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The Use of Limited Access Privilege Programs in Mixed-Use Fisheries (2021)

Chapter: 8 Addressing the Impacts of LAPPs in Mixed-Use Fisheries

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Suggested Citation:"8 Addressing the Impacts of LAPPs in Mixed-Use Fisheries." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2021. The Use of Limited Access Privilege Programs in Mixed-Use Fisheries. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26186.
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8

Addressing the Impacts of LAPPs in Mixed-Use Fisheries

This chapter provides a series of recommendations designed to address the economic, social, and ecological impacts of Limited Access Privilege Programs (LAPPs) noted in Chapters 4-7 for the mixed-use fisheries reviewed in this study, as well as for any future LAPPs in mixed-use fisheries. While the committee has prioritized recommendations that pertain specifically to fisheries with multiple sectors (i.e., by addressing intersectoral spillovers), LAPPs in mixed-use fisheries are a special case of LAPPs in general, and hence many of the recommendations have broad applicability. In addition to providing specific policy recommendations, the committee also provides recommendations for how additional data and research, or greater synthesis of existing data and research and stakeholder and community engagement, could enhance the decision-making capacity of the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) and the Councils when designing, establishing, or maintaining a LAPP in a mixed-use fishery.

The first section of this chapter summarizes the nature of the complexities and trade-offs faced by policy makers as they contemplate the design, implementation, or adaptive improvement of a mixed-use fishery LAPP and offers some high-level principles that are foundational to subsequent arguments. Having established this “big picture,” the next section briefly outlines a set of more specific criteria that undergird the recommendations. The committee then recommends potential policy changes that could be implemented by Congress, the NMFS, or individual Councils to mitigate negative impacts, while promoting the positive functioning of the LAPPs considered in this study as well as any future LAPPs that may be considered. Finally, recommendations are provided for data collection, research, and outreach that are important to improve the functioning of existing LAPPs as well as contribute to improved designs of new LAPPs.

SYNOPSIS OF COMMITTEE FINDINGS

Overall, the outcomes of LAPPs in these mixed-use fisheries are similar to experiences in LAPPs that lack mixed-use components. In terms of economic impacts, the committee finds very strong evidence showing that LAPPs mediate the race to fish and strong evidence for increased profitability of the LAPP fisheries. The committee finds some evidence that LAPPs have modestly

Suggested Citation:"8 Addressing the Impacts of LAPPs in Mixed-Use Fisheries." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2021. The Use of Limited Access Privilege Programs in Mixed-Use Fisheries. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26186.
×

reduced economically wasteful overcapacity, but for most LAPPs they find no evidence that associated consolidation has contributed to market power in the quota market; however, stakeholder concerns about fairness and access were central in several of the study fisheries. The committee finds strong evidence of ecological benefits of the individual bluefin quota (IBQ) LAPP. Although they find only weak evidence of very modest ecological benefits of other LAPPs, the committee finds no evidence of ecological harms.

With respect to social impacts, the committee finds strong evidence that LAPPs have led to improvements in safety at sea. They find mixed and largely inconclusive effects of LAPPs on labor with indications that some participants are better off and others are worse off. The committee finds no direct evidence of negative or positive effects of the LAPPs in the study on communities; however, they note a significant lack of data to assess social and community impacts. Many of the potential negative effects of LAPPs on communities that they identify are rooted in studies of different geographies, regional economies, histories of coastal development, and cultures of fishing (e.g., Alaska, Iceland, New Zealand, Newfoundland, and Norway). The disruptiveness of LAPPs in these rural, resource-dependent, and sparsely populated areas could be quite different than in the U.S. Mid-Atlantic, South Atlantic, and the Gulf of Mexico where complex coastal economies are often dominated by tourism and have substantial recreational fishing.

With respect to the mixed-use components of the fisheries in the study, the committee finds no evidence for direct effects of LAPPs on private recreational anglers or recreational for-hire providers. LAPPs plausibly increased the political power of the commercial sector in terms of its allocation claims. The greater accountability of the commercial sector, due to LAPPs, may be leading to pressures to attain greater accountability on the part of the recreational sector. While this is speculative, the greater political power of the commercial sector is a reasonable observation. However, given the particular history of power relations of the fisheries in the study, this change may result in greater parity in the political power of recreational versus commercial stakeholders in the Council process. The committee notes that studies of the political and power dimensions of fishery management systems, taking into account wide diversity within sectors, is necessary to properly assess these possible shifts. Taken as a whole, the evidence base in the committee’s study of mixed-use LAPPs affirms a number of positive outcomes cataloged elsewhere in the literature while failing to provide a clear picture of many of the associated negative outcomes. Nevertheless, substantial data shortages limit the committee’s ability to robustly exclude the potential for some negative social and community effects. The committee’s recommendations for the knowledge base and other matters are aimed at improving a management system that in many respects appears to be working well.

CONTEXT FOR RECOMMENDATIONS

Before providing specific recommendations, it is important to first address some persistent shortcomings in the overall conceptualization and ongoing policy discourse surrounding LAPPs, both at the level of individual Councils as well as in the national conversation, whether or not they are in mixed-use fisheries. Differences in the conceptual models that are often used to understand and discuss LAPPs within policy processes may promote divergent and often overly simplified narratives about the scope of their effects and their appropriate role within fishery management. Full agreement on these conceptual models is not to be expected given the heterogeneous impacts of LAPPs across stakeholders and divergent normative stances on the proper functioning of fishery systems. Nevertheless, grounding the policy discourse in some shared understandings may help to support a more constructive, creative, and less acrimonious policy process, as well as promote outcomes that foster economic prosperity for fishers and fishing communities, promote social equity,

Suggested Citation:"8 Addressing the Impacts of LAPPs in Mixed-Use Fisheries." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2021. The Use of Limited Access Privilege Programs in Mixed-Use Fisheries. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26186.
×

and ensure sustainable fisheries. Each of the specific recommendations is grounded in the following overarching principles.

First, it is important to keep in mind that LAPPs are fundamentally economically targeted policy instruments, with complex and potentially wide-ranging social and economic effects. As summarized in Chapter 4, the vessel-level accountability and associated enforcement mechanisms associated with LAPPs can make them unusually effective relative to traditional input controls in achieving management targets. However, there is abundant global evidence from scientifically managed fisheries that LAPPs, while very helpful for achieving ecologically sustainable fisheries, are not necessary for this end. Therefore, the dominant justifications for and concerns with LAPPs lie in the social and economic sphere. This reality has implications for the practice of fishery management when focusing on LAPPs and similar policies. The conceptual frameworks used to understand fisheries system states and feedbacks, and to organize policy, may be constrained by the deference to National Standard 1 and case law supporting the priority of biological conservation. These frameworks should also go beyond recognizing humans as an important component of marine ecosystems (as seen in many instantiations of ecosystem-based fisheries management at the Council level) to explicitly place people at the center of these systems. Doing so would not only recognize the role of human values and behavior as the primary leverage points of “fisheries management” (Fulton et al., 2011) but also acknowledge the importance of individual and collective human goals, welfare, and perceptions as central normative dimensions of fisheries policy. While aspects of LAPP design may have repercussions within the traditional biological confines of fisheries management, for the most part LAPPs and their alternatives are a tool of social and economic policy. Elevating the role of human actors and institutions within the management system may be facilitated by adoption of new interdisciplinary and integrated frameworks, such as socioecological systems (Ostrom, 2009). However, continued organizational and cultural change to foster such interdisciplinarity and integration within the Councils and the NMFS, backed by commensurate funding, is also needed.

Second, it is important for the fishery management community, including managers and scientists, to more openly and explicitly acknowledge and address trade-offs in the objectives of LAPPs. As noted in previous chapters, the Councils often specify a large number of social, economic, and ecological objectives when designing a LAPP, but only as they relate to the commercial sector for which the program is implemented. Moreover, each of these goals is often individually sensible, but collectively some goals cannot be simultaneously achieved to their fullest extent. For example, goals of enhancing efficiency, lengthening seasons, and reducing capacity may be complementary, but may be very difficult to achieve if another objective of the LAPP is also to preserve historic geographic patterns of fisheries employment or landings. Indeed, some objectives may be mutually exclusive (as can be the achievement of all 10 National Standards for the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act [the MSA]). Rather than maintaining a fiction that all LAPP objectives are equally important and achievable, proactive work to identify trade-offs where they exist and provide some guidance for how to evaluate and prioritize conflicting objectives in a way that fosters transparency and stakeholder confidence by the Councils would be beneficial. Failure to do so does not avoid the trade-offs; rather it “kicks the can” to future Councils to arbitrate these trade-offs, raising the risk that entrenched power dynamics (constrained by the legal process) have undue influence over outcomes. Failure to anticipate these complexities at the outset of a LAPP can engender considerable acrimony and a case of “buyers’ remorse” in the adoption of particular LAPP mechanisms.

