Overfishing NEG

Inherency

Status Quo SolvesThe US is already taking steps to save the fish – 2048 is a way too pessimistic predictionEilperin 6, Eilperin, Juliet. Washington Post Staff Writer "World's Fish Supply Running Out, Researchers Warn."Washington Post. The Washington Post, 03 Nov. 2006. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/02/AR2006110200913.html Web. 01 July 2014. CS

Some American fishery management officials, industry representatives and academics questioned the team's dire predictions, however, saying

countries such as the United States and New Zealand have taken steps in recent years to halt the depletion of their commercial fisheries. "The projection is way too pessimistic, at least for the United States," said Steven Murawski, chief scientist for the National Marine Fisheries Service, which is part of the National Oceanic and

Atmospheric Administration. "We've got the message. We will continue to reverse this trend." The National Fisheries Institute, a trade group representing seafood producers as well as suppliers, restaurants and grocery chains, said in a statement that most wild

marine stocks remain sustainable. The group's spokeswoman, Stacey Viera, added that because the global demand for seafood has already outstripped the amount of wild fish available in the sea, her group's members are meeting the need in part by relying on farmed fish. "To meet the gap between what wild capture can provide sustainably and the growing demand for seafood, aquaculture is filling that need," she said. But several scientists challenged that prediction and questioned why humanity should pay for a resource that the ocean had long provided for free. "It's like turning on the air conditioning rather than opening the window," said Stanford University marine sciences professor Stephen R. Palumbi, one of the paper's authors. Oregon State University marine biologist Jane Lubchenco said the study makes clear that fish stocks are in trouble, even though consumers appear to have a cornucopia of seafood choices.

The United States is successfully rebuilding fisheries, the number of stocks on the over fishing list has reduced drasticallyNOAA ‘13(National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Status of Stocks 2013 Annual Report to Congress on the Status of U.S. Fisheries http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/sfa/fisheries_eco/status_of_fisheries/archive/2013/status_of_stocks_2013_web.pdf)

National Marine Fisheries Service NOAA Fisheries is pleased to present the 2013 Report on the Status of U.S. Fisheries, pursuant to the

Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (MSA). This year’s report highlights the continued progress that, collectively, NOAA Fisheries, the Regional Fishery Management Councils, and our stakeholders have made to end overfishing and fully rebuild our nation’s fish stocks. In 2013, seven stocks came off the overfishing list and four stocks are no longer listed as overfished. Additionally, recent

assessments show two stocks have rebuilt—bringing the total number of stocks rebuilt since 2000 to 34. These results demonstrate the strength of the U.S. science- based management model under the MSA and the importance of ending overfishing as the key to addressing past overfishing problems. While new stocks have been added to

both the overfishing and overfished lists this year, the status of many of these stocks was previously unknown. Managers now have the status information they need to develop plans to end overfishing and rebuild these stocks. Sustainable management of our fish stocks is critically important to the nation’s economy. Commercial fishing supports fishermen and fishing communities and provides Americans with a local source of healthy food. Recreational fishing is an important social activity for individuals and families, and is a critical economic contributor to local communities and regional economies. Combined, U.S. commercial and recreational

saltwater fishing generated more than $199 billion in sales and supported 1.7 million jobs in 2012. Subsistence fishing provides an essential, culturally significant food source for many people. By ending overfishing and rebuilding stocks, we are strengthening the value of fisheries to the economy, our communities, and marine ecosystems. To sustain this progress, we must continue to ensure solid, science-based determinations of stock status and better linkages to biological, socioeconomic, and ecosystem conditions. With the support of the Councils, commercial and recreational fishermen, states, and all of our other partners, we will strive to manage U.S. fisheries for the benefit of the nation. Of the 478 stocks and stock complexes managed in

federal fishery management plans, we have information to make overfishing status determinations for 300 (63 percent) and overfished status determinations for 230 (48 percent). Of those stocks that contribute approximately 90 percent of total fishery landings, the overfishing status is known for 85 percent and overfished status is known for 79 percent. Details on all our managed stocks are available online at: www.nmfs.noaa. gov/sfa/fisheries_eco/status_of_fisheries. Ending Overfishing Through Annual Catch Limits In 2007, Congress enacted a requirement to use annual catch limits (ACL) to end and prevent overfishing. All federal fisheries, including stocks currently listed as experiencing overfishing and as

overfished, are operating under ACLs. Stock assessments show that the number of domestic stocks experiencing overfishing continues to decline. NOAA Fisheries and the Councils are actively monitoring how well ACLs control catch and are working to prevent further overfishing. Rebuilding and Improving Stocks When it is determined that a stock is overfished, the relevant Council must implement a rebuilding plan. A typical rebuilding plan allows fishing to continue, but at a reduced level so that the stock will increase to its target level and can produce the maximum sustainable yield (MSY)—the largest long-term average catch that can be

taken from a stock under prevailing environmental and fishery conditions. Fifty stocks and stock complexes currently are under rebuilding plans, including 13 stocks that are no longer on the overfished list because they have increased in abundance and are not yet at the target level that supports MSY. Black sea bass, a Southern Atlantic stock managed by the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council, is a recent rebuilding success story. This popular stock, which ranges from Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, to the Florida Keys, was declared overfished and a rebuilding plan put in place in 2006. Management measures such as a constant catch plan, as well as changes in the recreational bag limit and fish size limits for both the commercial and recreational fisheries, Continuing Improvement A researcher with a black sea bass. The Southern Atlantic Coast stock of black sea bass was declared rebuilt in 2013. National Marine Fisheries Service 3 led to an early recovery of the stock. As a result of rebuilding, annual catch limits have more than doubled. This is important to recreational anglers, charter boat captains, and commercial fishermen alike. According to the latest Fisheries Economics of the U.S. report, in 2012 recreational marine anglers in the South Atlantic states spent more than $6.5 billion, generating over 34,000 jobs in east Florida alone. Black sea bass is also an important commercial species and many fishermen expect to see incomes rise with increased catch

limits for this stock. NOAA Fisheries monitors the progress of all rebuilding stocks, and makes adjustments to plans if needed. Current information on fishing mortality and biomass trends for stocks in rebuilding plans is available online at: www.nmfs. noaa.gov/sfa/fisheries_eco/status_of_ fisheries.

No Overfishing CrisisThere is no fish depletion crisis—species are rebounding due to strict catch limits not catch share programsRust 13 (Suzanne, “Catch shares leave fishermen reeling”, The Bay Citizen, https://www.baycitizen.org/news/environment/system-turns-us-fishing-rights-into-commodity-sque/)

Fish populations around the nation are rebounding. But it’s not because of catch shares . Nearly half of the 128 fish populations that have been subject to overfishing since 2003 now are thriving, having been fully rebuilt over the past decade, according to government records. Five of those populations have been rebuilt under catch-shares management – the St. Matthew Island blue king crab, snow crab, Pacific coast widow rockfish, Gulf of Mexico red snapper and

Atlantic windowpane flounder, according to Connie Barclay, a spokeswoman for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Barclay said it would be hard to attribute rebuilding to catch shares in any of those cases. Crockett, director of federal fisheries policy for the Pew Environment Group, agrees and credits the rebuilding to strict catch limits, which the government began to institute in 2006 . The difference between catch limits and catch shares “is a distinction I think that is often deliberately conflated” by the government and groups advocating for the new system, Crockett said. And despite the government’s claims that catch shares can eliminate overfishing, nine of the 15 fisheries now in place were put in fisheries that were not overfished and where overfishing was not occurring. Scientists are not surprised. “Catch-share proponents say the system can improve the health of fisheries,” said Tim Essington, a fisheries scientist at the University of Washington in

Seattle. “But that’s not what our research showed. They generally don’t lead to more fish to catch.” Essington’s work, and other academic research on catch shares, shows little evidence that the system will rebuild fish populations. “Catch share programs have been implemented in a variety of fisheries for diverse reasons,” Barclay said. “The main objectives have been to address overcapacity and to improve economic and ecological sustainability.”

Foundations have paid of environmentalists to skew statistics about overfishing. One specific threat inflated is the 2048 brink of fish depletionRust 13 (Suzanne, “Catch shares leave fishermen reeling”, The Bay Citizen, https://www.baycitizen.org/news/environment/system-turns-us-fishing-rights-into-commodity-sque/)

Collins’ antipathy for the catch-share program represents a tiny voice drowned out by an alliance of environmental groups, free-market advocates, food retailers, seafood companies and private equity firms that is waging a broad and sophisticated campaign to transform the nation’s fisheries. Conservative interests – many of them free-market advocates, including the Charles Koch Foundation and the Reason Foundation – have aligned with progressive groups such as the Environmental Defense Fund to fuel a heavily funded campaign to consolidate the fishing industry, public records and interviews show. Through a network of nonprofits, these groups have paid for research bolstering claims that too many fishermen have depleted the oceans. Over the past six years, a handful of nonprofits have leveraged about $65 million to promote catch shares and nearly $650 million to promote new and “sustainable” fishing practices and policies by creating markets and businesses to push new forms of management, underwriting scientific research showing the oceans are depleted, and developing marketing campaigns designed to educate consumers about overfishing. Throughout 2012, the Environmental Defense Fund’s website proclaimed that “the oceans are emptying of seafood” and “overfishing is the biggest reason.” The group’s website touted catch shares as the answer, citing facts and figures that have been contradicted by many academics and fishery managers. The website cited, for instance, a 2006 study in the journal Science that predicted all “fish and seafood species worldwide would crash by 2048” if management practices didn’t change. That prediction has been countered and

contradicted by dozens of scientists , including the author of the study, who backed off the statement in a subsequent article published in the same journal. “It was one of the stupidest statements I had ever seen,” said Ray Hilborn, a fisheries biologist at the University of Washington in Seattle, who has followed global fisheries for three decades. Months after the Center for Investigative Reporting inquired, the Environmental Defense Fund removed the study, and some of its other claims, in January.

Economy

Econ Growth TurnGrowth causes urbanization, which causes environmental and societal collapseNorberg-Hodge ‘11 (Helena Norberg-Hodge, widely respected analyst of the impact of the global economy on communities, local economies, and personal identity, and founder and director of the International Society for Ecology and Culture (ISEC). 9 Sept 2011 Found at http://ebookbrowse.com/gdoc.php?id=22468503&url=1ce6067826e96fbb2ae9c664b04c656b) GH

• Urbanisation. Industrial economic growth so erodes rural economies that only 2% of the ¶ population remains

on the land in highly industrialised countries. Globalisation is accelerating ¶ that trend, leading to a massive population shift from rural areas to the cities. This is particularly ¶ true in the South, where the growth economy is steadily breaking down more self-reliant systems, ¶ leaving people little alternative but to migrate to ever-expanding cities. Even in the most ¶ industrialised countries, the urbanising process continues: jobs in the global economy are ¶ concentrated in sprawling metropolitan areas and their suburbs, while rural regions are ¶ systematically sapped of economic vitality. ¶ This unhealthy urbanisation not only hollows out rural communities, it also leads to a host ¶ of urban problems: overcrowded slums (particularly in the South), loneliness, alienation, family break-up, poverty, crime, and violence. Urbanisation also contributes to a massive increase in ¶ resource use and pollution: virtually every material need of urbanised populations must be ¶ shipped in from elsewhere, while the resulting waste — much of which would be of use in a rural ¶ setting — becomes a highly concentrated source of pollution. If the urbanisation of the world’s ¶ population continues at present rates, it will only lead to further social and environmental ¶ breakdown. ¶ ¶

Growth widens the rich-poor gapNorberg-Hodge ‘11 (Helena Norberg-Hodge, widely respected analyst of the impact of the global economy on communities, local economies, and personal identity, and founder and director of the International Society for Ecology and Culture (ISEC). 9 Sept 2011 Found at http://ebookbrowse.com/gdoc.php?id=22468503&url=1ce6067826e96fbb2ae9c664b04c656b) GH

