Elsevier

Marine Policy

Volume 27, Issue 6, November 2003, Pages 525-533
Marine Policy

Fishery control and regulation compliance: a case for co-management in Swedish commercial fisheries

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0308-597X(03)00078-2Get rights and content

Abstract

The results from a survey of Swedish commercial fishers on regulation compliance and attitudes to control and restrictions are reported. According to the responding fishers, 90% of all Swedish catches are reported, in spite of limited control efforts. From an economic perspective we would expect substantially lower levels of compliance. The results also show that the majority of Swedish fishers are in favour of co-management on a regional basis. However, on this and other management issues opinions divert significantly between large vessel operators and small vessel operators, which reveals conflicting interests for such and similar changes in Swedish management of fisheries.

Introduction

The commercial fisheries within the European Union (EU) are in a crisis. The current Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) is a failure and many of the fish stocks are at present outside safe biological limits. Stocks are too heavily exploited or have low quantities of mature fish or both. If current trends continue, there is even a risk that many stocks will collapse [1]. Swedish fisheries are not an exception from this problematic situation. Especially the cod stocks in Swedish waters are severely depleted. In April 2003, the European Commission announced a 20 weeks moratorium on cod and flatfish in the Baltic Sea for fishers using trawl, Danish seine or similar gear. The problems in Swedish fisheries are due to the same reasons as in other EU countries, i.e. total allowable catches (TACs) set above scientific advice, over-fishing, over-capacity of the fleet, discards and illegal or black landings.

Illegal landings, or with a broader concept, non-compliance in fisheries have been a neglected area of research for a long time, but have recently gained more interest [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8]. Research on explaining compliance in fisheries can basically be categorized into two different approaches. The first approach has an economic perspective, following [9] where a fisher is assumed to compare the expected benefits from non-compliance versus compliance and choose the most beneficial behaviour. According to this explanation, the fisher estimates the cost of non-compliance based on a subjective assessment of the risk for exposure, the risk for conviction in case of exposure and the severity of the expected penalty in case of conviction. If he perceives this cost is less than the gain from non-compliance, then he does not comply with regulations. The second approach, called co-management or cooperative action theory, emphasizes the role of legitimacy in making fishers comply with fisheries regulation. Fishers choose to comply with regulations if they perceive them or the decision-making process which has produced them as legitimate. According to this approach, social aspects of non-compliance are more important for the compliance decision. No matter which approach is preferred, a crucial matter is to learn more about how fishers themselves perceive regulations, the risk of being controlled, to what extent non-compliance occur, and what are the potential areas of improvement in regulation and control.

In this study, we report the results from a mail survey to Swedish commercial fishers and also use the scanty information available on experiences from Swedish monitoring and enforcement in fisheries. We find that almost half of the Swedish fishers think that the existing regulation works acceptably or well. Further, at least half support all of the 10 different regulation measures currently in use.

The overall impression of Swedish monitoring and enforcement of fisheries is that it suffers from too long handling periods, that convictions result in very low fines, that gear and catches often may be kept by the fishers despite convicted crimes and finally, that in Sweden, so far, there is no possibility of withdrawing fishing licences for a limited period in case of violation.

According to the responding fishers, 90% of all Swedish catches are reported, indicating a high degree of compliance. From the economic perspective we would expect substantially lower levels of compliance, considering the very low level of control and risk for conviction. Swedish fishers appear to see the current regulations to a large extent as legitimate and hereby supporting the co-management idea of high level of compliance. We also find that Swedish fishers in general, 76%, are in favour of co-management on a regional basis. However, on this and other management issues opinions divert significantly between large vessel operators, i.e. above 24 m, and small vessel operators, which reveal conflicting interest for such and similar changes in Swedish management of fisheries.

Section snippets

Compliance from a theoretical perspective

The issue of exploitation and management of common pool resources have attracted the interest of social scientists from a wide range of disciplines, varying from law and economics to sociology and anthropology. The classical reference is [10], which explicitly deal with fisheries.1 For a long time, this paper did not attract much attention outside the economics field, but with the seminal paper “The

Swedish fisheries

Swedish fisheries consist of roughly 2500 full time commercial fishers, who land a catch worth about SEK 1000 million (about EUR 100 million) annually. The fleet consists of 1900 vessels of which more than 80% are vessels below 12 m length. The Swedish fisheries can broadly be characterized as a regulated open access fishery, which means that participants are free to enter, subject to regulations like gear restrictions, area closures, and seasonal restrictions [19]. However, seasonal

Conclusions

The overall impression from this study is that Swedish fishers are much more compliant than expected from purely economic considerations. There are two implications from this finding. Firstly, Swedish fishing monitoring and enforcement can be improved in terms of reduced handling periods, the use of high fines in case of high value violations, more frequent use of forfeited gear and catches in case of convicted crimes and finally, that withdrawing fishing licences for a limited period can be

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Jesper Raakjaer Nielsen for input at the initial phase of this study.

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