Third, while trade-offs in objectives are to be expected, there may be cases where the perceptions of the steepness of these trade-offs among managers and many stakeholders may be far more exaggerated than is truly the case. These perceptions are likely to arise when potentially viable policy options are explicitly or implicitly removed from consideration, thereby constraining the policy process and removing creative options that may minimize trade-offs or even allow for

Suggested Citation:"8 Addressing the Impacts of LAPPs in Mixed-Use Fisheries." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2021. The Use of Limited Access Privilege Programs in Mixed-Use Fisheries. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26186.
×

“win-win” outcomes. In some cases these constraints are formally entrenched and would require high-level legal action to address (e.g., the MSA’s prohibition on levying royalties on quota shares ([1853a(e)(2) and 1885(h)(5)(B)] or that the Councils no longer have to have equal commercial and recreational representation). In other cases the constraints may be informal, lying in real or imagined political constraints or reflecting a risk-averse bureaucratic dependence on the templates embodied in previous policies. In the latter case, it is incumbent on the Councils and the NMFS to resist these tendencies, while stakeholder groups and nongovernmental organizations can play an important role as “policy entrepreneurs” (Anderson and Parker, 2013) to provide bottom-up suggestions for innovative approaches and encourage policy experimentation. It is also the case that stakeholders are not simply, or should not simply, be categorized or perceived as commercial versus recreational as some individuals participate in both and some sectors are more integrated, especially in fishing-based communities.

An example that is replicated across most LAPPs is the tension between the goals of fostering economic efficiency and the achievement of equitable outcomes for members of fishing communities. In theory the wealth-maximizing incentives under LAPPs generate the potential in many settings for all members of the community to be better off, or at least no worse off, than under the previous management—at least in a material sense. However, the ubiquitous practice of grandfathering allocation exclusively to vessel owners inherently concentrates wealth in the first generation of capital owners. While grandfathering in overcapitalized fisheries may be justified because a reduction in fleet size is the goal, or based on pragmatic political grounds, fairness to those who developed a fishery, and efforts to retain fishing opportunities in dependent communities—alternative approaches exist to distribute benefits to a broader group of stakeholders. A partial accounting might include auctions or rent recovery; separate allocations to captains, crews, or shoreside sectors (e.g., processors); or the explicit allocation of quota to community groups (i.e., community development quota) or to quota pools for new entrants (Ropicki et al., 2018). In fact, some programs have redistributed catch shares from forfeitures and when annual catch limits are increased.

While none of the aforementioned approaches is a panacea for the simultaneous achievement of economic and social objectives, their exclusion in favor of the dominant practice of grandfathering of most quota to capital owners with no rent recovery limits the ability for a broader group of stakeholders to have a shared stake in the economic profitability and dynamism of the fishery, exacerbating the trade-off between efficiency and distributional objectives and contributing to “us versus them” dynamics in the Council process. Indeed, the very perception by noncapital stakeholders that no portion of the economic benefits of a LAPP will flow to them may influence the ways social equity objectives are defined and expressed in the policy process. Where opportunities for mutual benefit are forestalled, it is only natural for social objectives to be redefined in defensive and backward-looking terms (e.g., “preserving historic patterns”). However, these objectives are far more likely to be inconsistent with the expressed economic objectives of the LAPP, exacerbating the tendency toward conflicting objectives.

Finally, while improved policy design may help to mitigate some of the social impacts of LAPPs and foster less acrimony in the Council process, it is important to acknowledge that LAPPs are likely to remain controversial among a number of stakeholders because they change both the economic and social aspects of fisheries, with differing impacts within a community. This process of transition can be unsettling to many members of fishing communities in ways that extend beyond material impacts, creating spillovers to the nature of work and a way of life for captains, crews, and participants in fisheries-dependent sectors (Pinkerton, 2014, 2015; Ringer et al., 2018; Steiner et al., 2018). A well-defined communications and engagement strategy specifically for such communities may be warranted for those affected by current LAPPs and as new LAPPs are considered.

Some stakeholders, including recreational fishers in mixed-use fisheries, may also oppose LAPPs due to fundamental philosophical positions, such as objections to privatization of public

Suggested Citation:"8 Addressing the Impacts of LAPPs in Mixed-Use Fisheries." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2021. The Use of Limited Access Privilege Programs in Mixed-Use Fisheries. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26186.
×

trust resources (even though they are revocable privileges and not property rights) or the free grandfathering of quota to commercial interests (if privileges are distributed for free). These objections may even undermine seemingly mutually beneficial trading of quota between recreational and commercial fishers (Chan et al., 2018), especially if trading markets are decentralized. As with any large-scale management change, LAPPs are not value neutral, even if only applied to one sector of a fishery; rather, they embody a prioritization of economic efficiency and safety at sea. Creative policy making, grounded in a co-management approach, may help to weaken dichotomies between efficiency goals in some sectors and other normative priorities, but philosophical objections may remain for some stakeholders.

CRITERIA FOR EVALUATION

In choosing the impacts to address, and in crafting recommendations for possible mitigation strategies for existing LAPPs and for the design of future LAPPs in mixed-use fisheries, the committee relied on the following criteria:

  • Magnitude: Is the LAPP impact in question of sufficiently large magnitude as to call for a potential policy response?
  • Certainty: Is the impact in question sufficiently linked to the LAPP itself, as opposed to other ongoing developments in the fishery or its broader socioecological context, to suggest that LAPP-focused remedies could mitigate the impact?
  • Efficacy: Are legal or policy approaches available that could effectively mitigate the negative impact and improve the functionality of the LAPP as defined by its social, economic, and ecological objectives?
  • Side effects: What is the likelihood that the policy “cure” may create significant spillovers or side effects that could substantially undermine the value of the LAPP-based mitigation?
  • Feasibility: Given the legal framework and policies underlying the LAPP, are the policies to mitigate negative impacts technically, institutionally, and politically feasible?

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR EXISTING AND FUTURE LAPPs

Part A: Impacts to Recreational Stakeholders

As noted in Chapter 6 there is weak evidence for direct spillovers, either positive or negative, to recreational stakeholders as a result of the establishment of a commercial LAPP in a mixed-use fishery. While several theoretical pathways have been identified by which such spillovers might exist, the weight of evidence and structure of causal links between recreational and commercial fishing provide little evidence for direct impacts. There are, however, two possible areas of indirect impact that deserve some consideration from regulators.

Leakage

The implementation of LAPPs in the commercial component of a mixed-use fishery may lead to an indirect shifting of fishing effort out of the commercial sector into the recreational sector through the repurposing of commercial fishing vessels for recreational for-hire fishing. The tendency for this cross-sector “leakage” will depend on the attractiveness of for-hire fishing in terms of its economic return and quality of life characteristics to displaced commercial vessel owners as well as the regulatory barriers to entry in place for the for-hire sector.

Suggested Citation:"8 Addressing the Impacts of LAPPs in Mixed-Use Fisheries." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2021. The Use of Limited Access Privilege Programs in Mixed-Use Fisheries. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26186.
×

In many cases, as in Gulf of Mexico reef fish, limited entry programs block a direct increase in vessel capacity within the for-hire sector from the implementation of a commercial LAPP. However, as noted in Chapter 6, the high value ascribed to landings by some recreational anglers has led to the phenomenon of “catch share experience” trips in which active vessels under the commercial LAPP bring on passengers from the general public that operate as unpaid crew for the trip while paying for the experience through the purchase of the catch from a dealer. These “dude trips” represent a distinct form of leakage, whereby some harvest that would otherwise be destined for commercial markets is instead reallocated toward ostensibly recreational harvesters.

