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Arctic Yearbook 2013
Industrialized Fisheries in Arctic & Antarctic Waters
Management Systems
While it is obvious that the issue of access to the fishing grounds of the Arctic needs to be discussed
within the Arctic nations, and it is also obvious that this is a task for the stakeholders directly
involved, for a historian, this article would not be complete without some remarks on the various
fisheries management schemes, their respective genesis, and maybe even some comments on their
potential consequences for the future fisheries in the Arctic. In addition to the various stock
collapses or more generally the issue of overfishing, the extension of the fishing limits to 200 nm has
clearly shown that even in a period in which the stocks were no longer a global common or open
access resource, there was by no means a guarantee that overfishing could be prohibited. There
should be no need to refer to the impressive body of research on fisheries management and its
development, but at least it should be mentioned that the mere existence of such systems would not
save the fish stocks or the fisheries, especially as long as these systems do not include all actors
(Jantzen, 2010).
The most traditional approach of fisheries management is the extension of fishing limits of certain
nations. This approach has dominated the Arctic fisheries for most of the 20
th
century with Iceland
the forerunner as well as the most successful nation when it comes to this approach (Guðni Th et
al., 2007). But once the fisheries limits were extended and consequently most of the fishing grounds
nationalized, this approach came basically to an end as up until then the model of exclusive fishing
rights for inhabitants of certain regions was only rarely broken down to the domestic level. Instead, a
variety of quota systems were established in the Arctic nations, with many of them in favor of the
approach of Individual Transferable Quotas (ITQ). In a simplified model ITQs transfer fishing
rights into a commodity that can be traded within certain groups, normally the inhabitants or active
fishermen of a certain nation (Finley, 2011; Jantzen, 2008). Thus, the fisheries in Arctic nations that
have introduced ITQ based systems are up to a certain degree simply following the mechanisms of a
capitalistic market, and according to a number of economic models and observations over the last
decades it is more or less safe to assume that pure ITQ systems will result in a concentration of the
fishing rights, and thus the fisheries, in the hands of a very small group of actors: the fishing
companies that can not only afford to buy larger industrialized vessels, but to also buy the quotas.
Individual small-scale fishermen might be tempted to simply sell their quota and give up the
fisheries, and retire on the revenue generated by selling the quota. In the end it needs to be
determined if the future of the fisheries in the Arctic should be dominated by a capitalistic
microeconomic approach, or if and up to what degree macroeconomic perspectives should be taken
into account. From a somewhat cynical view the question could also be asked if by a microeconomic
point of view it makes sense to continue with any settlement in the Arctic or if it would be much
more economical to move the whole population to Europe, the Canadian mainland or the
continental USA in the case of Alaska (often nicknamed simply as the lower 48). Of course this is
not an option, but if we take other reasons than economic reasons into account for the question
why Arctic people should remain in the Arctic if they want to, these reasons also needs to be taken
into account when it comes to a fisheries management system. Consequently it seems to be highly