• Loss of food security. The heavy emphasis on exports has led to a rapid decrease in ¶ agricultural diversity, with thousands of local varieties abandoned for the relative few suited to ¶ monocultural production and favoured by

short-term economic trends. Overall, approximately 75 ¶ percent of the world’s agricultural diversity has been lost in the last century, a narrowing of the ¶ genetic base that threatens food security everywhere.9 ¶ Increasing control by a handful of corporations over the world’s food supply also ¶ threatens people's access to food, particularly those without enough money to meet corporate ¶ profit expectations. Today, in fact, when food is more tightly controlled by corporations than ever ¶ before, some 790 million people are undernourished10 — even though more than enough food is ¶ produced to adequately feed everyone on the planet. ¶ ¶ • ¶ Growing gap between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’. Economic globalisation is leading ¶ to a widening gap between rich and poor — both between the countries of the North and the ¶ South, and within individual countries themselves. Already, the wealth of 350 billionaires equals ¶ the annual income of the poorest 45 percent of the world’s population, and yet the inequity ¶ continues to grow worse. The situation is exacerbated by the mobility of transnational ¶ corporations and capital, which operates to drive down wages everywhere. Production for global ¶ markets, meanwhile, is increasingly dependent on large-scale computerised and automated ¶ processes, thereby further marginalising human labour. If much of the world’s population is to ¶ continue leaving their villages in search of scarce jobs in the cities, how will the majority survive, ¶ jobless and with little prospect of future employment? ¶ ¶

Small Fisheries Turn

Small Fisheries Crowded OutLarge corporations are the only ones who benefit from catch shares—the profits are always tipped in their favorRust 13 (Suzanne, “Catch shares leave fishermen reeling”, The Bay Citizen, https://www.baycitizen.org/news/environment/system-turns-us-fishing-rights-into-commodity-sque/)

Catch-share systems vary from region to region and market to market. But they all are controlled by the federal government. Regulators have worked with regional fishery management organizations to divvy up shares – or a percentage of the fishery – to fishermen and corporations. The government allocates shares based on past fishing hauls: The more you fished a region, the more shares you received. But from there, each system can vary. Some systems limit the number of shares any one entity can own; others require that owners must actively fish. And some place no restrictions on the number of shares awarded. In each case, shares have been awarded to the

fishermen and corporations at no cost. But they can turn around and sell these shares. “This system represents a gifting of public wealth to private individuals,” said Daniel Bromley, an economist emeritus at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Defenders of the system say the giveaway of shares to fishermen was necessary and fair. “These guys have invested their own resources in the fisheries for years. They’ve bought boats and permits, spent their time and their lives fishing,” said Don Leal, director of research with the

Property and Environment Research Center, a free-market environmental think tank based in Bozeman, Mont. Some of the biggest beneficiaries have been corporate interests. For instance, according to government records, four companies own 77 percent of one type of Bering Sea crab shares: Trident Seafoods and Icicle Seafoods, both

headquartered in Seattle, and two Japanese conglomerates, Maruha Nichiro and Nippon Suisan Kaisha. Last year, more than 80 million tons of crab were hauled into Alaska ports, worth about $250 million . And in New Zealand, where catch shares are the national policy, the government estimates that eight companies control 80 percent of the industry’s production. Most researchers and managers acknowledge that the system will shrink the fishing fleet, hitting independent, small-scale fishermen the hardest, while protecting big corporate fleets. “No matter what you do, there is a dynamic that is going to unfold in predictable ways, toward the concentration of wealth and away from public participation,” said Bonnie McCay, an anthropologist at Rutgers University who was a member of a National Research Council panel assembled by Congress in the late 1990s to assess catch shares.

Catch shares create a division between “winners and losers”. Local fishermen and women always end up on the losing side because to be competitive in the fishing market millions of dollars of shares are requiredRust 13 (Suzanne, “Catch shares leave fishermen reeling”, The Bay Citizen, https://www.baycitizen.org/news/environment/system-turns-us-fishing-rights-into-commodity-sque/)

The job losses identified in fishing villages along the North Atlantic coast have prompted the New England regional management council to consider introducing safeguards for small fishermen and capping the amount of shares any one entity can own. “Consolidation is a feature of every catch-share system,” said Ed Backus of the

Portland, Ore.-based Ecotrust, an environmental organization. “You’re going to create winners and losers.” And the winners tend to include larger boats and corporate fleets. “I know a lot of guys who are raving about catch shares,” said Zed Blue, a Bellingham, Wash.-based fisherman, who fishes Dungeness crab and tuna off the Washington coast. “But those are the guys who got something. … For the rest of us, the crew, the fishermen that didn’t own boats, it’s a disaster.” Collins, the San Francisco fisherman, said he can’t afford to buy enough shares of

the Pacific’s lucrative groundfish fishery to make it worth his time. Instead, he and other small-scale fishermen in San

Francisco have built a co-op in the hope that if they pool their money, they might be able to buy some shares from the fishing fleets that were allocated larger chunks of the market, or from smaller entities that can’t afford to hold onto their shares. But if the Pacific groundfish market follows the trajectory of the halibut market,

most small-scale fishermen will be priced out, Collins said. In January, halibut shares were being sold for between $30 and $45

per pound, depending on the area fished. The price is a one-time cost that a fisherman or corporation will pay to gain access to fish under catch shares – if they weren’t given the shares during the initial allocation. And because halibut is a fish that is caught en masse, a fisherman would

have to buy thousands, if not tens of thousands, of pounds to fish effectively. “You’re talking hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars to fish,” said Collins, who said he used to just pay to renew his commercial fishing license every year, which would cost him “maybe $100, something like that. We didn’t used to have to buy the fish before we caught them.” Farther up the coast, in Alaska’s

North Pacific pollock fishery, the largest share owners include some of the nation’s biggest seafood harvesters and processors,

including Trident Seafoods and Icicle Seafoods. Some of these companies are working with the government to expand catch shares. The private equity firm Paine & Partners, which owns Icicle Seafoods, is co-sponsoring a World Bank initiative with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to expand catch shares globally. Paine & Partners did not respond to repeated requests for an interview and would not reply to questions about its contribution to the program. In 2010, The Carlyle Group, the second-largest private equity firm in the world, acquired the China Fishery Group, whose fleet trolls from the Arctic to the South Pacific and supplies fish across the globe. It owns one of the world’s largest fish-processing vessels, a 50,000-ton behemoth called the Lafayette. After the Carlyle acquisition, the China Fishery Group released a new business strategy, which included buying shares in global fisheries. The company now owns nearly 20 percent of Peru’s fishing region. It also owns shares in the North Pacific but declined to comment on where. Both Paine & Partners and The Carlyle Group have been part of the alliance paying for the marketing push to adopt catch shares around the globe. In 2012, Paine & Partners joined a coalition that is raising $1.5 billion to convert fisheries worldwide, and The Carlyle Group’s China Fishery Group sponsored a global conference in Singapore to support catch shares and a new “blue economy.”

IFQ’s result in an uneven distribution of wealth – small fisheries will be priced out of the industry and jobs will be lostDoremas et al. 12, Doremus, Holly, James H. House, and Hiram H. Hurd, Professor of Environmental Regulation, University of California, Berkeley and Member-Scholar, Center for Progressive Reform . Why International Catch Shares Won’t Save Ocean Biodiversity. LOSI-KIOST Conference. UC Berkeley–Korea Institute of Ocean Science and Technology Conference, May 2012. Web. 3 July 2014. CS

Economists, who have been the primary proponents of property rights approaches, typically do not prioritize wealth distribution as an important aspect of solving the fishery problem. Their major professional goal is efficiency. One reason they tend to gravitate toward market approaches is that in a smoothly functioning market voluntary transactions should achieve efficient outcomes regardless of the initial allocation of entitlements.57 Societies, however, are not necessarily indifferent to distributional consequences. Whether distributional outcomes are “equitable,” as the relevant society defines that term, can depend critically on the allocation of entitlements. Achieving equity may be in tension with achieving efficiency. In the fishery

context, for example, programs that reduce overcapacity almost necessarily decrease employment. Whether improvements in the employment conditions for the remaining jobs outweigh the cost of the job losses is a question on which reasonable minds are likely to differ. Distributional concerns have driven much of the opposition to property rights-based fishing regimes in the United States.58 The notion of private rights in fisheries is inherently inconsistent with long-standing egalitarian norms about access to fishery resources.59

Opponents of catch shares worry that small fishers will be priced out of the industry, that fishing-dependent communities will suffer or even disappear, and that crew members of fishing vessels will be transformed from the economic partners of vessel owners to subordinate wage earners.60 There is evidence that some catch share programs have had precisely these sorts of distributional effects, reducing employment and increasing the market share of large operators.61 These concerns can be

addressed by limiting the transferability of catch shares, but such limitations inevitably have efficiency costs. The relative importance assigned to efficiency and equity, therefore, is important not only to the decision to use catch shares or not, but also to the design of any catch share program.

The ITQ system unfairly distributes wealth and forces small fisheries and experts out of the policy-making process – Iceland proves.Eythorsson 2000 (Einar, Norwegian Institute for Urban and Regional Research, “A decade of ITQ-management in Icelandic fisheries: consolidation without consensus”, Marine Policy 24 (2000) 483-492, 1 August 2000, Date Accessed: 3 July 2014)

During the 1990s, the Icelandic fisheries have been transformed from a strictly regulated industry with units of production embedded within local communities, to a globally oriented free market industry with highly mobile units of production. This process is certainly not generated by the ITQ-system alone; a wide range of liberalisation policies have, in sum, created a free market environment in the fisheries. The transformation of fishing rights into capital, represented by quota value, has been an important contribution to the present economic strength of companies with large quota holdings. In terms of export value of fish products and profits made by leading fisheries companies, there is little doubt that the ITQ-management has been a success. Icelandic fishing companies are expanding into international waters and demonstrating their competitiveness in terms of technology and know-how. The quota holders have consolidated their position through a series of court cases that have reinforced the

status of quota shares as de facto private property. Despite this apparent success , there is still no consensus about the ITQ system in Iceland. After a decade of experience, the controversies within the industry and in Icelandic politics seem as strong as ever. Repeated polls among the public have shown that a majority of Icelanders are either sceptical or opposed to the system, and a new, anti-ITQ political party got two MPs in the 1999 elections. The critique against the system is in essence aimed at its distributional effects. The initial allocation of ITQs led to a gratis distribution of valuable rights to certain families, and in some cases these families have enjoyed great windfall gains from selling out their shares. As the Supreme Court decision in 1998 called the legality of this

procedure into question, this critique was reinforced. The distribution of economic, political and negotiating power within the fisheries as well as in society at large is also influenced by the system. As quota owners, the vessel owners association (LIDUD ) is in a superior position compared to the crewmen's unions and other stakeholders' organisations. The practice of working out the fisheries management policy by broad debates and consensus in the Fisheries Assembly and by preparing new legislation by task forces with broad representation from different stakeholder groups is now abandoned. The role of the Fisheries Assembly in policy-making is diminished since 1998 the Assembly has ceased to pass resolutions on policy issues and is reduced to an annual fisheries

conference. At present, two task forces are working on the question of reforming the quota system: The resource committee `AuL! lindanefnd a and a committee for reviewing the fisheries legislation, also referred to as the `consensus committee’. The mandate of the `consensus committee’ is

the rather difficult task of resolving the controversies over the fisheries management system and trying to make peace. There are no stakeholder representatives in these committees, the members are politicians, lawyers and economists. One of the reasons is probably that

the differences between principal stakeholder groups have grown deep. After a decade of bitter conflicts, some of them are hardly on speaking

terms. It is however legitimate to ask how the ITQ-system has been able to survive and consolidate its position despite the lack of consensus and

apparently against the will of the majority of the public. One reason may be that the crucial decisions taken at the early stages of the system from 1984 to 1991, have proved to become increasingly difficult to reverse as time passes. Another complicating factor is that all major political parties and many stakeholder organisations have at one point or another been involved in the design of the system and have to a certain degree been co-opted during the decision- making process. The opposition to the ITQ-system is not homogenous, and there is little agreement about what the alternative should be. In a recent poll among the general public, published in |gir, the journal of the Icelandic Fisheries Association, only 7.1% of the respondents wanted to keep the present system unchanged. However, only 17.3% wanted to abolish the quota system altogether. One-third (33.3%) of the respondents favoured some kind of regional allocation or `community quot’a. Almost one-third (29.2%) was favourably disposed to either resource rentals or quota auction, while 10.5% wanted a special tax on quota transactions.