The weight of evidence suggests that catch share experience trips are limited to the Gulf of Mexico reef fish fishery and represent a very small number of trips targeting a limited niche market in a manner that, while perhaps unanticipated by the Council, is legal. Furthermore, it is an open question for policy makers as to whether this form of quasi-recreational fishing within a commercial LAPP should be encouraged or not. Nevertheless, the committee provides the following recommendations to enhance the Councils’ capacity to monitor and control cross-sector leakage in existing LAPPs in mixed-use fisheries:

Recommendation A-1: The Councils should review the policies regarding entry into the for-hire sector for potential loopholes that would allow expanded capacity in the for-hire sector and revise the policies accordingly. This should be done for fisheries directly linked through a LAPP in a mixed-use fishery as well as those in other fisheries that may provide a viable source of alternative employment for displaced commercial fishers and their vessels.

Depending on whether the for-hire sector is considered fully capitalized, these loopholes may need to be closed. Note that a lack of evidence of current leakage is not sufficient to rule out future issues; negative shocks to the commercial sector (due to total allowable catch reductions or shocks to output prices or costs) or growth in demand in the recreational sector may expose previously unseen vulnerabilities.

Recommendation A-2: The Councils should closely monitor the evidence for the establishment and growth of “catch share experience” and similar quasi-recreational trips occurring under the structure of commercial LAPPs. In cases where these trips are already well established (e.g., the Gulf of Mexico reef fish fishery), the Councils should develop regularized reporting programs for monitoring the extent and characteristics of these trips.

Allocation

As detailed in Chapter 6, the allocation of landings between recreational and commercial sectors is often the largest source of contention between recreational and commercial fishers. Conflict over allocations is common in mixed-use fisheries, regardless of the presence of LAPPs. Nevertheless, the creation of a LAPP in the commercial component has the potential to alter the terms of this conflict, through the creation of a class of shareholders whose ability to organize potentially alters the political economy of allocation decision making in ways that may be consequential to allocation outcomes as well as the contentiousness of the policy process.

As previously noted, the creation of a commercial LAPP often creates a well-defined group of owners with a stake in maintaining, and potentially expanding, the commercial fleet’s share of the overall harvest. While it is unclear that these changes represent an unfair balance in power between the sectors—as recreational stakeholders are often overrepresented in the Council process by national and regional interest groups—they may nevertheless create inertia in any reallocation of

Suggested Citation:"8 Addressing the Impacts of LAPPs in Mixed-Use Fisheries." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2021. The Use of Limited Access Privilege Programs in Mixed-Use Fisheries. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26186.
×

harvest from commercial fishers to recreational anglers. It is also important to consider how these shifts in political power affect customary, subsistence, and other underrepresented groups of fishers who are often not well represented in decision-making processes.

Conflict may also be exacerbated by the simultaneous existence of a LAPP on the commercial side of the fishery along with regulated open access management in the recreational component of the fishery. Efficiency gains from commercial LAPPs will tend to raise the value of additional allocation within the commercial sector. Therefore, any perceived erosion of the commercial allocation due to the inability of regulators to contain recreational anglers’ harvest to their formal allocation using bag limits and seasonal closures (see Figure 6.1) may lead to calls from commercial fishers to more tightly regulate the “unaccountable” recreational sector. At the same time, recreational anglers, accustomed to pre-LAPP commercial seasons under “derby” conditions that are roughly similar to their own recreational seasons, may react unfavorably to the much longer commercial seasons that follow the LAPP—calling for increases in allocation and other reforms in the hope of extending fishing opportunities for recreational anglers. This has been especially prominent in the Gulf of Mexico red snapper fishery, which saw its recreational seasons fall to weeks or days, despite a consistent allocation of harvest, even as commercial fishers under the LAPP extended their season over months (see Figure 6.2).

The Councils charged with the governance of LAPPs in mixed-use fisheries have primarily addressed calls for reallocation through the development of procedural and evaluative criteria to apply in the case of reallocation (Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council, n.d.) and significant input from recreational and commercial stakeholders through ad hoc plan team panels and similar co-management structures. This process has often drawn heavily on principles of economic efficiency (Agar and Carter, 2014; Agar et al., 2014; Plummer et al., 2012). However, as mandated by the MSA, the Councils may not allocate based on economic principles alone, with considerable weight being given to “fair and equitable” allocations (Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council, n.d.).

While these steps have fostered greater transparency and stakeholder involvement, the zero-sum nature of regulatory reallocation has created a situation where one sector’s gain is perceived as another’s loss—so that agreement on what is “fair and equitable” is highly unlikely. Furthermore, the open access nature of recreational fisheries means that there is not a well-defined group that can legitimately represent anglers’ interests (although a number of prominent recreationally oriented advocacy organizations exist). Taken together, these measures make reallocation extremely difficult. Indeed, only one major reallocation between commercial and recreational sectors for a LAPP in a mixed-use fishery in this study has occurred subsequent to the implementation of the commercial LAPP. In this case 2.5% of the allocation of Gulf red snapper was transferred from the commercial sector to the recreational sector. However, the reallocation was based on data suggesting that previous methods of measuring recreational harvest had underestimated recreational harvest (and hence stock productivity)—so that this “reallocation” merely formalized the longstanding de facto division of harvest between the sectors as opposed to the formal process of allocation (Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council, 2015). In other words, the reallocation decision, while ostensibly altering the formal division of harvest, enshrined the status quo.

Given these difficulties, the committee recommends that the Councils investigate policies that shift the emphasis away from the zero-sum game of uncompensated reallocation between sectors to one that allows for the possibility of mutual benefit, either through negotiation between appropriate representatives of each sector or by compensated transfer of allocation between individuals or groups in each sector. Indeed, the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council currently lists “negotiation-based allocation” and quota purchases between commercial and recreational sectors as suggested methods for reallocation (Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council, n.d.). However, the primary impediment to such an approach is the open access nature of the recreational fishing

Suggested Citation:"8 Addressing the Impacts of LAPPs in Mixed-Use Fisheries." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2021. The Use of Limited Access Privilege Programs in Mixed-Use Fisheries. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26186.
×

sector (although access may be limited to for-hire vessels). Therefore, whereas owners of quota share under a commercial LAPP are individually accountable for covering their harvest with quota share, individual anglers cannot acquire or dispose of harvest rights, because all such rights are subject to claim by right of capture. Furthermore, any group that purports to represent anglers cannot do so in a way that is binding on individual anglers’ decision making.

One way to resolve this conundrum is to explicitly allocate recreational quota to one or more nongovernmental entities while also devolving some management rights to these groups. In particular, each entity must determine rules of access and implement accountability measures to remain within its allocation. This concept has been advanced in the literature in the form of an angler management organization (AMO) (Sutinen and Johnston, 2003) and has features in common with the sectoral management program for New England groundfish (e.g., Holland et al., 2013). Under Sutinen and Johnston’s (2003) formulation, AMOs are formed as for-profit organizations with shareholders, who may directly participate in the governance of the AMO or delegate this governance to officers and a board as in a corporation. Importantly, shareholding in the AMO is distinct from the holding of harvest quota itself. The managers of an AMO can then devise rules, subject to Council approval, that are satisfactory to angler “customers” and that maximize the value of the AMO to its shareholders—essentially identifying goals and objectives for the recreational sector—while maintaining harvest within the AMO’s allocation. Critically, while the AMO itself receives its allocation as a revocable and transferable privilege (as commercial fishers receive under a LAPP), individual AMOs need not devolve these rights to individual anglers as in a recreational LAPP. Instead, AMO managers may select from a wide array of approaches to allocate catch among anglers in an accountable manner—from conventional bag limits to incentive-based approaches such as harvest tags.

AMOs may be defined geographically. For example, given the adoption of state-based management for red snapper in the Gulf of Mexico, individual states could create one or more AMOs to govern recreational fishing in their state waters or appurtenant federal waters. This approach could allow for customization of management to reflect the local context and allow for policy experimentation. Importantly, AMOs would have the ability to transfer their annual allocation to other AMOs or even to commercial fishers as well as purchase or lease quota from the commercial sector. This right of transferability, bundled with the management rights and responsibilities, provides the mechanism for allocations to be resolved through negotiated contracts or arms-length transactions rather than via regulation.

