Fish Futures

Fish stock depletion and gross overcapacity of fishing fleets worldwide has promoted fisheries agencies to reconsider their approaches to the management of commercial fisheries. The use of individual transferable catch quotas is becoming increasingly popular as a means of forestalling or reversing this trend.

However, there are many obstacles to successful implementation of this quota management approach, including the initial quota allocation to fishers and the prevention of 'quota busting' and fish discarding actions that threaten the sustainability of the fish stocks and seriously undermine public and fishing industry confidence in the management system.

The book draws together the growing body of practical experiences of quota systems both in Australia and internationally with the aim of helping fisheries managers, fishers and others take informed decisions on how to make quota systems work in practice.