IFQ’s hurt small fisheries – that’s why they’re not in place now Baker 99, Baker, Beth. "Individual Fishing Quotas—A Complex and Contentious Issue." Oxford Journals 49.3 (199): 180. BioScience. Oxford University Press, 1999. Web. 3 July 2014. CS

But the study also pointed out the potential pitfalls of IFQ programs. Fair allocation—deciding who may be part of the quota system, how much each participant gets, and whether the quotas can be transferred—is key to winning support from local communities. There is concern that a few large companies could buy up the quotas of smaller operations, exacerbating unemployment in fishing communities. Limiting quotas to owners who work aboard fishing vessels is one way to help curb this practice. But others support the consolidation of quotas as a way

to avoid having too many vessels chasing too few fish. Because of these potential pitfalls, IFQs are a contentious issue

that has divided traditional allies. “It's complicated because you have different interests in different states,”

says study director Ed Urban, of the NRC. “You have big business versus small business, different fishermen in different fisheries, even those using different gear types in a fishery, aligned on different sides of the issue.” Members of the environmental community also come down on both sides of the issue. For example, Greenpeace adamantly opposes IFQs because of the potential to harm small fishing interests, whereas the

Environmental Defense Fund strongly supports quotas. Congress reflected this contentiousness during reauthorization of

the Magnuson Fishery Conservation and Management Act in 1996. The IFQ moratorium was a compromise between the senators from Alaska, who felt that IFQs would harm their state's smaller fishing operations, and those from Washington, who felt that their state's large trawlers would benefit from quotas. The NRC study stressed that the benefits of IFQs have to be weighed for each fishery and that the decision on initiating an IFQ program should be left to each management council.

Small Fisheries K2 EconomySmall Fisheries provide economic, social, and environmental benefits, 90% of fishing employmentEDF ’14 (Environmental Defense Fund, 6/11/14, FAO adopts sustainable small-scale fisheries guidelines - See more at: http://blogs.edf.org/edfish/2014/06/11/fao-adopts-sustainable-small-scale-fisheries-guidelines/#sthash.k2ONvKnt.dpuf, accessed: 7/3/14 GA)

Small-scale fisheries provide a host of social and economic benefits to local communities. They contribute about half of the global catch; supplying food for local, national and global markets. They are responsible for about ninety percent of fishing employment. They provide income, contribute to food security and nutrition, alleviate poverty, and often support a way of life strongly anchored in local culture and community. But small-scale and artisanal fisheries face many challenges today including depleted fish stocks; pollution; encroachment from development; climate change, and sea level rise. Many small-scale fishing communities are marginalized, with low levels of access to political power, education and other resources. To combat these challenges, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) collaborated with governments, Civil Society Organizations and other stakeholders to develop a set of ‘Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-scale Fisheries in the Context of Food Security and Poverty Eradication’ (SSF). Today at the biennial meeting of the FAO’s Committee on Fisheries in Rome, delegates adopted the SSF Guidelines by consensus. The SSF Guidelines offer guidance on how to deliver on the promise of sustainable small-scale fisheries in a way that is ecosystem-friendly, participatory and sensitive to cultural context. The Guidelines give strong new impetus to the importance of inclusiveness in setting goals and designing management systems that can work for communities, with an emphasis on the key role that women play in sustainable fishing communities. In brief, the Guidelines stress that: Small-scale fishing communities need to have secure tenure rights, which equitably distribute benefits from responsibly managed fisheries. These tenure rights are balanced by responsibilities for long term conservation and management of fishery resources, and small-scale actors must fish at levels and with practices that protect the resource over the long term. States must include small-scale fishing communities in the design, planning and implementation of management systems to sustain fisheries and communities – and in particular must ensure that women are equitably included in all aspects of the process. The post-harvest and trade sectors are just as critical to the security of SSF communities as fishing itself, and stakeholders from these sectors (particularly women, who are often more active in post-harvest than harvest roles) must be included in the design, planning and implementation of these parts of the value chain. Special attention to social and economic development may be needed to ensure that often-marginalized SSF communities can have secure livelihoods and enjoy their human rights. Governments need to put in place policies and plans to take into consideration the potential for significant risks to SSF communities from disasters and climate change. All parties need to respect and make use of traditional knowledge, in addition to collecting and disseminating scientific research, in support of SSF; communicating the data in an efficient and transparent way is an essential component of sustainable management. Small-scale fisheries also operate in near-shore environments of great ecological value, and thus high-quality fisheries management systems in those places also yield tangible environmental benefits. The FAO developed the SSF Guidelines through a very broad and inclusive process of outreach and listening; the result was a document that truly reflects the concerns and aspirations of the people and communities who depend on these fisheries. EDF commends all involved for adoption of these important guidelines and looks forward to assisting in implementation.

SSF’s important, provide employment, food security, and incomeNIMR ’06 (Norwegian Institute of Marine Research, Importance of Small-Scale Fisheries, NIMR, https://www.imr.no/filarkiv/kopi_av_filarkiv/2006/11/Chandrika_Sharma-MPAs_and_Impact_on_small_scale_Fisheries.pdf/en, accessed: 7/3/14 GA)

Small-scale fisheries are an important source of employment, food security and income, particularly in the developing world � An estimated 90 per cent of the 38 million people recorded by the FAO as fishers and fish farmers are small-scale � An additional more than 100 million people are estimated to be employed in other fisheries associated occupations. Figures likely to be underestimates—millions of people fishing seasonally/ part-time, in coastal and inland waters not recorded as fishers � FAO estimates that about 5.8 million fishers (about 20 per cent of the total) can be considered poor, earning less than US$ 1 per day. Small-scale fisheries promote the equitable distribution of benefits from the exploitation of aquatic resources � Several small-scale fisheries are managed and regulated in ways that are compatible with the sustainable use and conservation of biological diversity.

Small scale fisheries are important, provide nutrition to poor countriesGFCM ’14 (General Fisheries Commission of the Mediterranean, A Regional Symposium for Small-Scale Fisheries, GFCM, http://www.ssfsymposium.org/SitePages/WelcomePage.aspx, accessed: 7/3/14 GA)

The considerable role of small-scale fisheries in the Mediterranean and Black Sea has long been recognized.

They have the potential to contribute significantly to food security, economic growth and rural development and to provide valuable employment opportunities. This is why there is a genuine and widespread

interest in securing their sustainable development in the whole region. Small-scale fisheries are characterized by a great diversity and represent different values and ways of life. They are important vectors of local knowledge and good practices for co-management and they have a low environmental impact. However, there is sparse information at the regional level on their production volumes and socio-economic dimension as well as on their contribution to sustainable development and to the preservation of marine ecosystems.

Price Spike TurnTurn-IFQ’s may decrease prices in short term, however in the long term prices spike because of lack of supply and IFQ’s can’t solve don’t allow for reproductionLinsley 13, Linsley, Mark, Reporter. "Optimal Economic Policy for the Regulation of the Fishing Industry in Alaska." Juneau Empire. Juneau Empire, 8 Nov. 2013. http://juneauempire.com/opinion/2013-11-08/optimal-economic-policy-regulation-fishing-industry-alaska#.U7R9NPldXZg Web. 02 July 2014. CS

Quotas do, however, have two adverse side effects. First, since the majority of the fish is caught toward the beginning of a given season, the market is initially oversupplied and prices consequently decrease. Furthermore, because fish has a relatively short shelf-life, there is an additional downward pressure on prices to ensure that the entire amount of the product is sold before it spoils. For producers, any revenue is better than a fridge full of spoiled fish that cannot be sold. In addition, as time passes, prices spike as there is relatively little product left because the majority of the fishing quotas had already been met earlier in the season. Taken together, at first supply exceeds demand, thereby forcing prices down for consumers and lowering the profit-margin for producers. However, as time progresses, the oversupply is depleted and, because additional fish are unable to be caught, prices sharply rise and certain species may not be available at all. Second, individual fishing quotas incentivizes suppliers to catch younger, and subsequently smaller and less meaty fish. Since seasons typically begin after reproduction cycles, the majority of fish available are not fully developed, yet they are still caught to ensure the producer’s market share. Therefore, because smaller fish do not weigh as much, the total number of fish caught increases. Furthermore, a higher number of younger smaller fish are caught to meet the quota, which curtails the total amount of fish able to reproduce for the next season.

Turn - Individual Fishing Quotas causes price spike in the short term – high demand and low supply Hawaii provesKubota 14, Kubota, Lisa, Lisa Kubota anchors Weekends on Hawaii News Now: She is also a general assignments reporter. She has been with KGMB9 since 2004.. "Possible Ahi Limits for Hawaii Could Cause Price Hike." Possible Ahi Limits for Hawaii Could Cause Price Hike. Hawaii

News Now, 08 Oct. 2013. http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/story/23641456/experts-predict-spike-in-ahi-prices-next-year Web. 02 July 2014. CS

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) - Ahi lovers could face a price hike for fresh sashimi and poke next year because of a proposal that would slice the bigeye tuna limit for Hawaii's longline fleet. The overfishing of bigeye tuna is a problem across the Pacific Ocean. The issue is managed at an international level, and the U.S. is hoping to keep the current quota in place. Customers at Nico's Pier 38 line up daily for fresh fish. The restaurant buys about 10,000 pounds of ahi a month from the nearby fish

auction. The news of a possible bigeye quota reduction for Hawaii's longline fleet is troubling. "Less fish means more expensive fish so the demand is going to go higher for less fish and the price is going to go up so everyone is going to be affected price-wise, and also no product in the market," said owner Nico Chaize. The current quota, which was set in 2008, is nearly 3,763 metric tons. One proposal calls for a limit of 2,300 metric tons, which is roughly a 37% reduction. "What that would mean is potentially we're closing our fishery in July and having no bigeye and that would be just hard to accept," said Michael Tosatto, regional administrator for the NOAA National Marine Fisheries Service. "We've adhered to that quota consistently over

the years. Unfortunately, that's not true of all the various countries and different fisheries so what we would like to see is a level playing field," said Sean Martin, president of the Hawaii Longline Association. Concerns about overfishing led to the international recommendation that came out of a Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) working group meeting in August. Local experts, however, suggest new restrictions on the purse seine fishery which uses big nets and buoys. "In the course of taking skipjack tuna, they

take a growing amount of bigeye, and they're taking juvenile bigeye and it's having an impact on the stock" explained Tosatto. If Hawaii's

quota is cut, customers could end up paying the price if they're hooked on ahi. "So a plate lunch would cost you $25," said Chaize. "But I don't want to serve any frozen fish or import fish because that's not what we're all about."