AMOs would represent a major transformation of the governance of recreational fisheries. Given the lack of real-world applications of this management concept, innumerable questions remain concerning how to best design AMOs to ensure compliance with harvest limits, provide high-quality fishing opportunities to anglers, and facilitate compensated reallocation between sectors. One possible modification to Sutinen and Johnston’s (2003) original formulation would be to limit shareholder status in the AMO to anglers that remain bona fide participants in the fishery, so that rather than functioning as a for-profit corporation with shareholding and management severed from its customer base, the AMO instead operates as a consumer cooperative, as commonly seen in rural electric cooperatives or food co-ops. This institutional structure may help to align the management of the AMO with the provision of sustained benefits to anglers. It may also provide a mechanism for anglers to collectively invest in habitat enhancement and other public goods as well as provide constructive representation of anglers’ interests at the Council level that might differ from those of the “recreational industry” (Hervás Ávila, 2018). The challenges to be faced by moving toward such a system are analogous to that faced by the imposition of LAPPs, such as the need to address issues associated with grandfathering that would be inevitable as only bona fide participants would remain. Nevertheless, this proposal represents but one of many potential AMO structures and ways of allocating shareholdership between active anglers and the general public that could be

Suggested Citation:"8 Addressing the Impacts of LAPPs in Mixed-Use Fisheries." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2021. The Use of Limited Access Privilege Programs in Mixed-Use Fisheries. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26186.
×

explored and fostered through outreach and engagement. Despite the many unanswered questions about their effects and proper design, AMOs have significant promise to facilitate self-governance within a co-management structure, while also providing the necessary institutional infrastructure to facilitate win-win solutions to allocation problems.

Recommendation A-3: The NMFS, in partnership with the relevant Councils, should conduct research into innovative institutional structures, such as AMOs, to partially devolve management of marine recreational fisheries to anglers and the associated fishing communities, improve accountability of anglers for their harvest, and facilitate mutually agreeable reallocation between the recreational and commercial sectors. Given the significant knowledge gaps and lack of real-world analogs, this research should be broad in focus, consisting both of internal NMFS research leading to the production of technical memoranda as well as external research funded through channels such as the Marine Fisheries Initiative Program or Saltonstall-Kennedy awards with the goal of bringing government and academic scientists together with the angling community for the joint production of actionable knowledge. The Councils, together with NOAA outreach programs, could then begin to communicate to anglers the potential benefits of the new system and any required data collection systems.

The reforms proposed in the previous recommendation will require substantial research and unprecedented levels of cooperation between the Councils and recreational angling stakeholders to successfully implement. In some cases, this cooperation may be infeasible or entail a long and uncertain path forward. Accordingly, there may be a need for the consideration of more incremental policy reforms for the management of the recreational and for-hire sectors to facilitate fishing opportunities, enhance the value of the recreational fishing experience, and facilitate profitable livelihoods for for-hire providers and other members of the recreational fishing community—all while enhancing accountability under regulatorily defined allocations. The charge of this committee is not directly concerned with the management of the recreational component of LAPPs in mixed-use fisheries. Nevertheless, tensions over allocations between the recreational and commercial sectors in a fishery with a LAPP are demonstrably heightened by policies in the recreational sector that undermine angler welfare and unnecessarily constrain fishing opportunities, while also failing to adequately contain recreational fishing mortality (Abbott et al., 2018). Therefore, developing improved policies for the management of the recreational sector can be important to the overall functionality of a LAPP in a mixed-use fishery.

Recommendation A-4: The Councils, or their state partners in the case of “state-based management,” should conduct reviews of their management of both private recreational and for-hire fisheries for species shared under LAPPs in mixed-use fisheries (or proposed LAPPs in mixed-use fisheries) and propose and implement reforms (including, but not limited to, individual fishing quotas [IFQs] or cooperatives for for-hire vessels and harvest tags or day passes for private anglers) that foster accountability while enhancing fishing experiences and opportunities to heterogeneous groups of anglers. To foster comparison between sectors, review guidelines, like those that exist for the commercial sector, should be established for each sector (e.g., including goals, objectives, and measurable outcomes).

These policy changes should be conducted through a process that seeks input and cooperation from the recreational sector and that attempts to capture the spectrum of heterogeneous values (e.g., consumptive versus “catch and release” anglers), modes of access (e.g., private vessel versus

Suggested Citation:"8 Addressing the Impacts of LAPPs in Mixed-Use Fisheries." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2021. The Use of Limited Access Privilege Programs in Mixed-Use Fisheries. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26186.
×

for-hire vessel), and patterns of use (e.g., locals with year-round access versus winter “snowbirds” versus summer vacationers) reflected in the fishery.

Given this heterogeneity, variations in regulatory capacity from setting to setting, and the level of buy-in from recreational fishing stakeholders, the appropriate reforms will likely differ significantly from fishery to fishery. In some cases, relatively modest reforms—such as integration of “now casting” approaches to improve accountability and limit over- and underfishing of quota, or the division of a single derby season into subseasons to facilitate access by heterogeneous anglers—may be all that is feasible. In others, there may be a compelling case for more extensive reforms, such as the implementation of quantity-limited harvest tags (Johnston et al., 2007) or short-term fishing passes (Abbott, 2015) in the private recreational sector. Where supported by the industry and facilitated by the availability of adequate data to support the process of initial allocation, it may be feasible to introduce LAPPs into the for-hire sector, as was done successfully for red snapper and gag on an experimental basis in the Gulf of Mexico (Abbott and Willard, 2017). Regardless of the particular policies that are adopted, the most important aspect of the committee’s recommendation is to adopt an overall stance to the management of recreational fisheries that acknowledges the heterogeneity of anglers through policies that foster diverse and valuable fishing experiences, while curbing open access incentives that tend to undermine these opportunities (Arlinghaus et al., 2019).

Part B: Impacts to Commercial Participants

The committee’s findings from Chapter 5 on the impacts of LAPPs in mixed-use fisheries on commercial participants demonstrate that these impacts are the same as for LAPPs in nonmixed-use fisheries. Therefore, while the following recommendations do not directly pertain to the mixed-use dimension that forms the unique basis of this study, they are nonetheless pertinent to current and future LAPPs in mixed-use fisheries. As reviewed in Chapter 5, barriers to entry are the most commonly discussed negative social impacts of many LAPPs, and this appears to apply to LAPPs in mixed-use fisheries as much as to others. A major issue is the failure to recognize crew and hired captain contributions to production in determining initial allocation. A related concern is the desire to have a program in which fishers can work their way up (from crew member to captain to vessel owner) within the fishery without having to accumulate a large financial investment. Intergenerational equity is another: when initial allocations are handled as windfalls to the current generation, the second generation has a much higher cost of entry, and the generational turnover in fishing that once was commonplace may be delayed under LAPPs.

To address these concerns, mechanisms are needed that facilitate entry into, and upward mobility within, LAPP fisheries without excessively undermining potentially conflicting goals of reducing overcapitalization and enhancing profitability. These would allow for new entrants who are already engaged in the fishery itself but who did not experience the windfall gain of initial allocation. Most attention has been given to subsidized loan programs. The committee’s recommendation focuses on existing participants in the fisheries who did not participate in the initial allocation. While subsidized loan programs can help facilitate new entrants, or help disenfranchised existing participants, the benefits of this intervention need to be weighed against the negative effects of subsidizing fisheries, including counterbalancing the global push toward reducing capacity overall (Smith, 2019). The committee also notes support in the literature for nonmarket mechanisms such as student licenses and apprenticeship programs to help facilitate entry (Cullenberg et al., 2017; Eythórsson, 2016).

