Designing Catch Shares to Effectively Manage Bycatch

Fishery managers and stakeholders have been increasingly interested in catch shares as an approach for managing fisheries. Catch shares have the potential to address many of the traditional challenges associated with fisheries management including the catch of non-target species, or bycatch. Traditional approaches used to limit bycatch include prohibition of retention, fines for landing, restrictions on the deployment of gear, and time and/or area closures. These measures may discourage targeting of certain species, but also contribute to wasteful regulatory discards and introduce economic inefficiency while providing little flexibility to fishermen.  Catch shares may offer a better solution by setting a catch limit for bycatch species and allocating shares. The benefit under catch shares is that fishermen have an incentive to find innovative ways to limit bycatch while continuing to access target species. When developing a catch share program that includes bycatch some considerations include designing for constraining species, monitoring catch versus landings and the use of quota baskets to reduce administrative complexity.