Price Spike Defense

Not UniqueChina’s demand for fish makes rising prices inevitable—increases in past years should’ve triggered impactTerazono 13 (Emiko, “Global fish prices leap to all-time high”, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/af42937a-d811-11e2-9495-00144feab7de.html#axzz36cwBZAJY)

Global fish prices have leapt to all-time highs as China’s growing appetite for high-end species – from

tuna to oysters – runs up against lower catches. The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation’s global fish price index, an industry benchmark that tracks the cost of wild and farmed seafood, hit a record high in May, up 15 per cent from a

year ago and above the peak set in mid 2011. “In the coming months, supply constraints for several important species are likely to keep world fish prices on the rise,” the Rome-based FAO has warned. Changes in the Chinese diet have already boosted demand for grains and livestock feed, but the index suggests that the same phenomenon is under way in the seafood industry, where the total value of fish trade is expected to reach $130bn this year. China is the world’s largest producer of farmed tilapia – the mainly freshwater white fish – but it is increasing its imports of other types such as salmon and shellfish. Oyster and mussel consumption is growing at 20 per cent a year in the country, according to the FAO, making China a leading market for more expensive shellfish and tightening supply elsewhere. Oyster prices, which have more than doubled over the past three years, are expected to rise further in 2013, as supplies from France remain low due to a virus that has destroyed the country’s young stock. Richard Haward, a seventh generation oysterman in Essex, northeast of London, said: “Demand from Hong Kong and China and a worldwide shortage of supplies have increased prices.” Urbanisation and the advent of supermarkets are contributing to higher fish consumption in emerging markets generally, the FAO has found. Audun Lem, a fish expert at the FAO, said: “The product development, including ready meals and clean fillets really facilitates fish consumption.” Rising Asian demand has coincided with low supplies for several key species because of disease and high feeding costs in the aquaculture industry. The cost of tuna – one of the most heavily traded fish species – has risen 12 per cent in the past year, to reach a record high, on strong demand from makers of sashimi and sushi, as well as

from the canned tuna industry. This has coincided with smaller catches. Shrimp, another heavily traded species, has risen in price by 22 per cent over the same period as supplies have been hit by disease in southeast Asia, as well as by a fall in wild harvests. Salmon prices, meanwhile, have surged 27 per cent – but remain well below their record highs. Farmed fish production costs remain high as the industry battles with record feed costs. Fishmeal prices remain near a record high because of a sharp decline in supplies of anchovies, used to manufacture feed rations

Fish prices have already spikedHagen and O'Neill 14 (Natalie and Elizabeth, “Meat, poultry and fish prices spike to all-time high”, New York Post, http://nypost.com/2014/06/18/meat-poultry-and-fish-prices-spike-to-all-time-high/)

It’s a barbecue-season bummer! Meat, poultry and fish prices have spiked an average of 8 percent since last year — soaring to an all-time high, national data show. The cost of ground beef has gone up 11 percent, pork has increased

9.4 percent and fish has spiked 4.2 percent since last spring, according to US Department of Labor statistics. Poultry prices increased 1.3 percent. “Everything is going through the roof,” said Jim Hopkins, 52, a supervisor at Associated Supermarket in the West Village, who has worked in the grocery business for 30 years. “I’ve never seen increases like this — where they jump as much as this.” The dramatic cost spike is due in part to a drought in California, thin cattle herds and a recent pork virus, according to experts. New Yorkers on tight budgets have been forced to cut back. “We’ve definitely seen a decrease in meat sales,” Hopkins said. Ground beef at mid-level-priced grocery stores costs about $4.59 per pound, tilapia costs $5.99 per pound and pork chops cost $3.99 per pound — all marked up between 30 and 40 cents per pound since last year, Hopkins said. “It’s crazy — sometimes you just can’t buy meat,” said Ana Meca, 41, who was shopping for her family of five at Associated on Tuesday. “I have some pasta at home, so I will just make that tonight. It’s cheaper.” Meat, poultry and fish prices have risen an average of 7.7 percent nationally since last year, according to Labor Department statistics. Nationally, ground beef rose from an average of $3.31 to $3.85 per pound from May 2013 to May 2014. Bacon increased from $5.09 to $6.04 and sirloin steak spiked from $6.79 to $7.58 per pound during the same period. Meat, poultry and fish rose 1.4 percent nationally in the past month — the sharpest increase since 2011. During that month, the price of whole chickens increased from $1.53 to $1.56 per pound, bacon increased from $5.69 to $6.05 a pound and ground beef increased from $3.85 to $3.89 a pound, according to the data. And it may only get

worse. “They’re expecting a big increase come July again,” Hopkins said. “I think it will affect [the deli] stronger into the coming summer season.”

Econ Decline

Alt CauseAlt Causes to economic decline – no health care spending and lack of job growth Cosmen 6/25, Cosman, Ben, Ben graduated from SUNY Geneseo with a B.A. in English Literature and a minor in Political Science. "American Economy Shrinks By Highest Rate Since Great Recession." The Wire. The Atlantic Monthly Group, 25 Jun. 2014. http://www.thewire.com/national/2014/06/american-economy-shrinks-by-highest-number-since-great-recession/373357/ Web. 03 July 2014. CS

The Bureau of Economic Analysis announced Wednesday that the United States gross domestic product declined by an annual rate of 2.9 percent in the first quarter of 2014, the worst decline since the Great Recession. In late May, the BEA reported that the economy shrank by 1 percent in Q1 of 2014, but with more

complete data, they revised that figure Wednesday to nearly 3 percent. The BEA cites a larger-than-expected increase in the U.S. trade deficit and a significant drop in personal consumption. The major factor at

play, according to the Associated Press, was a decrease in health care spending, which accounted for "two-thirds of the downward revision" and saw a decline of 1.4 percent after estimates of growth over 9 percent. That 2.9 percent drop is the largest quarterly decline since 2009, when GDP declined by more than 5 percent. Since 2010, the only other quarterly decline of GDP came in Q1 of 2011, when it dipped by 1.3 percent. In the last quarter of 2013, GDP increased by 2.6 percent.

When the BEA first announced a decline for Q1 2014, it was met with little more than a shrug. The decline was chalked up to inclement weather, and economists cited solid job numbers to assuage fears. And there doesn't seem to be significant worry about this revision, either. Reassuring, too, is that the second quarter of 2014 is expected to see a GDP increase of more than 3 percent. So this severe revision suggests the drop was a bit steeper than previously thought (and will likely have a few minor ripple effects), but still not a sign of complete economic turmoil ahead.

AT: Econ Decline ImpactEconomic decline doesn’t cause warJervis 11 (Robert, Adlai E. Stevenson Professor of International Politics in the Department of Political Science, and a Member of the Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University, “Force in Our Times”, Saltzman Working Paper No. 15 July 2011 http://www.siwps.com/news.attachment/saltzmanworkingpaper15-842/SaltzmanWorkingPaper15.PDF)

Even if war is still seen as evil, the security community could be dissolved if severe conflicts of interest were to arise. Could the more peaceful world generate new interests that would bring the members of the community into sharp disputes? 45 A zero-sum sense of status would be one example, perhaps linked to a steep rise in nationalism. More likely would be a worsening of the current economic difficulties, which could itself produce greater nationalism, undermine democracy, and bring back old-fashioned beggar-thy-neighbor economic policies. While these dangers are real, it is hard to believe that the conflicts could be great enough to lead the members of the community to contemplate fighting each other. It is not so much that economic interdependence has proceeded to the point where it could not be reversed – states that were more internally interdependent than anything seen internationally have fought bloody civil wars. Rather it is that even if the more extreme versions of free trade and economic liberalism become discredited, it is hard to see how without building on a pre- existing high level of political conflict leaders and mass opinion would come to believe that their countries could prosper by impoverishing or even attacking others . Is it possible that problems will not only become severe, but that people will entertain the thought that they have to be solved by war? While a pessimist could note that this argument does not appear as outlandish as it did before the financial crisis, an optimist could reply (correctly, in my view) that the very fact that we have seen such a sharp economic down-turn without anyone suggesting that force of arms is the solution shows that even if bad times bring about greater economic conflict, it will not make war thinkable.

Food Security

Food Prices

Alt Cause

Alt Cause to food prices- the great drought is raising prices worldwideKlare, 2012 < Michael T. Klare is the Professor of Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College, The Hunger Wars in Our Future, http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2012/08/food-scarcity-drought-global-crisis>The Great Drought of 2012 has yet to come to an end, but we already know that its consequences will be severe. With more than one-half of America's counties designated as drought disaster areas, the 2012 harvest of corn, soybeans, and other food staples is guaranteed to fall far short of predictions. This, in turn, will boost food prices domestically and abroad, causing increased misery for farmers and low-income Americans and far greater hardship for poor people in countries that rely on imported US grains.This, however, is just the beginning of the likely consequences: if history is any guide, rising food prices of this sort will also lead to widespread social unrest and violent conflict.Food—affordable food—is essential to human survival and well-being. Take that away, and people become anxious, desperate, and angry. In the United States, food represents only about 13% of the average household budget, a relatively small share, so a boost in food prices in 2013 will probably not prove overly taxing for most middle- and upper-income families. It could, however, produce considerable hardship for poor and unemployed Americans with limited resources. "You are talking about a real bite out of family budgets,"commented Ernie Gross, an agricultural economist at Omaha's Creighton University. This could add to the discontent already evident in depressed and high-unemployment areas, perhaps prompting an intensified backlash against incumbent politicians and other forms of dissent and unrest.It is in the international arena, however, that the Great Drought is likely to have its most devastating effects. Because so many nations depend on grain imports from the US to supplement their own harvests, and because intense drought and floods are damaging crops elsewhere as well, food supplies are expected to shrink and prices to rise across the planet. "What happens to the US supply has immense impact around the world," says Robert Thompson, a food expert at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. As the crops most affected by the drought, corn and soybeans, disappear from world markets, he noted, the price of all grains, including wheat, is likely to soar, causing immense hardship to those who already have trouble affording enough food to feed their families.

Food Shortages

Alt CauseAlt causes to food shortages—climate changeBryce 13 (Emma, “Leaked IPCC report links climate change to global food scarcity”, The Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/environment/world-on-a-plate/2013/nov/07/climate-change-environment-food-security-ipcc-emissions-united-nations-global-warming)

It's a human-centric approach, but the prospect of a food scare should be one way to get people—believers and

deniers alike—to seriously evaluate the effects of climate change. Last week, a source leaked a draft report, drawn up by the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and due to be released next March. It's the second of three reports, following the first that came out in September this year. Among other things, the text clearly outlines the threats climate change poses to the global food supply, citing a decrease of up to 2% each decade in yields of staple crops like maize, wheat, and rice. That projected dip looks even more serious when one considers the parallel 14% increase per decade in the demand for food that scientists are expecting, to match the needs of a population that will reach 9 billion-plus by 2050. It's a familiar message. But, "what is probably new compared to previous reports is the recognition of climate change's impacts much sooner than was expected," says Alexandre Meybeck, senior policy officer on Agriculture, Environment and Climate Change

with the United Nation'sFood and Agriculture Organisation. "We are not talking about 2100, we are talking about what's going to happen in 20, 30 years." The New York Times first reported on the story in depth, author Justin Gillis writing: The warning on the food supply is the sharpest in tone the panel has issued. Its previous report, in 2007, was more hopeful…The new tone reflects a large body of research in recent years that has shown how sensitive crops appear to be to heat waves. This IPCC report, which focuses on the impacts of, vulnerability and adaption to, climate change,

finds that the negative impacts on crops and yields have been more common than the positive ones,

the latter occurring in some higher latitudes where atmospheric carbon dioxide can aid plant growth. Climate will place limits on staple crops, and the variability of yields will also increase year to year, the IPCC concludes. The rising food prices that accompany this uncertainty will affect the world's poorest the most, and countries in the tropics will bear the brunt of climate change. "The more vulnerable populations and countries will be affected more," Meybeck says, emphasising an oft-repeated fact, "because they are already vulnerable and they also have fewer resources to deal with climate change."

Biodiversity

Alt Causes

Pollution/DegredationThere are alt causes to biod loss – pollution and invasive speciesCraig 12

(Robin Kundis, S.J. Quinney College of Law, University of Utah, “Marine Biodiversity, Climate Change, and Governance of the Oceans.”, Diversity (14242818). Jun2012, Vol. 4 Issue 2, p224-238. 15p., EBSCO)

Existing and Climate Change Impacts on Marine Biodiversity 2.1. Existing Stressors to Marine Biodiversity Ocean biodiversity is threatened by a number of stressors. Severe reductions of biodiversity in many parts of the world, and the resulting “jellyfish seas,” are

profound evidence of this accumulated stress [3]. This section summarizes the most important of these existing stressors. 2.1.1.