A variety of methods to counter inequities from initial allocation and subsequent transfers are available if not addressed through the initial appeals process. One is to consider a redistribution of shares, either retroactively or based on future trading activity, and either by “use-it or lose-it” or “lease-to-own” provisions; these options were discussed by Ropicki et al. (2018) for red snapper. Retroactive redistributions would be criticized as unjust and counter to the benefits that leasing was

Suggested Citation:"8 Addressing the Impacts of LAPPs in Mixed-Use Fisheries." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2021. The Use of Limited Access Privilege Programs in Mixed-Use Fisheries. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26186.
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intended to address, namely, improving efficiency and reducing discards. Future redistributions, on the other hand, could allow time for planning if a control date were set into the future but success would depend on forfeiture rates. Given that the goal of the LAPP was to address overcapacity and derby fishing, most fundamentally, these policies would change ownership but would likely not affect fishing effort; the goals of the program would have to be modified to implement such a change. An additional challenge is that a substantial number of current participants depend on the allocation market. If the goal is to increase owner-fishers then those benefiting from the flexibility of the allocation market could be adversely affected by the smaller market for, and availability of, allocation, which could drive up price. This is but one example of the indirect effects that could occur through the markets in the red snapper LAPP (Ropicki et al., 2018). In sum, whether one owns shares or a reef fish permit, one fishes, one leases, or one is a dealer—and to what extent—should be considered with respect to changing the structure of the program; no change is going to benefit everyone, or even everyone of a particular participant type of which there are at least six in this fishery (i.e., investor, investor fisher, share fisher, supplementer, allocation-dependent fisher, or allocation broker; Ropicki et al., 2018).

Another concern about LAPPs is the rise of a class of share owners who do not fish even though the initial allocation was granted to fishing vessel owners. They are sometimes called “investors,” “sea lords,” or “armchair captains” by those critical of the wealth they accumulate and their alleged power to affect share and lease prices, and/or by those who believe that shares should only go to those working in the fishery, a widespread notion in the moral economy of fisheries. Initial allocation issues aside, in an established quota share program the size of this subsector in the commercial fishery will increase (ceteris paribus) simply due to retirement. Whether it is unacceptable to the public or others in the fishery that retired fishers—or others who simply invest in the quota shares—remain in the LAPP as nonfishers who profit off the fishery is a key issue for management Councils to consider. If aging shareholders can continue to reap the benefits of a well-managed fishery, perhaps even one that they had helped develop through resources of their own, is it in the best interest of a fishery to remove the participant? If so, what message will that send to those currently involved? Proposed changes to current LAPP regulations should be evaluated with a view of (1) how current participants will rationally and legally circumvent them, (2) potential spillover impacts that may undermine stated goals (Ropicki et al., 2018), and (3) whether a perception that policy makers will keep shifting the goalposts undermines the quota security and cooperative spirit of LAPP regimes; moreover, the nonfishing shareholders provide fluid lease markets, making more fishing opportunities available to more people compared to their experience pre-LAPP. Their experiences are not so far removed from “the fishery,” and they continue as active participants in management planning. Some communities may view this arrangement as preferable to one with limited entry and even steeper barriers to entry.

It is important that new LAPPs in mixed-use fisheries address perceived inequities in the initial allocation of quota shares, which lead to perceptions of unfairness from all sectors in the fishery. Grandfathered allocations preserve and retain traditional and historical participation but can create windfall gains for initial claimants, which may or may not be justifiable. However, the distribution of these gains between existing stakeholder groups and the public (via auction or rent recovery measures) should be broadly viewed as to whether they are procedurally just and defensible in terms of their consequences. Allocating quota solely to owners of vessels with fishing history may ignore longstanding contributions from captains and crews who have also contributed to the development and productive utilization of a fishery and that have shared as “co-venturers” in the financial risk of doing so given that many fishery workers are paid under a share system. Broadening allocations to include captain and crew may decouple the link between quota and vessels that is important if overcapitalization is an issue, and may complicate the measure of effort that is tied to the stock assessments, but may be warranted in these situations. However, doing so will likely require substantial

Suggested Citation:"8 Addressing the Impacts of LAPPs in Mixed-Use Fisheries." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2021. The Use of Limited Access Privilege Programs in Mixed-Use Fisheries. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26186.
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changes to data collection (i.e., crew permit registries and vessel-level reporting on crew members) to facilitate allocations. An increased focus on equity is consistent with national and international commitments, including the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations’ Small Scale Fishery Guidelines, which state: “States should where appropriate grant preferential access of small-scale fisheries to fish in waters under national jurisdiction, with a view to achieving equitable outcomes for different groups of people, in particular vulnerable groups” (FAO, 2015).

Recommendation B-1: The Councils and the NMFS, in planning new LAPPs in mixed-use fisheries, should develop a broad range of options for the initial allocation of quota, including but going beyond the practice of limiting eligibility to existing vessel owners or permit holders with historic records (especially if overcapitalization is not a goal and shares are to be given for free). Where available, data on the contributions of hired captains and crews to the historic performance of vessels should be collected and used to assess the potential of awarding shares to them as well as vessel owners. If such data are not available, the Councils should consider delaying the creation of a LAPP for a limited time to conduct a rapid assessment of crew contributions and preferences that would inform initial allocations.

In a mixed-use fishery, it may also be deemed appropriate to maintain data on for-hire captains and crew members in case there is movement toward individual allocations in the for-hire sector. Such changes should occur soon so that they are in place when new LAPPs arrive. Finally, the potential consequences of broadening the base for allocations to help foster program designs that mitigate negative unintended consequences is needed.

Recommendation B-2: The Councils should set aside a portion of the total quota shares for new entrants or assess a fee (on the transfer or lease of shares or allocation, 2-5%, for example) that could be reallocated.

This recommendation may be feasible for existing LAPPs but is especially important to consider up front for future LAPPs because of difficulty making changes such as this once the program has begun. There are a number of ways to configure such a program. One possibility is to allow crew and hired captain work experience (i.e., hours fishing) to accumulate toward thresholds that vest into quota shares over time. Such a mechanism is unusual in a market economy, but LAPPs are assigning public trust resources to private entities, albeit nonpermanently. Such a program would simply share the resource with a larger segment of the population. Because LAPPs are by statute considered nonpermanent, carving out this set aside from existing shares would be possible.

Recommendation B-3: The Councils should consider intergenerational equity at the outset of program consideration and design. Any new LAPP should explicitly address in its design any mechanisms to address objectives related to facilitating entry of second-generation fishers and the potentially undesirable effects of wealth primarily accruing only to the first generation.

Ways to implement Recommendation B-3 are numerous in theory but poorly explored in practice (e.g., formal quota banks with commensurate funding, graduated phase-outs of rights over time, and so on). The key is that these issues must be considered from the start. Otherwise, virtually any adjustment to the program that will meaningfully address these issues will dilute the privileges of incumbents, creating fierce resistance. Most importantly, the consideration of such unfamiliar

Suggested Citation:"8 Addressing the Impacts of LAPPs in Mixed-Use Fisheries." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2021. The Use of Limited Access Privilege Programs in Mixed-Use Fisheries. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26186.
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program elements would need to be supported by sufficient outreach and engagement that addressed needs of fishing-dependent and underserved communities.

Recommendation B-4: Because of perceptions that “investors” or “armchair captains” should not control quota shares, the Councils that consider new LAPPs in mixed-use fisheries, as well as others, should address this question up front, in initial scoping and draft amendment processes, and research whether and how such shareholding would affect the market for quota and its availability to active fishers. To assist the Councils in addressing this question, the NMFS should sponsor a study of the direct and indirect consequences of moving from LAPPs that require holding active fishing permits or other measures of active participation in fishing, to the “public” scope of eligibility to own quota shares. Such a study, likely focused on the experience of the two Gulf of Mexico LAPPs but informed by other programs, should offer a stronger basis for decision making about eligibility.

Recommendation B-5: The NMFS and the Councils should encourage full transparency of LAPP ownership, transfers, and leasing, making these data publicly accessible and part of the policy process. This effort, which is well under way in most current LAPPs, should include developing the capacity to provide real-time information on trades in order to foster well-functioning markets for quota shares and leasing. This can help achieve social objectives of equity by ensuring fishers are not disadvantaged in the transfer markets. In addition, inefficiencies and inequities caused by incomplete or inaccurate transfer data and uncentralized markets should be examined.

Part C: Impacts to Fishing Communities

Congress specified that LAPPs should take into consideration the needs of fishing communities and small-scale fishing enterprises. This issue of scale of operation received no attention in the LAPP reviews and management documents, possibly because the smaller-scale operations in these regions are thought to be mainly participating in inshore, state water fisheries; however, fishing communities, including some measures of their ties to recreational fishing, are now systematically characterized by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The place-based notion of fishing community under the MSA is inadequate for understanding the social and community aspects of recreational angling, which usually involves people from highly dispersed places, but it can reflect the importance of marinas, bait and supply shops, restaurants and hotels, and other businesses that depend on and serve the needs of recreational anglers. However, the committee found that the present systems for managing and monitoring LAPPs in these mixed-use fisheries do not allow for assessment of the effects of LAPPs on either small-scale fisheries or fishing communities.

