Providing Access Without Ownership to Traditional Users of a Wild Resource

摘要

Is fisheries management best served by creating a single, tiered feudal system of access ownership? Or, if privatization is to be pursued, should it be balanced by a mechanism that would provide access to working skippers and deckhands to a pool of unowned quota? A Kodiak-based group of working fishermen will be presenting a novel twist on rationalization to the North Pacific Fishery Management Council this year, as they fine-tune the new Gulf of Alaska groundfish management plan. The Crewmen's Association, an organization of working skippers and deckhands, is developing a proposal whereby a percentage of the yearly allocated quota would be linked to working fishermen through a co-op mechanism. According to C.A. President Steve Branson, a pool of working skippers and deckhands with a minimum of two years in the industry would be assigned points according to experience. The pool would be organized into a co-op and allocated quota by the National Marine Fisheries Service. The co-op then would distribute it to its members according to points.