Coastal Degradation In 2005, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA) described in detail the cumulative existing degradation of coastal

ecosystems, emphasizing that these systems “are now undergoing more rapid change than at any time in their history” through a complex synergy of physical, chemical, and biological/ecological changes [4] (p. 516). It

concluded that “these impacts, together with chronic degradation resulting from land-based and marine pollution, have caused significant ecological changes and an overall decline in many ecosystem services” [4] (p. 516). Nor is such coastal degradation likely to cease any time in the near future. The

United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) expects coastal populations worldwide to increase from a density of approximately 77 people per square kilometer to 115 people per square kilometer by 2025, and density is correlated to coastal degradation [5]. 2.1.2. Overfishing While coastal degradation can devastate near-shore marine biodiversity, overfishing is considered the primary traditional threat to marine biodiversity more generally [4]. This is especially true when fishing methods also destroy habitat, such as through blast fishing and ocean trawling [4] (p. 479). Overfishing leads to declines in marine biodiversity in three ways. First, overfishing impacts the targeted species, often to the point of fisheries collapse [4] (p. 479) and [6], which is generally defined as a 90 percent reduction in the speciess abundance [7]. Such impacts pervade the marine world, and total global catch in marine and coastal fisheries is declining despite increased investment in fishing effort [4] (pp. 481–482). Indeed, in its 2010 review of the world’s fisheries, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) concluded that “the increasing trend in the percentage of overexploited, depleted and recovering stocks and the decreasing trend in underexploited and moderately exploited stocks give cause for concern” [7] (p. 8). Second, through “by-catch,” overfishing reduces the populations of non target species incidentally caught in nets or on lines, most of which are thrown back in the water dead or dying [4] (p. 479). Such by catch can be destructive both of the non-target species and the ecosystem more generally. For example, in the Bering Sea, pollock fisheries catch between 200 and 1,400 metric tons of salmon sharks Diversity 2012, 4 227 and Pacific sleeper sharks every year; 1,000 metric tons is the equivalent of about 7,400 sharks [8]. Salmon sharks in particular occupy a high trophic level, and as Wright (2010) has pointed out, “reductions in salmon sharks and Pacific sleeper sharks in the numbers reported could disrupt the Bering Sea ecosystem in unexpected ways, notably by removing predation pressure from a more effective pollock predator. Any of several pollock predators may be kept in check by salmon sharks and Pacific sleeper sharks—including squid (Decapodiformes), which could prey on all pollock age classes” [8] (p. 642). Finally, overfishing has resulted in a phenomenon known as “fishing down the food web”: as larger, more desirable, and higher trophic species are fished out, fishers shift to smaller and once-less-desirable species [4] (p. 479), [9] (p. 1045) and [10] (p. 15). As a result, overfishing of the original target species eventually leads to overfishing of far more species at lower trophic levels, far more pervasively disrupting marine food webs. Such disruptions can alter a marine ecosystem’s overall ecological state, and restoration may become impossible [4] (p. 488) and [9]. Indeed, as proof of how pervasive and destructive marine overfishing actually is, a team of scientists reported in Science that, if current trends in

overfishing continue unabated, global fish stocks will, as a whole, be entirely collapsed commercially by the middle of the 21st century [11]. 2.1.3. Invasive Species A third existing stressor is invasive species, which can opportunistically exploit coastal ecosystems that are already degraded and destroyed as well as causing new and independent stresses. As has been demonstrated

repeatedly, from jellyfish in the Black Sea to zebra mussels in the Great Lakes, non-native species can quite successfully travel to new coasts in ships’ ballast water [12]. According to estimates, as many as 7,000 marine species may be transported in ballast water every day, including marine-facilitated human diseases such as cholera [12]. Invasive species also escape from aquariums or are intentionally introduced into new marine ecosystems [12]. Once introduced into new

environments, invasive species can alter marine ecosystem function and ecosystem services and can reduce native biodiversity [2,12]. In some circumstances, the invader simply takes over the new ecosystem. As one extreme example,

in the 1980s the comb jelly Mnemiopsis was introduced into the Black Sea through ballast water, where it bloomed prodigiously and devoured the base of the Black Sea food chain, devastating the anchovy

population and most of the rest of the food web [13]. 2.1.4. Marine Pollution A variety of sources of marine pollution

affect marine biodiversity. In many parts of the world, for example, sewage discharges remain an important source of coastal pollution [14]. Nutrient pollution from on-land activities, such as runoff from farms that includes

fertilizer or atmospheric deposition from power plants, can contribute to harmful algal blooms and marine

hypoxic, or “dead,” zones [15]. Harmful algal blooms directly impact marine biodiversity by toxifying marine organisms, especially shellfish [15], while dead zones drive oxygen-dependent life away [15]. The number of dead zones in the ocean has doubled every decade since 1960, and a 2008 study identified more than 400 dead zones throughout the world [16]. Diversity 2012, 4 228 Toxic pollution is also a substantial impairment to marine biodiversity. As the MEA noted, “the estimated 313,000 containers of low-intermediate emission radioactive waste dumped in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans since the 1970s pose a significant threat to deep-sea ecosystems should the containers leak, which seems likely over the long term” [4] (p. 483). Moreover, toxic chemicals continue to reach the oceans through a variety of industrial processes discharging wastes

into upstream waterways and through various forms of dispersed water pollution, such as atmospheric deposition and runoff. Several of these chemicals bioaccumulate in ocean organisms. For example, methyl mercury, the organic form of mercury, becomes more concentrated the further up the food web a species resides [17]. High-level marine predators such as tuna, swordfish, shark, and mackerel can end up with mercury concentrations in their bodies that are 10,000 times or more the ambient concentration of mercury in the water [18]. Indeed, mercury contamination is already prevalent in food fish [19–22]. Other toxic pollutants such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) also bioaccumulate and are considered a cause of increased mortality to marine mammals such

as the beluga whales in the St. Lawrence River [23,24] and orcas off the west coast of the United States [25]. Plastic pollution also affects marine biodiversity. Floating plastic waste accounts for 80 percent or more of marine debris [25]. Various marine

animals can become physically entangled in larger forms of plastic debris, leading to injury, dismemberment,

and death [26,27]. Many marine species also consume plastic trash; plastic bags, it turns out, look a lot like jellyfish, which is a food item for sea turtles and

other species, and other marine animals intentionally or accidentally consume plastic trash [26,27]. Once swallowed, the plastic can both inhibit adequate nutrition by taking up space in the digestive system and directly cause death by choking or through internal damage [28]. A 2011 study reported that at least 9.2 percent of fish in and below the Great Pacific Garbage Patch—a concentrated gyre of plastic pollution in the northern Pacific Ocean—had plastic debris in their stomachs, and the

researchers estimated that fish in the North Pacific are ingesting 12,000 to 24,000 tons of plastic every year [29]. 2.2. Climate Change’s Impacts on Marine Biodiversity The consensus view of world climate scientists, as presented in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC’s) 2007 report, is that Earth’s climate system is warming [30]; “evidence from all continents and most oceans shows that many natural systems are being affected by regional climate changes” [30] (p. 31) and [31]; and most of the observed change is very likely caused by humans’ greenhouse gas emissions [30] (p. 39).

Climate change is likely to significantly affect marine biodiversity in a number of ways. The most important of

these impacts will be: changes in ocean temperature; changes in ocean current patterns; sea-level rise; and ocean acidification. 2.2.1. Changes to Ocean Temperatures Ocean surface temperatures and ocean heat content are both increasing

[30]. The IPCC indicated in 2007 that most regions of the ocean have already experienced SST increases of between 0.2 and 1.0 degree Celsius [30]. It predicted that, under its “business-as-usual” (A2) scenario, ocean temperatures would increase by another 0.5 to 1.0 degree Celsius by 2029 and by up to 4 degrees Celsius by 2099, with warming continuing for at least another century thereafter [30]. However, more recent research by an international team of scientists indicated “that ocean temperature and associated sea level increases Diversity 2012, 4 229 between 1961 and 2003 were 50 percent larger than estimated in the 2007 Intergovernmental

Panel on Climate Change report” [32]. Moreover, temperature increases have been detected more than 3,000 m below the ocean’s surface [33]. As a result of this increasing temperature, marine ecosystems are also changing. The IPCC reported in 2007 that “in some marine and freshwater systems, shifts in ranges and changes in algal, plankton and fish abundance are with high confidence associated with

rising water temperatures, as well as related changes in ice cover, salinity, oxygen levels and circulation” [30] (p. 2). It projected widespread ecosystem changes as a result of changes in major marine currents beginning at about the point when global average

temperatures increase by about 2.5 to 3.0 degrees Celsius [30]. Even before that point, however, changes in ocean temperatures are already causing temperature-sensitive marine species to migrate poleward

[34,35]. Some marine species may go at least locally extinct because of temperature-induced changes in their habitat or

food supply, especially in the tropics [36]. More pervasively, by promoting widespread shifts in species’ ranges and species invasions of new habitats, climate change will have direct impacts on marine biodiversity and on fishing and fish stocks [7],

especially at the Earth’s poles [36]. A study published in Nature concluded that ocean temperature is a major determinant of marine biodiversity and that changes in ocean temperature “may ultimately rearrange the global distribution of life in the ocean” [37] (p. 1098). Such changes in marine biodiversity from ocean temperature may also increase the effects of climate change itself. For example, “scientists have found that as the oceans become warmer, they are less able to support the phytoplankton that have been an important influence on moderating climate

change” [38]. 2.2.2. Changes to Ocean Currents As the IPCC has noted, seawater circulates in both surface currents and in three-dimensional, globe-spanning, interconnected currents below the surface—sometimes far below the surface [30]. Prevailing winds drive the surface currents, are driven by the prevailing winds, which account for 13 to 25 percent of all ocean water movement [30]. In contrast, the more three-dimensional ocean currents are driven by differences in temperature and salt concentration (salinity) and hence are known as the thermohaline circulation [30]. These powerful ocean currents

redistribute heat, “stir up nutrients, transport food, mix salt- and freshwater, and even influence much of

the weather and climate that we experience across continents” [30] (pp. 10–11). As climate changes alter atmospheric temperatures, wind patterns, and sea

temperatures, it is also altering the ocean’s patterns of currents. Ocean currents are important to marine biodiversity for a

number of reasons, but one of the most important of these is upwellings. Upwellings occur when “deep nutrient-rich water rises up to replace the water carried away from the coast” [39]. Because upwellings are nutrient-rich, they support plankton blooms and high concentrations of marine plants and animals, including commercially important species of fish [39]. Upwellings regularly occur off the coasts of California, Chile, and South Africa [39], and these highly productive areas of the ocean support “20% of global fishery yield” [40].

Changes in ocean currents can convert these regions of high productivity to hypoxic zones, more commonly known as “dead” zones. Changes in wind patterns off the northwest Pacific coast of the United States, for example, increased upwellings of nutrients to the point where the nutrients Diversity 2012, 4 230 over-fertilized plankton growth, creating a “boom and bust” cycle in which decaying plankton blooms consumed most of the oxygen in the water [41]. Three other such climate change-related dead zones have been detected, one off the coast of

Chile and Peru in South America and one each off the west and east coasts of Africa [39]. More severe changes to ocean circulation and ocean

currents have been associated with mass extinctions—of both marine and terrestrial life—in the past,

and climate change may drive such extinctions again in the future [42]. 2.2.3. Sea-Level Rise Climate change-driven sea level rise occurs for two main reasons: thermal expansion and melting land-based ice [30]. Currently, the contribution of each source to sea-level rise is about equal [43],

although the contribution of melting ice may be increasing [44]. Sea-level rise causes multiple impacts on coastal ecosystems, especially with respect to highly productive—but also highly vulnerable—estuaries [45]. According to the Climate Institute, “During the 20th century, sea level rose about 15–20 cm (roughly 1.5 to 2.0 mm/year), with the rate at the end of the century greater than over the early part of the century” [46]. However, the unexpectedly increasing pace of polar and glacier ice melting around the world has made predicting future sea level rise difficult [43]. Complicating these predictions from the melting of the world’s major ice sheets are studies that indicate that smaller mountain glaciers are also making a significant contribution to global sea level rise—as much as 12 cm by the end of the century—as they disappear worldwide [47]. While long-term sea-level rise predictions are difficult, initial sea-level rise will

primarily affect marine biodiversity in low-lying coastal areas, especially because sea-level rise appears to be accelerating [48]. The IPCC indicated that, with about a 3 °C increase in global average temperature, 30% of the world’s coastal wetlands will be lost [30] (p. 51), and barrier islands, mangrove forests, and near-shore coral reefs are similarly vulnerable [30]. These are coastal ecosystems of high biodiversity, and their destruction or decline will consequently decrease marine biodiversity overall. 2.2.4. Ocean Acidification The oceans are naturally basic, with a pH of about 8.16, and that pH level has been remarkably stable over geological time [49]. Since the start of the Industrial Revolution the oceans have been absorbing billions of tons of CO2. The oceans have absorbed so much CO2, in fact, that their pH is changing [30] (p. 9). Ocean acidification begins when CO2 in the atmosphere dissolves into seawater [50]. Once dissolved, CO2 reacts with the seawater to form carbonic acid [51]. In the last century and a half or so, the average ocean surface water pH has dropped by 0.1 unit, with greater drops predicted

for the near future [30]. This decrease in pH interferes with a number of species functions, especially shell-building [51].

