Catch shares slow the race to fish

A large-scale treatment–control meta-analysis of US fisheries provides evidence that the implementation of catch shares extend fishing seasons by slowing the race to fish. No catch to sharing fish In fisheries, the competitive race to fish reduces fishing season length, threatens fish stocks and leads to ecological damage, economic waste and safety risks. Catch shares—whereby fishermen, fishing vessels or cooperatives are allocated a portion of the total allowable catch—are thought to slow the race to fish, but evidence to date has been limited to individual fisheries. In this meta-analysis, Martin Smith and colleagues show that the beneficial effect of catch shares on the race to fish holds true across 39 fisheries in the US. They suggest that these findings can inform the current debate over the expansion of market-based regulatory measures, such as catch shares, in fisheries. In fisheries, the tragedy of the commons manifests as a competitive race to fish that compresses fishing seasons, resulting in ecological damage, economic waste, and occupational hazards 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 . Catch shares are hypothesized to halt the race by securing each individual’s right to a portion of the total catch, but there is evidence for this from selected examples only 2 , 9 . Here we systematically analyse natural experiments to test whether catch shares reduce racing in 39 US fisheries. We compare each fishery treated with catch shares to an individually matched control before and after the policy change. We estimate an average policy treatment effect in a pooled model and in a meta-analysis that combines separate estimates for each treatment–control pair. Consistent with the theory that market-based management ends the race to fish, we find strong evidence that catch shares extend fishing seasons. This evidence informs the current debate over expanding the use of market-based regulation to other fisheries.