sectors.

In exchange for fishing under a hard limit, sectors have been exempt from much of the restrictive effort controls imposed under the old management system. From an economic standpoint, the quasi-property rights of sectors, and the relief from effort controls should maximize economic efficiency by allowing fishermen to make more rational decisions about their business. Fisheries economics predict two main things about privatizing fisheries: 1) vessels that continue to fish will yield higher profit margins by expending less overall effort and hence realizing higher prices at the dock, and 2) the number of vessels actively fishing will consolidate as more efficient fishers purchase harvest share (ACE) from less efficient fishers. The question is: has this happened?

This paper looks at two New Hampshire sectors as a case study and examines the changes in total landings, total revenue, total trips taken, total number of vessels fishing and total costs from the 2009-2010 fishing year (effort control) to the 2010-2011 fishing year (output control).Preliminary data shows that New Hampshire fishermen have caught less fish, have taken fewer trips, and have less vessels fishing. However, fishermen also face new costs, fish prices haven’t been significantly higher, and the market price to purchase ACE has not just reflected it's own shadow value.