The results over the long term for marine biodiversity could be devastating. A recent article in Science, for

example, concluded that “the current rate of (mostly fossil fuel) CO2 release stands out as capable of driving a combination and magnitude of ocean geochemical change potentially unparalleled in at least the last ~300 million years of Earth history, raising the possibility that we are entering an unknown territory of marine ecosystem change” [52] (p. 1062).

There are alt causes to biod – ecosystem degradation and diversity alterationCantera Kintz et al 2013

(Jaime Ricardo, Research Group in Estuaries and Mangroves of Colombian Pacific, Departamento de Biología, Universidad del Valle, Cali, Colombia, Edgardo Londoño-Cruz, Research Group in Estuaries and Mangroves of Colombian Pacific, Luz Marina Mejía-Ladino, Research Group in Taxonomy, Systematic and Marine Ecology, Instituto de Investigaciones Marinas y Costeras "José Benito Vives de Andreis", Santa Marta, Colombia, Leonardo Herrera-Orozco, Research Group in Estuaries and Mangroves of Colombian Pacific, Carlos Andrés Satizabal, Research Group in Estuaries and Mangroves of Colombian Pacific, Natalia Uribe-Castañeda, Research Group in Estuaries and Mangroves of Colombian Pacific, ”Environmental Issues of a Marine Protected Area in a Tectonic Estuary in the Tropical Eastern Pacific: Uramba (Malaga Bay Colombia): Context, Biodiversity, Threats and Challenges.”, Journal of Water Resource & Protection. Nov2013, Vol. 5 Issue 11, p1037-1047. 11p., EBSCO)

Threats to Biodiversity Due to the threats that have been rising during the last years, there is a need for the protection of MB’s

biodiversity. The threats include: 1) degradation of marine ecosystems such as beaches, mangroves, estuaries and

rocky shores marked loss of habitat, 2) disruption of bio- logical cycles and decreasing of stocks of fished populations as a consequence of overexploitation or navigation practices and operations of new ports, 3)

sediment resuspension and settlement, 4) pollution: introduction and recycling of toxic pollutants to the

bottom and the water column (waste disposal, hydrocarbons, sewage, mainly by the floating population), 5) ingestion and

accumulation of contaminants by wildlife, 6) increasing water turbidity and decreasing O2 concentration, 7) modification of bathymetry causing changes in circulation, 8) alteration of species diversity and structure of benthic communities, (9) eutrophication processes, finally 10) dredging of channels causing the suspension of sediments in the water column, affecting mainly benthic populations, both adult and larval forms. Additionally, ENSO events (El Niño), the ocean hydrodynamics (waves, currents, tides), the bioerosion of cliffs and beach erosion and accretion are environmental factors with high impact on the bay. The main biological processes affected by these threats are shown in Table 3 where we can see that the marine taxonomic group that presents the major risks of deleterious changes in bioecological processes is fishes, especially those of economic importance. Moreover most affected biological processes are related to reproduction (mating, eggs, larvae, youth and recruitment given the condition nursery of the waters,

ecosystems and bottoms of the bay. Similarly the probability of increased mortality of marine biodiversity affects marine biodiversity.

Alt causes to bio d loss- habitat degradationAMARAL and JABLONSKI in 2005

(ANTÔNIA CECÍLIA Z., Departamento de Zoologia, Instituto de Biologia, Universidade Estadual de Campinas , SÍLVIO, Departamento de Oceanografia, Instituto de Geociências, Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, “Conservation of Marine and Coastal Biodiversity in Brazil.”, Conservation Biology. Jun2005, Vol. 19 Issue 3, p625-631. 7p., EBSCO)

Current Habitat Loss and Present and Future Threats [he greatest threats to marine and coastal biodiversity arc the degradation or alteration of habitats, overexploitation for consumption or ornaments, and introduction of exotic species. Unregulated tourism ¡s especially damaging for coral reefs and calcareous bottom sediments. Pollution,

mainly from pesticides, chemical products, and industrial effluents, is another major destructive force, but it

is difficult to evaluate its extent for lack of understanding of the effects on individual species. The huge quantities of largely untreated organic matter discharged into the oceans, besides wrecking marine environments, constitute a

chronic public health problem. The introduction of exotic species not only causes serious problems for some native species,

but may. in extreme cases, threaten entire ecosystems. the main vectors ¡n the marine environment are ship ballast water, encrustation (fouling), and the importation of species for aquaculture and the aquarium trade. One of a number of serious cases in Brazil is the introduction of Charybdis bellerli, an Indo. Pacific crab of no commercial value, which is prejudicial to the fishery of the corresponding native species in the state of Bahia. it has already spread to the states of Rio de Janeiro and So Paulo (Tavarcs & Mendonça 2004). Isog. nomon bicolor, an intertidal indo-Pacifk bivalve moUusc, has been reported along the coast from Babia to Santa Catarina (Fernandes et ai. 2004). Toxic algae native to other parts of the

world have also been found. Mostly dinoflagcUates. they can be toxic and cause serious problems in areas where oysters and mussels are cultivated (Procnça & Fernandes 2004).

All of humanity is degrading biodiversity via pollutionStendera et al 2012 (Sonja, Institute of Biology, Applied Zoology/Hydrobiology, University Duisburg Essen, R. Adrian, Department of Shallow Lakes and Lowland Rivers, Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries, N. Bonada, Grup de Recerca Freshwater Ecology and Management, M. Cañedo-Argüelles, Grup de Recerca Freshwater Ecology and Management, B. Hugueny, UMR BOREA, Département Milieux et Peuplements Aquatiques, K. Januschke, Institute of Biology, Applied Zoology/Hydrobiology, University Duisburg Essen, F. Pletterbauer, Institute of Hydrobiology and Aquatic Ecosystem Management (IHG), University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences,Vienna, D. Hering, Institute of Biology, Applied Zoology/Hydrobiology, University Duisburg Essen, “Drivers and stressors of freshwater biodiversity patterns across different ecosystems and scales: a review.”, Hydrobiologia. Oct2012, Vol. 696 Issue 1, p1-28. 28p, EBSCO)

Marine biodiversity loss is driven by five proximate causes that are driven, in turn, by five ultimate causes. Of course, these categorizations are especially useful because humans’ fingers generally come in fives, thereby having given us, over evolutionary time, a useful mnemonic for remembering lists with as many as five items (seldom more). But our categorizations are not the only useful

ways to think of threats. Each of them is itself an agglomeration. For example, marine pollution includes pollution from myriad toxic substances, from excessive nutrients, from many kinds of solid wastes such as plastic bottles and discarded fishing gear, and from various sources, frequencies, and amplitudes of noise. Indeed,

with more than 190 countries worldwide, one could also say with some justification that there are more than 190 threats to marine biodiversity or, for that matter, 6,371,282,811 (the human population as of this writing). Lacking the

ability to remember all of those, there is considerable utility in sticking with the S + S list of threats. The proximate threats to marine biodiversity include: 1. Overexploitation 2. Physical alteration 3. Pollution 4. Alien species S. Climate change And these are driven, in turn, by these ultimate threats: 1. Overpopulation 2. Excessive resource consumption 3. Insufficient understanding 4. Undervaluing S. Inadequate institutions

Climate Change/TourismMultiple Bio D alt causes – climate change and tourismde La Fayette 2009

(Louise Angélique, Visiting Professor, Maritime Institute, University of Greenwich, UK, “A New Regime for the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Marine Biodiversity and Genetic Resources Beyond the Limits of National Jurisdiction.”, International Journal of Marine & Coastal Law. Jun2009, Vol. 24 Issue 2, p221-280. 60p., EBSCO)

Pressures and Threats In recent years. it has become increasingly clear that marine biodiversity is faced with numerous threats to its continued existence, at least in its current form and infinite variety. By the end of the 20th century. the situation had already reached a crisis point. The threats and pressures faced by marine bio diversity include: fishing, climate change. pollution from various sources, ocean dumping. habitat destruction, ocean

acidification, anthropogenic underwater noise, the introduction of alien species. potential mineral exploitation. marine debris, carbon sequestration. geo-engineering, pipelines and cables, tourism, bio prospecting and MSR. All of these of course will have an impact on the genetic resources contained in the marine organisms affected. As will be explained below, a fairly Large number of legally binding instruments.

recommendations and political commitments addressing these anthropogenic stresses already exist. However, some stresses, while

covered by general obligations to protect the environment and biodiversity, have not yet been addressed by detailed

regulations that are legally binding at the global level. These include: MSR, bio prospecting, noise, underwater cables and pipe lines, and tourism.

UrbanizationAlt cause- habitat destruction from urbanizationDanovaro and Pusceddu in 2007

(R, Dipartimento Scienze del Mare, Università Politecnica delle Marche, Ancona, Italy and A, Dipartimento Scienze del Mare, Università Politecnica delle Marche, Ancona, Italy, “Ecomanagement of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in the Mediterranean Sea: concerns and strategies.”, Chemistry & Ecology. Oct2007, Vol. 23 Issue 5, p347-360. 14p, EBSCO)

3.1 Habitat destruction Habitat destruction is the most evident process along all Mediterranean coastal areas. The human impact on biodiversity is largely due to the increasing utilization of the shore. This results in a series of

factors that modify the characteristics of the environments from different points of view. Besides the introduction of several kinds of contaminants and pollutants (discussed below) the progressive urbanization has determined the increased inputs of nutrients with evident consequences on eutrophication processes. The discharge of large amounts of inert material has modified the reduction in the light penetration with,

among others, consequences in the distribution and extent of the Mediterranean seagrass meadows of Posidonia

oceanica. This seagrass shows the highest polychaetes diversity among Mediterranean coastal soft bottoms 1471- Where these effects are acute, as in the Adriatic Sea, such seagrass meadows have completely disappeared with the consequent impoverishment of the local biodiversity (see below). Besides urbanization processes. the rapid expansion of aquaculture activities mainly along the Italian and Greek coasts has induced a general concern on the effects on some key parameters potentially affecting benthic biodiversity. Recent studies have

recently demonstrated that fish and mussel farming might induce a strong decline of the density and diversity of the meiofaunal assemblages inhabiting the farm-sediments [48, 49J. The creation of such strongly modified sediments implies strong habitat changes in areas (bays. inlets and ponds) generally characterized by large habitat

Solvency

Catch Shares Don’t Work

Wrong MethodCatch Shares and Quotas will never solve – they focus on extraction rather than conservation Safina 13, Safina, Carl, founding president of the Blue Ocean Institute and writes extensively on the changing oceans. "A Future for U.S. Fisheries." Issues in Science and Technology. University of Texas at Dallas, 27 Nov. 2013. http://issues.org/25-4/safina-4/ Web. 01 July 2014. CS

As a key problem, most management efforts today are based primarily on catch quotas that regulate how much fishers can harvest of a particular species in some set period, perhaps a season or a year. The problem is that quotas are set according to estimates of how much of the resource can be taken out of the ocean, rather than on how much should be left in. This may sound like two sides of the same coin, but in practice the emphasis on extraction creates a continual bias on the part of fisheries agencies and unrealistic short-term expectations among fishers. For example, a basic tenet of these approaches is that a virgin fish population should be reduced by about two-thirds to make it more “productive.” But this notion is belied in the real world, where it has been proven that larger breeding populations are more productive . The failure of this approach is readily apparent. The Sustainable Fisheries Act of 1996, reaffirmed by Congress in 2006, states that fish populations may not be fished down below about one-third of their estimated virgin biomass . It also states that in cases where fish stocks already have been pushed below that level, they must be restored (in

most cases) to that level within a decade. On paper, this act looked good. (Full disclosure: I drafted the quantitative overfishing and

recovery goals and triggers mandated by the act.) Unfortunately, the NMFS wrote implementing regulations interpreting the mandates as meaning that overfishing could continue for some time before rebuilding was required. This too-liberal interpretation blurred the concept and delayed benefits. In its worst cases, it acknowledged that fish populations must be rebuilt in a decade but said that overfishing could continue in the meantime. Clearly, the nation needs to take a different approach, based solidly on science. As a

foundation, regulatory and management agencies must move from basing their actions on “how much can we take?” to concentrating on “how much must we leave?” The goal must be keeping target fish populations and associated living communities functioning, with all components being highly productive and resilient. The nation must confront another reality as well. So many fisheries are so depleted that the only way to restore them will be to change the basic posture of regulations and management programs to one of recovery. Most fish populations could recover within a decade, even with some commercial fishing. But continuing to bump along at today’s depleted levels robs fishing families and communities of income and risks resource collapse.

