Fish: To Privatize or Not to Privatize?

Today, Cornelia Dean at the New York Times reports on the latest findings from Costella et al. in Science about the use of individual transferable quotas in fisheries. In her article (and the study), Privately Owned Fisheries May Help Shore Up Stocks, the premise is that "allocating ownership shares of a particular fishery to individuals, cooperatives, communities or other entities gives them a reason to nurture the stock." In other words: privatize public goods. Ken Weiss at the L.A. Times also reports on the findings with a little more space. He includes quotes from Andy Rosenberg at UNH about how it "remains crucial for government to limit the total catch to keep stocks healthy enough to reproduce."

These are our fish. Up until individual transferable quotas (ITQs), the world's fish belonged to everybody (and nobody). And they wound up on the deck of the most zealous and fortunate boats. How do you feel about parceling them off to individuals? Is it the best way to save them from collapse? Is it fair? It's still early enough in the ITQ game to have a conversation around the privatization of a public resource, though the fish might not wait around for the results...