Managing Redundancy in Overexploited Fisheries

Excess capacity in fishing and fish processing characterizes many, if not most, fisheries today. Because the capital and labor employed in fisheries are generally use-specific, their exit is often painfully slow. This paper reviews and catalogs current approaches for facilitating the exit of redundant capital and labor from overexploited fisheries. It begins with an examination of fishery management objectives and the different measures used to achieve these objectives. It then discusses, in the context of the challenges confronting fishery management, the problems surrounding the exit of capital and labor from overexploited fisheries. The paper examines approaches that can be used to facilitate exit from both industrial and artisanal fisheries, citing several relevant case studies as well as the experience of different countries.