No Incentives/EnforcementCatch Shares will not provide incentives for sustainable practices – fisherman will still cut corners to increase profitDoremas et al. 12, Doremus, Holly, James H. House, and Hiram H. Hurd, Professor of Environmental Regulation, University of California, Berkeley and Member-Scholar, Center for Progressive Reform . Why International Catch Shares Won’t Save Ocean Biodiversity. LOSI-KIOST Conference. UC Berkeley–Korea Institute of Ocean Science and Technology Conference, May 2012. Web. 3 July 2014. CS

Conceptually, the position that property rights will increase incentives for stewardship is sometimes, but

not always, compelling. If a stock is highly valuable but slow to reproduce, or if there is substantial risk that

the future will reduce demand for the product, it will be economically rational for property rights holders to deliberately court a “boom-bust” cycle, or even to knowingly extirpate a stock.66 Without an effective regulatory backstop, quota holders may also be tempted to “high-grade,” discarding less valuable (generally smaller) fish in order to fill their quota with the most marketable specimens.67 Finally,

catch shares, like other cap-and-trade allocations but unlike property rights in land, typically are not guaranteed to be permanent.68 To the extent that the issuer retains the prerogative to reduce or withdraw shares without compensation, catch shares will not provide firm incentives for sustainable practices.6

Catch Shares don’t solve – doesn’t provide incentives for preservationDoremas et al. 12, Doremus, Holly, James H. House, and Hiram H. Hurd, Professor of Environmental Regulation, University of California, Berkeley and Member-Scholar, Center for Progressive Reform . Why International Catch Shares Won’t Save Ocean Biodiversity. LOSI-KIOST Conference. UC Berkeley–Korea Institute of Ocean Science and Technology Conference, May 2012. Web. 3 July 2014. CS

There is also indirect evidence that catch shares reduce pressure on target species. The National Research Council, in a landmark 1999 study on individual fishing quotas, found that catch share fisheries were less likely to exceed the regulatory TAC,75 presumably because fishing can be carried out more carefully and over a greater period of time. On the other hand, there is also evidence of “high-grading” in some fisheries.76 There is little evidence on the question of whether catch share approaches affect stewardship of non-target resources. There are theoretical reasons both for optimism

—because catch shares reduce economic incentives for wasteful practices, including some that increase bycatch—and for skepticism—because catch shares do nothing to produce a long-term profit incentive for preservation of resources that are not marketable. What evidence there is suggests that the answer is context-specific. In some cases, catch share fisheries seem roughly equivalent to those managed by conventional regulation in terms of bycatch and discards.77 On the positive side of the ledger, in the Alaska halibut fishery, the elimination of derby fishing by an individual quota approach seems to have sharply decreased “ghost fishing” by lost or abandoned gear.78 On the negative side, environmentalists have complained that Alaska pollock quota holders have shown little concern for the status of the endangered Steller sea lion.79

IFQS are empirically not enforced—pacific sablefish provesKatsaros 2014 < Andrew, U.S. Department of Commerce Office of Inspector General Office of Audit and Evaluation, NATIONAL OCEANIC AND ATMOSPHERIC ADMINISTRATION Review of NOAA Catch Share Programs FINAL REPORT NO. OIG-14-019-I > During our documentation of NOAA’s controls over landing overages, we found instances where shareholders landed more than their annual allocations allowed. Five of the six programs we reviewed had adequate procedures in place to ensure that, when overages occurred, shareholders had acquired additional allocation, had allocation withheld in the subsequent

fishing season, or were referred to NOAA’s Office of Law Enforcement (OLE). For example, the Gulf of Mexico Red Snapper IFQ program requires that commercial vessels make a landing notification 3–12 hours in advance of unloading their catch. Vessel operators provide the vessel name, landing location, dealer’s name, time of landing, and estimated pounds landed. The NMFS Southeast Region’s IFQ online system then identifies whether the vessel’s remaining annual allocation is sufficient to cover the pounds landed by the vessel. NMFS OLE and IFQ support staff receive an email message generated by the IFQ online system indicating whether the vessel has sufficient allocation to cover the amount landed. IFQ shareholders can legally exceed, by up to 10 percent, the shareholder’s remaining allocation on the last fishing trip of the

year, but any overage is subtracted from the shareholder’s allocation at the start of the next fishing year. By contrast, we found that the Pacific Sablefish Permit Stacking IFQ program does not have adequate data, and NOAA is not monitoring to determine whether individual permits are exceeding their allowed landings. As a result, NOAA is not enforcing the limitation on landings per individual permit and individual permits have exceeded their allowed landings without corrective action. The Pacific Sablefish program tracks landings through paper-based fish tickets collected by state agencies in Washington, Oregon, and California, and subsequently submitted to the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission (PSMFC). The commission, in turn, enters the fish

tickets into the Pacific Fisheries Information Network (PacFIN), to which NOAA then has access. The three states also enter the fish tickets into systems for their own tracking, and quality assurance reviews are performed at the state agencies and PSMFC. As a result of this process, NOAA estimates that it can take roughly 2–4 months after a landing occurs to have access to the data for a specific landing or for total landings under an individual permit. NOAA currently does not monitor Pacific Sablefish landings on an individual permit basis during a fishing season. Instead, it only monitors landings for the entire fishery as a whole. However, the data being monitored in-season is based on a

combination of fish tickets and estimates, due to the inability to obtain real-time landings data. There are several problems with this system. First, it is paper-based and thus subject to compromise and the multiple possibilities of error associated with any manual process, such as lost or destroyed tickets or typographical errors. Second, the use of in-season estimates does not provide NOAA with sufficient evidence to enforce landing overage violations. Third, NOAA does not review landings data after a fishing season for this particular program to determine whether individual permits have exceeded their allowed landings. As a result, NOAA does not have sufficient controls to monitor landings overages for the Pacific Sablefish. A summary of landings overages for the Pacific Sablefish is provided in table 2

Data CookingOver half of the studies claiming the benefits of catch shares were paid for by environmental groups—any evidence of catch shares being good is most likely a product of these skewed statistics Rust 13 (Suzanne, “Catch shares leave fishermen reeling”, The Bay Citizen, https://www.baycitizen.org/news/environment/system-turns-us-fishing-rights-into-commodity-sque/)

Since 2000, 47 studies have looked at environmental effects of catch shares. Slightly more than half, 24, found no effect or negative effects, including the four most comprehensive and recent studies, a review of the research shows. The Center

for Investigative Reporting found that the seafood industry and the environmental groups advancing the system paid for 11 of the 23 studies that praised catch shares. In six cases, funding could not be established. Roughly 2 out of 3 favorable studies with clear funding sources were paid for by an industry that has spent more than $200 million promoting the system. Five independent government studies have found positive effects from the system. One of the most

notable and widely cited studies, a 2008 article in the journal Science by University of California, Santa Barbara researchers, showed that in fisheries where catch shares had been implemented, the system could halt and even reverse fishery collapse. That study, according to both the Environmental Defense Fund and a researcher at UC Santa Barbara, was largely paid for with a $5 million grant from the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation as part of a partnership between the university and the environmental group . A spokeswoman for the foundation

said the grant money was given only to the university and not the environmental organization. With the study in hand, the Environmental Defense Fund has attempted to advance the cause. In a letter to the TED foundation, an Environmental Defense Fund

vice president outlined the organization’s partnership with UC Santa Barbara and its involvement in the research, noting that the study has helped contribute to “a campaign to convert the majority of U.S., Canadian

and Latin American fisheries to catch shares.” “In a nutshell, the effort was our attempt to rescue West Coast fisheries from the failures of the broken regulatory system,” said John Mimikakis, a spokesman for the Environmental Defense Fund. Another study, published in 2012 in the journal Marine Policy, also funded by the Environmental Defense Fund, showed that catch shares improved environmental and economic conditions in fisheries where the system had been established. The Environmental Defense Fund did not respond to questions about the study’s cost. “I don't understand why some of my colleagues seem to be turning to catch shares as the solution or the only alternative to open access,” said Mark Spalding, president of The Ocean Foundation, an environmental advocacy group based in Washington, D.C. “But anytime we get into silver bullet solutions, we’re making a mistake.”

Catch Shares Not Key

Alt MethodsCatch shares aren’t key - license limitations and permit buyback programs solve overfishing and sustainability- they decrease the number of boats that have access to the fish. National Marine Fisheries Service. 2014. Fisheries Economics of the United States, 2012. U.S. Dept. Commerce, NOAA, Tech. Memo. NMFS-F/SPO-137, 175p. Available at: https://www.st.nmfs.noaa.gov/st5/publication/index.html.

Vessel or permit buyback programs are another market-based tool used by fishery managers. Under these programs, fishing vessels or permits are purchased by the government to permanently decrease the number of participants in the fishery to ease fishing-related pressure on marine resources. To date, there have been ten buyback programs instituted nationwide. The cost of seven1 of these buyback programs totaled of $397 million. Eighty-five percent of this total cost was funded by loans from the federal government that will be repaid by the commercial fishing industry. License limitation programs, also known as limited entry programs, are another management tool available to fishery managers. In these programs, the number of fishing vessels allowed to harvest a specific fish stock or stock complex is limited to a fishermen or vessels with permission to fish. Unlike catch share programs, license limitation programs have been implemented for almost all federally-managed commercial fisheries and have been implemented in every region except the Caribbean.

Other Nations Overfishing

No solvency- EU countries like France and Spain are overfishing now and will continueCastle 2007 <Stephen castle, Ny times reporter, Ny times, France, Italy and 5 other European countries threatened for overfishing tuna, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/26/world/europe/26iht-tuna.4.7646491.html?_r=0>

Seven European countries including France and Italy were threatened with legal action over lax fisheries controls Wednesday as part of new efforts to prevent the collapse of bluefin tuna from overfishing.Driven by the high prices from the Japanese sushi market, European fishermen have already caught their entire quota of 16,779.5 tons of bluefin tuna for 2007 and last week were ordered to stop fishing until next year.The European Commission said Wednesday that it intended to get tough with the countries that fail to police their national fishing fleets. In a statement it said that "high rates of undeclared overfishing have been singled out as a key cause of the decline of the stock."Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Malta, Portugal and Spain were sent legal letters for failing to send official data on catches to the commission. France and Italy received the same warning though theirs also referred to shortcomings in their controls. If their answers fail to satisfy the European Commission, the countries can be taken to the European Court of Justice, the European Union's highest court.Stocks have been devastated by the efficiency of modern fishing techniques, with which tuna are caught and then dragged in nets to cages where they are fattened for several months to ensure maximum weight.Xavier Pastor, an executive director of Oceana, an international marine conservation organization, said the commission's decision was welcome though overdue."This is not the first time that countries like France and Italy ignore the rules, overfish their allocated quota and then subsequently fail to accurately report their catches," he said.

