Developing Risk Pools to Work within Bycatch Quota Constraints

The shoreside Pacific groundfish trawl fishery recently converted to a system of Individual Fishing Quota (IFQ) management.  The application of IFQs to the Pacific groundfish fishery brings significant challenges that will push the frontier of market-based fishery management mechanisms.  Several factors are the cause of these challenges, including allowable catch levels that hold some fishermen accountable to less than a single fish.  To deal with these constraints several groups of fishermen are forming voluntary associations, cooperatives, and risk pool activities with a high degree of focus on a collective approach to harvest coordination and risk management.  Particular examples include the pooling of quota to manage risk and the development of rules that apply to the collective which proactively reduce chance encounters and reactively respond to those encounters should they occur.  This presentation describes the development of one of these private institutions among a network of fishermen working in the Pacific coast IFQ fishery.  This case study will identify and discuss the process, motivations, and key factors present in bringing this network of fishermen together while also providing a description of the actual terms developed by that collective.