Fisheries and Aquaculture

As a result of a combination of rising wealth, rising population and rising technological sophistication, the very relationship that mankind enjoys with the seas is being fundamentally altered. Nowhere is this transformation clearer than in aquaculture, which rose from nothing to a US$30-billion industry worldwide last year. The prestigious Economist magazine recently featured an aquaculture cover story called the Blue Revolution, intentionally suggesting a parallel with the Green Revolution, which hugely increased world agricultural production and efficiency at the end of the last century. Aquaculture is set to become a vigorous and lucrative industry for Canada’s coasts. Yet “fencing” this last frontier is hampered by a property rights regime intended for the wild fishery, rather than agriculture, which aquaculture more closely resembles.

New Zealand and in Iceland did it. Why can’t we? What these two fishing nations did was to revolutionise their fisheries by giving fishermen, not politicians, ownership and control over the fish through Individual Transferable Quotas (ITQs). But while the experience from around the world is that ITQs improve conservation, economic returns from fishing, safety, and standards of living for fishermen while improving relationships with the government regulators. Yet progress in implementing ITQs in Canada, while important, has been slow and halting. In this article published in the Halifax Chronicle Herald and the Moncton Times & Transcript, October 22, 2003, AIMS President Brian Lee Crowley says that if the federal Minister of Fisheries and Oceans is serious about creating a sustainable fishery that creates wealth for coastal communities and isn’t merely a way to get stamped up for EI, he needs to champion this change.