Catch Shares = Worse

OverfishingCatch shares don’t work, in fact they exacerbate the problemMoore ’13 (Meredith Moore, ecologist/environmentalist, Why Catch Shares Can’t Save the Oceans, Food and Water Watch, https://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/blogs/why-catch-shares-cant-save-the-oceans/, accessed: 6/30/14 GA)

A recent blog at Mother Jones asks the question, “Can a fish-sharing program save the oceans?” Since the program in question is catch shares, the answer is, “No.” You’re probably asking the next obvious question: why? Catch shares really do look artificially positive until you look at the

whole picture. Catch shares programs privatize our nation’s fisheries, divvying out the privilege of catching fish to a limited number of individuals, and letting them trade, sell, and lease these rights in unregulated, closed markets. In the process, hundreds to thousands of smaller-scale fishermen are cut out of the industry entirely. What we end up with is a sharecropper system, which was well-described in a Seattle Weekly

feature on one of the halibut and sablefish catch shares programs in the North Pacific. This catch shares program, which has been in place since 1995, has devolved into a system where boat captains compete against each other to offer the latest in at-sea entertainment and luxury to the wealthy owners of those catch shares, just so they can get some fraction of the profits for themselves and their crew . Many of those catch shares owners have never baited a hook in their lives. Catch shares are thus essentially an economic management system rather than an environmental one, but the claims made about how catch shares can also ensure sustainability are exaggerated and poorly supported. All catch share programs operate under a catch limit, which sets the maximum number of fish of that species or species group that can be caught in a fishing year. This is really the only sustainability measure inherent in a catch shares program, and these limits can and have been set independently of catch shares management in numerous fisheries. In fact, one of the co-authors of the 2008 study published in Science that the Mother Jones blog cites as finding catch shares as “highly effective” in recovering fishery sustainability has cautioned against interpreting their results that way, as the study was not sufficient to establish a cause and effect relationship between catch shares and fishery health. This was,

in part, due to a failure to distinguish between the influence of setting catch limits and implementing catch shares. Once we distinguish between catch limits and catch shares, the only essential conservation idea behind catch shares is “kick a bunch of fishermen out and let the remaining, wealthy few handle the sustainability for us.” Implementing catch shares typically removes other measures to protect vulnerable spawning areas and other critical fish populations, and their rigidity fails to

respond to both natural and dramatic stock fluctuations. And catch shares have been shown to increase bycatch and discard issues in fisheries. A study out just this week in PNAS confirms what we’ve intuitively known for a long time – saving the fish is going to be a lot more complicated than just not catching some of them. Climate change, ocean acidification, pollution, expanding human competition for ocean resources, and natural changes in oceanic states are all going to increase the pressure on our fisheries. And the government’s plan to abdicate responsibility for creating sustainable fisheries by ceding all their authority to closed, shadowy private markets is possibly the worst possible situation we could be in to tackle those enormous problems.

Small vs Large Fisheries Catch Shares are bad – heighten disputes between large and small fisheries, they don’t change psychological state of the fisherman, and they are morally unacceptableDoremas et al. 12, Doremus, Holly, James H. House, and Hiram H. Hurd, Professor of Environmental Regulation, University of California, Berkeley and Member-Scholar, Center for Progressive Reform . Why International Catch Shares Won’t Save Ocean Biodiversity. LOSI-KIOST Conference. UC Berkeley–Korea Institute of Ocean Science and Technology Conference, May 2012. Web. 3 July 2014. CS

There are at least three reasons why catch share approaches do not necessarily reduce conflict over TACs.

One is that fishery participants might have a higher discount rate than regulators, which would mean that fishers are, rationally, more interested in short- than long-term gains. That could be true if the fishers believe that short-term profits can be invested profitably,89 that if the current fishery collapses there will always be another one to which they can turn, or that their catch shares are likely to be limited or revoked in the future. Another possible explanation is psychological. In general, people are inclined to see the world as they would like it to be, interpreting equivocal or conflicting evidence in the way that most favors their interests.90 Fishers, therefore, will not necessarily accept that fisheries are declining just because scientists or regulators say they are. Holders of catch shares who genuinely believe their target species are not overfished will rationally push for higher TAC levels even if they seek a sustainable outcome. Catch share and other property rights approaches also create conflict over allocation of rights. In an open access fishery, no allocation decisions are required. Anyone who wants to can participate

in the fishery; success is determined by the skill or luck of the fishers. Property rights strategies, by contrast, require political decisions about who will have access at what cost. Because industry participants are deeply invested in the outcome of these allocation decisions, they frequently become the subject of high-stakes political battles.91 Furthermore, participants with an emotional or cultural stake in the industry

involved often demand limits on trading to protect the initial rights allocation.92 Small fishing enterprises, for example, may want assurances that large firms will not be able to buy up the entire quota. But demand for trading limits can go well beyond market share concerns. One of the economic arguments for tradable permits is that they allow environmentalists who want resources left unharvested or unsullied to put their money where their mouths are by buying and retiring use rights. Industry participants, however, tend to resist opening the market to conservation interests. Property rights enthusiasts frequently point out that the U.S. acid rain market includes annual auctions in which environmental groups can purchase SO2 emission allowances for the purpose of retiring them.93 It’s important to realize, though, that the SO2 market is the exception rather than the rule. Even in that market, only a very small proportion of allowances are auctioned,94 and the environmental benefits of conservation purchases have been negligible.95 In other contexts, industry participants have fiercely resisted the attempts of conservation interests to enter a resource allocation market. In the United States, for example, the federal government offers permits to graze livestock on federal lands. Conservationists seeking to acquire permits in ecologically sensitive locations for the purpose of removing livestock have come up against a statutory framework that does not allow them to do so.96 A similar dynamic has played out in other cap-and-trade contexts, where “[r]ather than quietly exiting production, some lower valued users resist trading their rights, often through political action seeking to preserve or erect barriers to free entitlement trading.”97 This is especially likely when, as is the case with fisheries, participants attach emotional or cultural, as well as monetary, value to the behavior in question.98 Another potential source of conflict is disagreement about the morality of the permitted behavior, or about the message that commodifying the behavior may send. One objection to trading of air pollution allowances in the United States has been that “turning pollution into a commodity to be bought and sold removes the moral stigma that is properly associated with it.”99 That concern has been answered primarily by pointing out that the “cap” in “cap-and-trade” limits the amount of pollution just as more traditional regulatory approaches do, and by efforts to clarify the costs cap-and-trade systems impose on heavy polluters.100 Public opinion has not crystallized around strong moral objections to trading in pollution rights, perhaps because there is general agreement that pollution cannot, as a practical matter, be completely eliminated. The strong moral objection will have real force, though, if a

significant portion of the relevant population views the permitted activity as per se unacceptable.

Most fishing does not carry the same ethical overtones as pollution but, as discussed in more detail below, the recent proposal for tradable whale harvest permits has brought this objection to markets to the fore.101 A related objection,

that tradable permits improperly privatize public resources, has more general force in the fisheries context because of the strong tradition of public ownership of fisheries in many nations. Even if environmentalists are allowed to participate in a resource market, if they regard the rights to a healthy resource as a public entitlement they will object to being expected to pay to ensure that entitlement is respected.102

K LinkCatch shares is a system of faulty ethics that leaves local fishing communities devastated and fishers without jobsRust 13 (Suzanne, “Catch shares leave fishermen reeling”, The Bay Citizen, https://www.baycitizen.org/news/environment/system-turns-us-fishing-rights-into-commodity-sque/)

SAN FRANCISCO – For centuries, men like Larry Collins, a garrulous crab and sole fisherman, were free to harvest the seas. But

sweeping across the globe is a system that slowly and steadily hands over a $400 billion ocean fishing industry to corporations. The system, called catch shares, in most cases favors large fishing fleets, a review

of the systems operating across the United States shows. “We’ve been frozen out,” said Collins, who docks near the Golden

Gate Bridge. “This system has given it all to the big guys.” More and more wild-caught fish species and fishing territories in the United States are managed under catch shares, which work by providing harvesting or access rights to fishermen. These rights – worth tens of billions of dollars in the United States alone – are translated into a percentage, or share, that can then be divided, traded, sold, bought or leveraged for financing, just like any asset. Catch shares have been backed by an alliance of conservative, free-market advocates and environmental groups, some of which have financed scientific studies promoting the merits of

the system, the Center for Investigative Reporting has found. Thousands of jobs have been lost in regions across the United States where catch-share management plans have been implemented, researchers have noted. Click

here to see which regions of the U.S. have catch-share programs. There are 15 catch-share systems in the United States, stretching from the North Pacific’s frigid gray waters along the coast of Alaska and the Aleutian Islands down to the Gulf of Mexico.

More than 3,700 vessels are no longer active in the 10 defined fishing areas that have operated under catch shares since before 2010. That could account for as many as 18,000 lost jobs, according to estimates from researchers who track the fishing industry. Nowhere is that more apparent than in the surf clam fishing fleet of the mid-Atlantic. The region was the first to implement catch shares more than 20 years ago. Since then, the surf clam fleet has declined by more than 60 percent. In 1990, there were 128 boats. Today, there are fewer than 50. “There’s been a lot of consolidation,” said Carolyn Creed, a Rutgers University anthropologist who has studied catch shares in the mid-Atlantic region. “It’s not the frontier like it

used to be. Everything is clean and so businesslike.” Catch shares are part of a larger government-regulated movement that over the past few decades has been turning the country’s natural resources into marketable commodities to be traded, leased and carefully controlled – including the rights to pollute the air, trade and bank endangered species, and sell and distribute water. Canada, the Netherlands and Iceland were the first countries to experiment with the idea of privatizing fisheries in the 1970s. New Zealand made it national policy in the mid-1980s. These fisheries are defined as regions where certain species of fish are harvested. Today, fishery experts estimate there are about 150 major fisheries worldwide managed under a form of rights-based management, including catch shares, which accounts for roughly 10 percent of the world’s commercial marine harvest. Some of the nation’s largest ocean territories are managed under catch shares, including Alaska’s pollock, halibut and sablefish fisheries. Proponents such as the Environmental Defense Fund argue that if a fisherman or seafood company owns a percentage stake, it will take better care of it. They contend it brings economic efficiency to a system in which too many boats are chasing after too few fish. But it’s more than that, promoters say. Because the system brings financial rewards to those who stay in the system, those who remain have more of a stake in seeing the system thrive. “In traditional fisheries management, there are perverse incentives that actually penalize conservation,” said Tom Lalley, a former spokesman for the Environmental Defense Fund, referring to traditional “derby fishing,” in which boats catch as much they can in a certain period of time.

Catch shares, he said, are “about getting the incentives right. It’s about getting them aligned.” Critics, including small fishermen and independent scientists, say the system doesn’t live up to its billing. They note that the nation’s fish stocks have been rebuilding steadily over the past decade with the use of catch limits, but not necessarily catch shares. Congress required catch limits in every fishery by 2011 when it reauthorized the

nation’s fishery law, the Magnuson-Stevens Act, in 2006. Catch limits put a cap on the number of fish that can be harvested in a fishery. By contrast, the catch-share system is a management tool that provides exclusive access to fishing harvesting rights. Catch shares require catch limits, however, and critics of the management tool question whether any positive environmental results are actually the result of effective catch limits – not privatization. “Catch

limits work,” said Lee Crockett, director of federal fisheries policy with the Pew Environment Group. He pointed to the success of the mid-Atlantic flounder fishery, which crashed during the 1980s and 1990s. The fishery, now considered healthy, was rebuilt using an overall catch limit, which included size limits and gear restrictions. Awarding shares in the Pacific actually has benefited trawlers that

contributed to the demise of some fish species such as canary and yelloweye rockfish, records and interviews show. When the catch-share system was implemented in 2011, all shares went to fishermen and fishing companies that exclusively used trawling boats. A decade before, government regulators and environmental groups blamed trawlers for overfishing and environmental destruction that prompted the entire fishery to be shut down. Fishermen like Collins, the San Francisco fisherman, who relied on traps or hook-and-line practices found themselves locked out because the government excluded fishermen who didn’t use trawlers. “Those drag boats, they pull in about 100,000 pounds every week,” Collins said. “I maybe pulled in 200 pounds, and I rarely had any bycatch,” or unwanted fish that are thrown overboard. Collins, along with other fishermen and some small fishing organizations, sued the government over catch shares, arguing that the program unfairly shut out small fishermen. He lost the case in September but is considering an appeal. Squeezed out of the initial allocation, Collins knows he won’t be able to get back in without

having to buy shares from the same fishermen he believes depleted the territory back in the 1990s. “I believe local families should have access to local fish stocks. And there’s a danger that will never happen again,” Collins said.

“If you’re going to privatize the system, give the shares to the community, not the guys driving Mercedes, not the guys who got those Mercedes by destroying the fishery.”