Recommendation C-1: The NMFS and the Councils should develop explicit measures to associate LAPP fishing activity, as well as fishing activities of the for-hire and recreational sectors, with fishing communities represented in the NOAA Social Indicators data, both in the baseline period (pre-LAPP) and in subsequent periods. These measures should capture multiple community connections (e.g., residency, vessel homeport, landings, and support services for recreational and commercial fisheries).

Recommendation C-2: The NMFS and the Councils should create a process for determining what constitutes small-scale fishing in the context of different regions and fisheries

Suggested Citation:"8 Addressing the Impacts of LAPPs in Mixed-Use Fisheries." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2021. The Use of Limited Access Privilege Programs in Mixed-Use Fisheries. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26186.
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and whether they see enough presence in federal fisheries to warrant its inclusion as such in data collection, decision making, and reviews. Scale can be a consideration for recreational as well as commercial fisheries; for example, do the policies and practices in the mixed-use fishery favor those with larger or more costly vessels and gear, whether recreational or commercial? Are small-scale fishers who lose out in LAPP allocations likely to move into for-hire or recreational fishing?

Recommendation C-3: In situations where fishing communities are significantly involved with and major components of a fishery where LAPPs are being considered, the provisions in the MSA (16 U.S.C. § 1853a(c)(3)(A)) that allow for assignment of quota shares to fishing communities, as well as regional fishery associations, should be included as among alternatives being considered by the Councils. These provisions appear to apply only to commercial fisheries. The recommendation for AMOs in the recreational section above better captures the reality of the recreational sectors in mixed-use fisheries, where participants are often highly dispersed.

Potential inequities in distributional consequences in terms of ethnicity, race, and socioeconomic class are largely invisible in current fisheries management programs. In the committee’s review, the lack of information about different social groups who participate in these fisheries (e.g., socioeconomic class, ethnicity, race, and education) was a serious barrier to assessing social impacts. This is due in part to lack of record-keeping on the matter and difficulty collecting personal information in a voluntary survey. The visibility problem also may be the consequence of longer-term processes that have made participation in commercial and for-hire fisheries difficult for members of minority groups. The committee found no information on LAPPs for mixed-use fisheries that would allow assessment of the degree to which the LAPPs have systematized the exclusion of minority population participation in these programs. Indeed, as the 2021 Executive Order on Racial Equity (White House, 2021) states: “Many Federal datasets are not disaggregated by race, ethnicity, gender, disability, income, veteran status, or other key demographic variables. This lack of data has cascading effects and impedes efforts to measure and advance equity.”

Recommendation C-4: The NMFS should make implementing the human dimensions section of the NOAA Fisheries research strategy for 2021-2025 (NOAA Fisheries, 2021) a high priority.

The human dimensions section of the NOAA Fisheries research strategy discusses the importance and need to “describe and understand diverse communities and to respond to environmental justice goals and mandates” and “examine diversity and address inequalities in community impacts [and] management outcomes” (e.g., Executive Order 12898).

Part D: Recommendations for Data Collection and Future Research

The committee’s analysis of possible ways that LAPPs might affect the ecological status of mixed-use fisheries hypothesized that some LAPPs, depending on circumstances of fisheries that are interconnected, might induce additional concern regarding the adherence to allocations and other conservation requirements in other sectors targeting the same species or other species in mixed-species aggregations. The committee termed this process “serial conservation” (as opposed to the well-known “serial depletion” of stocks), or a process whereby improvement in conservation in one sector can affect improved conservation in other sectors and/or overall.

Suggested Citation:"8 Addressing the Impacts of LAPPs in Mixed-Use Fisheries." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2021. The Use of Limited Access Privilege Programs in Mixed-Use Fisheries. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26186.
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Recommendation D-1: The concept of “serial conservation” in mixed-use fisheries should be explored in more detail through partnerships of federal, academic, and state agency scientists, supported through funding initiatives at the federal or regional level. Under what conditions and through what mechanisms might LAPPs create leverage for improvements in rates of bycatch and discards and keeping within fishing mortality rate targets for complexes of stocks? To the extent that LAPPs result in elimination of overfishing and stocks are no longer overfished, will there be more resiliency in the overall ecological system that benefits all sectors?

The committee’s analysis of LAPPs in mixed-use fisheries has made it abundantly clear that most programs have been implemented without sufficient investments in the data required to adequately assess their social, economic, and ecological impacts on all sectors.

Recommendation D-2: For fisheries where LAPPs may be contemplated, the Councils and the NMFS should establish longitudinal data collection protocols for additional economic and social information, including pre-implementation baselines. These protocols should collect ongoing and, where possible, retrospective data prior to LAPP implementation and continue thereafter, with minimal disruptions to the survey protocols. At a minimum these data collection efforts should focus on social and economic data at the vessel level (e.g., revenues, input use, costs, ownership, community affiliation), including detailed demographic and economic data on crews, captains, vessel owners, and shareholders. Possible models are the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands crab rationalization program and the data collection efforts of the Northwest Region for groundfish rationalization. These data collection efforts would ideally branch out beyond surveying only capital owners, but also regularly survey other immediate fishery stakeholders such as captains and crews (acknowledging difficulties here). These efforts would be complementary to plans to broaden the base of initial allocations. Additionally, all datasets should cross reference each other to facilitate linking by including the appropriate identifiers.

Assessment of ongoing LAPPs is made difficult both by the lack of pre-post data for most LAPPs as well as any ability to compare their trends with those of non-LAPP fisheries.

Recommendation D-3: The Councils should collectively institute a baseline level of longitudinal economic and social data reporting for all major fisheries in order to facilitate the comparative and causal analysis of policy changes or natural shocks in one fishery.

In going through the five LAPP reviews done by the Councils (see Chapter 3), the committee found the need for improvements that would help in future reviews of existing LAPPs but also in designing future LAPPs. In most cases the program reviews found little empirical evidence that would enable evaluating social and community aspects of the programs, reflecting the underdevelopment of data collection for social impact analysis, a problem already discussed in this report. Beyond that, the committee observed the need in program design to have quantitative targets for specific major objectives, and clearer definition of what is meant and the appropriate metrics in objectives such as “viability” or “overcapitalization.” In addition, and building on the committee’s discussion in Chapter 1 about the problem of assigning causation, the program reviews should be encouraged to include counterfactuals and the impacts of concurrent and confounding events.

Recommendation D-4: The NMFS and the Councils should reexamine the guidelines for LAPP review (including minimum data requirements for analysis) and expand their

Suggested Citation:"8 Addressing the Impacts of LAPPs in Mixed-Use Fisheries." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2021. The Use of Limited Access Privilege Programs in Mixed-Use Fisheries. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26186.
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scope in light of the efforts of this committee to use them as sources of information about the social, economic, and biological effects of LAPPs in general and in mixed-use fisheries. Future reviews of LAPPs in mixed-use fisheries should examine their relationships to other sectors of the fisheries, and their goals and objectives, and be informed by the efforts of this committee to hypothesize and in some instances substantiate interactions and side effects.

A number of community impacts of LAPPs are documented in ethnographic studies, but the committee found little information about the recreational fisheries at the community level. The above recommendation may help. In addition, there is little corroboration of ethnographic findings from other research approaches, perhaps due to a lack of data.

A finding in Chapter 7, based on the committee’s exploratory analysis of NOAA Social Indicators data, was that LAPPs had no statistically significant effect on a measure of labor in the Gulf of Mexico grouper fishery. Though not statistically significant, the results highlighted possible ways that these data could be used and enhanced in future analysis.

Recommendation D-5: The NMFS and the Councils should conduct more thorough analysis of the NOAA Social Indicators for Coastal Communities (SICC) data to explore whether they can provide information about causal effects of LAPPs on communities. The committee recommends three specific steps: (1) refine the geographical definitions of treated and control units to more carefully match communities affected by LAPPs with ones that are similar but unaffected, (2) conduct more analyses to explore other indicators and other ways of exploiting natural policy experiments in the SICC, and (3) test the efficacy of quasi-experimental analysis of the SICC data by examining effects of hurricanes or other shocks with well-known geographic specificity for consistency with well-understood effects of social and economic disruption. If not, they should expand the data collected to allow for such analysis.

