Catch Shares and Individual Transferable Quotas (ITQs)

Catch shares are a system of fishery management. In this system, the right to harvest a specific geographic area, or a specific portion of a fishery's total allowable catch, is assigned to particular individuals or groups. Individual transferable quotas (ITQs) are one type of catch share: they are portions of a total allowable catch that can be bought, sold, or transferred to other individuals. The list below offers a primer on the concepts of catch shares and ITQs, how these concepts fit into ecosystem-based management, and how catch shares perform as a real-world fishery management tool.

Blogs

• Individual Transferable Quotas – Benefits for global fisheries

• Rights, responsibility and the management of our fisheries

MEAM articles

• Are catch shares compatible with ecosystem-based management? Experts respond

• Tundi’s Take: Can anything as narrow as catch shares propel us toward EBM?

Literature

• Catch shares have not led to catch-quota balancing in two North American multispecies trawl fisheries

• Tradable permit programs: What are the lessons for the new Alaska halibut catch sharing plan?

• On the Allocation of Possible EU Total Allowable Catches (TAC) for the Mediterranean Swordfish: An Envy-Free Criterion and Equitable Procedure

• Does ‘race to fish’ behaviour emerge in an individual transferable quota fishery when the total allowable catch becomes non-binding?

• Design or pragmatic evolution: applying ITQs in EU fisheries management

• The evolution of New Zealand's fisheries science and management systems under ITQs

• Property Rights in Fisheries: How Much Can Individual Transferable Quotas Accomplish?

• Finding the accelerator and brake in an individual quota fishery: linking ecology, economics, and fleet dynamics of US West Coast trawl fisheries

• Improving or overturning the ITQ system? Views of stakeholders in Icelandic fisheries

• The role of government and industry in resolving assignment problems in fisheries with individual transferable quotas

• Changes in fishing behaviour of two fleets under fully documented catch quota management: Same rules, different outcomes

• Individual transferable quotas and ecosystem-based fisheries management: it's all in the T