Changes to within-sector distribution of quota shares that allow crews or hired captains to vest into share ownership (as discussed above in Recommendation B-2) would require new tracking of fishery participants. At the same time, one of the major gaps in understanding of LAPPs in mixed-use fisheries is the diversity of fishery participants. There are no comprehensive data available on captains and crew who are not also permit holders. Given the rising importance of mixed-use fisheries, this data gap is pertinent to the for-hire recreational fishing crew as well.

Recommendation D-6: The NMFS and the Councils should develop ways to expand captain and crew data collection such that it can comprehensively track people participating in federal fisheries. Such a system could facilitate ways to address concerns about fairness in quota share distributions as well as contribute to a richer understanding of social, economic, and community impacts of LAPPs and other sectors of mixed-use fisheries. It could also potentially discourage hiring crew members off the books and enhance fairness for fishers who do not engage in that practice, especially if tied to the ability to vest into quota.

Some stakeholders express concerns about LAPPs creating new roles in the commercial fishery such as quota brokers. Others suggest that brokers are needed to make trades and for the quota program to function effectively. It may be possible to improve the functionality of quota markets in ways that are complementary to the presence of brokers through greater data transparency. Currently, quota trades are not easily available to fishery participants.

Suggested Citation:"8 Addressing the Impacts of LAPPs in Mixed-Use Fisheries." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2021. The Use of Limited Access Privilege Programs in Mixed-Use Fisheries. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26186.
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Recommendation D-7: The NMFS and the Councils should make quota share and allocation data more transparent, comprehensive, and widely available, and encourage data presentation and analysis on these dimensions so they can inform the policy formation processes. Such activities would also serve to show that accurate and complete data reporting is critical as it can also help potential buyers and sellers make transaction decisions.

Reducing tensions between the recreational and commercial components of a fishery with a LAPP requires that ample consideration be given to the policies that allocate fish and fishing opportunities across anglers within the recreational sector (see Recommendation B-4), to ensure that these policies serve the needs of heterogeneous anglers and for-hire providers to foster high-value fishing opportunities. However, data and research to inform managers of important dimensions of angler preferences and angler heterogeneity in preferences and decision constraints (e.g., modes of access, seasonality of demand, etc.) are frequently limited for most saltwater species (NRC, 2006). Recurrent survey products (e.g., the Marine Recreational Information Program) are limited in their ability to provide these data across geographies and species, as well as by their primary focus on quantifying fishing effort and harvest.

Recommendation D-8: The NMFS and the Councils should develop prioritized, targeted human dimensions recreational data as well as commercial and for-hire data collection programs for species or species complexes of particular interest either due to ongoing or anticipated allocation tensions between sectors in existing LAPPs in mixed-use fisheries or in anticipation of new LAPPs in mixed-use fisheries.

Recommendation D-9: Congress and the administration should fully fund data collection and analysis programs consistent with the priorities identified above.

These efforts should build on well-established survey approaches in recreational demand modeling, but should expand beyond the often narrow focus of most studies on recovering preferences for marginal adaptations to current policies. Rather, these studies should seek to recover anglers’ preferences for (and likely behavior under) a broader suite of policy-influenced attributes of fishing opportunities and novel policy tools. These quantitative data should be supplemented by complementary efforts to gather qualitative social science data from anglers through ethnographic interviews or surveys. Participatory research approaches (e.g., focus groups) in cooperation with recreational fishing stakeholder groups would be critical at an early stage in these research efforts to help design more effective survey instruments and to ensure that the research is viewed as valid and of value to recreational stakeholders. Moreover, such an effort can be a step toward a more integrated approach to understanding and managing mixed-use fisheries insofar as it may allow for comparison among the recreational, for-hire, and commercial sectors, at least at the level of qualitative data on social, economic, and community dimensions.

A note of caution: trying to design in a myriad of policy constraints on LAPPs to address legitimate social concerns may limit their ability to address what turn out to be even greater economic and social issues stemming from problems like climate change. The existence of IFQs combined with greater transparency of quota trades and data may facilitate the development of other financial instruments. For example, in agricultural markets, futures and options are important for hedging risk. These instruments are not currently available to fishers but could be available if quota markets functioned sufficiently well.

Suggested Citation:"8 Addressing the Impacts of LAPPs in Mixed-Use Fisheries." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2021. The Use of Limited Access Privilege Programs in Mixed-Use Fisheries. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26186.
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Part E: Recommendation for Interdisciplinary Impact Assessment

A large part of the committee’s task centered on economic and social issues for which data were not always adequate and available but were also of different kinds, leading to challenges in assessing which qualified as evidence and how to weigh differences in the report. Expecting that efforts to evaluate LAPPs and other policies in mixed-use fisheries will continue, the committee offers a recommendation about future interdisciplinary impact assessments done or commissioned by the NMFS and the Councils.

A significant challenge is integrating types of data that are based on distinct, discipline-driven methodologies and theories. Important to the development of effective impact analyses is the ability to integrate qualitative, interview-based data with datasets like the SICC, and to integrate stakeholder perceptions of economic phenomena revealed in interviews or surveys with quantitative economic data. The quantitative data may not capture all of the nuance available in qualitative data, but the qualitative data may lack features such as representativeness. Finding ways to integrate qualitative and quantitative data more effectively could lead to new insights and inform new hypotheses. That is, there are potentially substantial gains in understanding from cross-fertilization among disciplinary fields, particularly if done with knowledge and respect for differences, and similarities, in how knowledge is created and the criteria for plausibility (e.g., Moon et al., 2021). More generally, all researchers can benefit from clearer appreciation of the epistemological differences across disciplines, which is essential for interdisciplinary work.

It is important to find ways to compare and integrate social and economic analyses, without questioning the importance of both. For example, some stakeholders assert that LAPPs create large entities that effectively control access to the fishery through market power. However, for the mixed-use fisheries in this study, objective measures of market concentration such as the Herfindahl-Hirschman index suggest that these perceptions are at odds with economic reality. This divergence has at least two important implications. First, a policy response to curtail market power is not warranted. Second, divergent perceptions raise the question of why these views are being expressed. Are stakeholders simply uninformed? Are these views deliberate attempts to influence the political process in regulating the fishery or securing more access to the resource? Or are these views expressive of frustration tied to concerns about access, power relations, and policy? While all three factors could be at play, crafting an appropriate policy response (including the possibility of no policy response) requires a richer understanding than either research approach alone can inform, and perhaps a deeper investment in engagement to address.

Accordingly, better integration is needed for future assessments of the economic and social impacts of fisheries policy. For example, Birkenbach et al. (2017) find that LAPPs slow the race to fish on average and in most fisheries analyzed, but there are counterexamples in which fishing sped up. A modeling study provides a potential explanation (Birkenbach et al., 2020), but ethnographic research could shed additional light on how the LAPP changed fishing behavior and incentives. Similarly, findings of quantitative studies, including difficult-to-explain results, can inform future qualitative data collection to help explain why certain outcomes materialize.

Recommendation E-1: The NMFS and the Councils should encourage interdisciplinarity and better integrate qualitative and quantitative data to generate hypotheses and discern and test policy impacts. These activities and discussions can happen within the multidisciplinary Scientific and Statistical Committees of the regional Councils as well as within the regional science centers of the NMFS.

This recommendation includes ways to assess the use of qualitative data on perceptions and values in social and economic impact analysis. Ideally, these assessments can be conducted in

Suggested Citation:"8 Addressing the Impacts of LAPPs in Mixed-Use Fisheries." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2021. The Use of Limited Access Privilege Programs in Mixed-Use Fisheries. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26186.
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tandem with quantitative approaches like randomized sampling or taking a census of the population. To this end, the Councils and NOAA can expand the social and cultural methodologies used, including cultural models, cultural consensus analysis, and network analysis (e.g., Paolisso, 2007), which can be helpful in assessing the fisheries connectivity and possible spillover effects to other sectors or other fisheries (e.g., Addicott et al., 2018). These are among a range of methods used by the social sciences to assess people’s behavior, values, and attitudes in ways that are representative of larger populations and that can be useful for linking qualitative and quantitative fisheries data as shown in a recent NMFS handbook on methods for fisheries social science (Clay and Coburn, 2020). They are among other well-known adjuncts to in-depth interviews, participant observation, social surveys, and social indicators work. However, they have not been routinely applied to social impact assessments within the NMFS. Ultimately, a stronger commitment of NOAA and the Councils to interdisciplinarity and a broader set of social science data collection and research approaches will strengthen the representation of human dimensions in integrated and ecosystem-based fisheries assessments (Szymkowiak, 2021), as well as more limited assessments such as the effects of a LAPP in a mixed-use fishery.

CONCLUSIONS

The committee’s task of studying LAPPs in mixed-use fisheries led to a series of recommendations for existing and future cases, mindful of the potentials to meet the goals of economic efficiency, social equity, and biological sustainability but also the realities of significant trade-offs that may be required. The federal fisheries management system is realized in large part through collaborations among regional science centers, regional and national offices, and the regional fishery management councils, with the oversight of the Secretary of Commerce. It has evolved since its inception in the late 1970s toward a far more balanced system that recognizes the importance of human behavior and institutions in fisheries. Fisheries management does not manage fish; it manages people, on behalf of the fish, which in turn gain value through people. To that end, efforts have been made by NOAA and the Councils to collect and incorporate analyses of economic and social data pertinent to management decisions. The committee’s recommendations thus build on strong foundations that, if properly funded and appropriately modified, can contribute to an even stronger and more effective representation of human dimensions in the management enterprise.

The committee’s appraisal of the place of LAPPs in mixed-use fisheries is constrained by the scarcity of seminal data and studies that would enable a clearer picture of how the commercial, for-hire, and recreational fisheries for particular species or species complexes interact. The existence of LAPPs in the mixed-use fisheries in the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic coasts is new, really only begun in the mid-2000s (discounting wreckfish, which can be argued as a specialized, totally commercial component of the larger, mixed-use reef fish fisheries of the South Atlantic). Moreover, beyond LAPPs, research on mixed-use fisheries as such appears to be limited to analyses done for purposes of allocating allowable catches among the sectors with little attention to other possible relationships.

The general question of this study is how a LAPP affects a mixed-use fishery. The committee’s finding is that there is weak, if any, evidence for direct relationships between commercial fishing with IFQs and the recreational fisheries, which are open access and managed under overall nonbinding quotas. The committee considered indirect impacts and raised the possibility of cross-sector movement of fishers displaced from a LAPP into the for-hire sector, but no data are available on the matter.

Not surprisingly, allocation between sectors—and conflict over reallocation—emerges as the one clear relationship among the sectors in this study, but even there, the committee can only

Suggested Citation:"8 Addressing the Impacts of LAPPs in Mixed-Use Fisheries." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2021. The Use of Limited Access Privilege Programs in Mixed-Use Fisheries. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26186.
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hypothesize the effects the LAPPs might have had on allocation decisions in any of the cases of the study. The committee’s conjecture, based largely on comments from stakeholder and expert participants in meetings and committee members’ observations of the workings of fishery management councils and similar groups, is that a major feature of LAPPs within a mixed-use fishery is political. Such a program, quasi-privatizing the right to capture a portion of an annual quota, creates a clearly defined group of stakeholders who hold a newly valuable asset. They are thus motivated and equipped to form an interest group, even a formal association, to represent their interests. In some circumstances, this can counteract other well-organized interest groups which are found representing recreational anglers in regions where recreational fishing is important, as well as environmental nongovernmental organizations. It can have other effects, too, where the shareholders contribute more support for industry-run or cooperative research leading to improved stock assessment or other biological goals, become more fully engaged in co-management with the Councils, or work together to improve markets. These are only conjectures for the cases of this study; as committees such as this are often forced by the evidence to say, much more research needs to be done.

The committee felt, nonetheless, that the challenge of coming up with fair and equitable reallocations across sectors is important, but noted that the zero-sum nature of allocation decisions to the relevant sectors, and the challenges of ensuring sufficient accountability in the presence of open access incentives in the recreational sector make top-down allocation through decisions by the Councils inherently fraught and politically contentious. The committee therefore recommends that the NMFS and the Councils more thoroughly investigate institutional innovations such as co-managed “angler management organizations,” which provide a platform for representing the interests of recreational anglers in facilitating negotiated transfers of harvest quota between recreational and commercial sectors, while devolving management in a manner that facilitates anglers’ investment in their own governance and ensuring accountable harvest within the allocation. Finding ways to devolve management to better customize it to regional and user-group features, facilitate reallocation when situations measurably change, and, above all, improve accountability are worthwhile goals for all participants in a mixed-use fishery.

Even if sweeping co-management reforms, such as AMOs, are not deemed feasible or desirable, the committee nevertheless recommends that the NMFS and the Councils, and the state agencies with which they cooperate, reassess the management of the recreational component of LAPPs in mixed-use fisheries to ensure that anglers and for-hire vessels are held accountable within their allocations and that angling opportunities are allocated in an equitable manner that enhances the welfare of heterogeneous anglers. Tensions over allocations between the recreational and commercial sectors in a fishery with a LAPP are exacerbated by policies in the recreational sector that leave anglers collectively (if not individually) unaccountable for their harvest while undermining angler welfare and unnecessarily constraining fishing opportunities. Therefore, developing improved policies for the management of the recreational sector can be important to the long-run functionality of a LAPP in a mixed-use fishery.

The committee was also tasked with evaluating the ecological, economic, and social impacts of LAPPs on the commercial sector itself. Central to the committee’s recommendations is the importance of explicit and transparent consideration of trade-offs, particularly with respect to economic objectives of efficiency and their potential collision with objectives pertaining to fairness, distributional and procedural justice, and social justice. The committee issued several recommendations for ways the social objectives could be explicitly prioritized in the initial design of new LAPPs as well as furthered within the confines of existing LAPP structures. These included proposals to broaden the base for initial allocation to embrace bona fide captains and crew, policies to address perceived inequities in quota access and rent distribution in existing LAPP programs, and the development of methods to mitigate cross-generational distributional impacts. However, the analysis also revealed a number of fundamental informational gaps that hamper the Councils’ ability to seriously grapple

Suggested Citation:"8 Addressing the Impacts of LAPPs in Mixed-Use Fisheries." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2021. The Use of Limited Access Privilege Programs in Mixed-Use Fisheries. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26186.
×

with social and economic trade-offs and that make evidence-based approaches to addressing these trade-offs challenging. The committee’s recommendations identify these missing data and provide suggestions for how these gaps may be remedied.

Social justice and distributional issues loom large in formal and informal deliberations and much of the literature about LAPPs. The committee tried to assess claims about inequity and unfairness of the various design features of LAPPs and about allocative aspects of mixed-use fisheries in ways that respect and value the sentiments of people interviewed in social research. At the same time, the committee aimed to seek and properly interpret quantitative data that may or may not support those views. This was a genuinely interdisciplinary endeavor, and the committee urges the NMFS and the Councils to take seriously the recommendation to find ways to better link, and where possible integrate, social and economic research methods. This is particularly important where the programs being designed and evaluated have multiple, disparate, and potentially conflicting goals. LAPPs are exemplary but not unique cases.

Suggested Citation:"8 Addressing the Impacts of LAPPs in Mixed-Use Fisheries." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2021. The Use of Limited Access Privilege Programs in Mixed-Use Fisheries. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26186.
×

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A central goal of U.S. fisheries management is to control the exploitation of fish populations so that fisheries remain biologically productive, economically valuable, and socially equitable. Although the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act led to many improvements, a number of fish populations remained overfished and some fisheries were considered economically inefficient. In response, Congress amended the Act in 2006 to allow additional management approaches, including Limited Access Privilege Programs (LAPPs) in which individuals receive a permit to harvest a defined portion of the total allowable catch for a particular fish stock.

This report examines the impacts of LAPPs on mixed-use fisheries, defined as fisheries where recreational, charter, and commercial fishing sectors target the same species or stocks. The report offers recommendations for NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) and the Regional Fishery Management Councils (the Councils) who oversee and manage federally regulated fisheries. For each of the five mixed-use fisheries included in the report, the committee examined available fisheries data and analyses and collected testimony from fishery participants, relevant Councils, and NMFS regional experts through a series of public meetings.

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