Solway Cockle Fishery Management Study

3. Territorial Use Rights for Fisheries

3.1 Managing under a TURF system - why this system?

The open access nature of local and global fisheries has been blamed for the biologically and economically wasteful manner in which fisheries resources have been exploited around the world ( FAO, 2005). In other coastal nations a range of alternative management regimes have evolved, of which territorial rights based management is one which could have potential benefits for stock management in Scotland. Known as Territorial Use Right in Fisheries ( TURFs), this approach allocates an area of sea to a specified group, frequently in the form of a co-operative and often community-based, who then undertake further allocation within that for a set period of time (often of long duration) to sustainably manage the stock (Poon & Bonzon, 2013). The objective is to limit capacity and encourage sustainable harvest, and these approaches have been highly successful in areas with well-defined boundaries and sedentary species, such as lobsters, snails and shellfish e.g. Quahog in Iceland, oysters in USA, mussels and scallops in New Zealand.

TURFs are widely used in Japan, Chile, the Pacific islands, and increasingly across Europe. TURF systems can help mitigate the perverse economic incentives experienced in open-access fisheries by awarding exclusive access to a spatially defined fishing area to a clearly define user-group/s. The user-group/s most often embody littoral communities with a strong history of fishing adjacent inshore stocks. The creation of user privileges under a TURF system does not award ownership rights to the area in question, but the users are granted exclusive access to harvest pre-defined stocks in the territory and the less mobile and less migratory the species the better the system (Defeo & Castilla, 2005).

TURFs are increasingly considered an appropriate tool for small-scale fisheries management due to the socio-economic possibilities they offer to local, artisanal communities. As well as mitigating the dissipation of rent. i.e. reduced economic efficiency because of the inappropriate or poor allocation of resources, that occurs in open-access regimes, TURFs channel the generated net economic gains to a specific group and its wider area. TURF systems are therefore able to produce economically and ecologically sustainable fisheries while facilitating the accomplishment of social goals and the maximisation of social net benefits.

3.2 Making TURFs Work: Governing Framework

While the allocation of the rights to a TURF is a top-down process, TURFs are most suited as a form of co-management. This encourages local self-management of the fishery and places local knowledge at the heart of the operation; allow the harvesting, marketing and distribution of the harvested stocks to complement local socio-economic, biological and technical conditions.

A general rule throughout the TURFs in operation is that the group selected to manage the TURF is responsible for the design and implementation of internal management. The regional/central government then signs off the plan and awards the TURF. Across the different TURFs in operation, the duties carried out by the awarded group vary, with all required to govern internal management but some required to carry out stock assessment and surveillance. While the design and implementation of the internal management will be influenced by the use of a TURF, it will also be influenced by the nature of harvesting and depending on the country of application, the managing authority and the way rights are allocated.

3.2.1 Scope of Rights

The scope of rights under a TURF system can be broad or narrow depending upon the management objective. In Japan, many TURFs grant rights to use any and all of the marine resources within a designated area. Conversely, in the Chilean and Galician TURFs, access rights are granted for the harvesting of a single resource within the area.

3.2.2 Ownership

Several global TURFs have been formalised from customary practices, with rights often granted on the basis of traditional tenure rather than on criteria with a specific socio-economic or ecological objective. In Chile, there are various instances of tenure granted on a basis of historical performance and TURFs established de novo for the association of local fishing communities. The question of ownership is as much a matter of effectiveness as it is of equity. While individuals can usually make decisions more easily than groups, given the estimated net worth of a fishery the establishment of a localised TURF represents a significant re-distribution of wealth. With regards to the objective of improving the welfare of small-scale fishing communities, a form of communal ownership of a TURF is desirable.

3.2.3 Security of Tenure

The harvest rights awarded through the TURF must be of significant duration and certainty to give the users the confidence to invest in the resource. It is through the creation of secure and durable rights that incentives for economic and ecological sustainably are facilitated. However, there is no template for TURF tenure. In Japan, tenure is indefinite, in England and Wales Regulating Orders awarding access to shellfish last between 10-20 years, while in Malta, TURF rights for dolphin-fish ( Coryphaena hippurus) last for only one year.

3.2.4 Spatial-Tenure

TURFs are typically associated with the water column over a specific marine substrate or identified with coastal landmarks. In Japan and Chile, the delimitation of territory is based upon historically important harvest communities that have dominated the coastal system. In Chile, local fishermen were organised into local organisations, around which the TURFs were formed. This reveals a traditionally strong socio-economic objective within the creation of TURFs as many were created specifically to protect small-artisanal fishing communities from the operation of larger, offshore vessels. In delimiting the spatial extent of the Solway TURF, the guiding objective should be the biological distribution of the cockle stocks.

3.2.5 Seasonal Tenure

TURFs can operate on a seasonal basis which allows extraction at certain times and closure at others underecological or socio-economic criteria. Closed seasons have been used in England, Wales and Ireland for cockle management which define the time period e.g. a certain number of weeks, days in a week, and hours/time per day, that cockles can be harvested. The 'open season' can be designed to coincide with peak market demand and to mitigate the loss of stocks to adverse weather conditions such as the arrival of frost. The advantage of a closed season is that it limits the overall harvest by reducing the number of fishing days available to fishers and protecting stocks at vulnerable life stages.

3.3 Making TURFs Work: Internal Management

Whilst open access fishery have been blamed for resource overexploitation, the implementation of regulations which are capable of producing biologically sustainable harvests do not automatically mitigate economic waste (Wilen et al, 2012). In this respect, TURFs are no different. Simply identifying a closed class of users does not prevent the group from dissipating the resources inside the TURF. To make them successful TURFs require strong internal rules and mechanisms that govern day-to-day operations including: 1) the allocation of the scientifically determined catch; 2) monitoring and enforcement and; 3) regulation of processing and distribution to ensure that the proper incentives are created which led to the production of a sustainable harvest. Where strong internal mechanisms have not been implemented, TURFs have failed (Cancino, 2007).

Current cockle management systems in the UK focus on a combination of time, effort and entry restrictions. In conjunction with the TAC, daily quotas, minimum sizes and limitations on entry are often used to ensure ecological limits are not exceeded and the combination of these practices can also work to ensure that the TAC is not spread across a large number of people, rendering individuals and fishery products at risk of rent dissipation i.e. economic inefficiency due to too many people trying to access the fishery. Based upon a review of best-practice models within UK cockle fisheries and global TURF systems (see annex 8 for an overview), the following options are viable for the internal management of the Solway fishery.

3.3.1 Gear restrictions

There are a range of methods for collecting cockles and depending on the substrate and cockle density ^[1] some methods are preferable to others, but hand gathering may be the most effective in meeting objectives for local employment and wealth redistribution. When developing a sustainable management model, no gear should be permanently discounted as flexibility in a system is desirable - different fishing gears offer different benefits as well as impacts - environmental, social and economic criteria should be used when considering the inclusion of alternative collection methods in a fishery.

3.3.2 Licence limitation

A licensing system is the most straightforward operational approach for granting/restricting users access to a fishery. In order to establish effort controls, a strict limit on the number of gatherers should be imposed. The number of licences issued would depend upon stock levels, which would allow managers to alter effort in line with stock fluctuations. This option would work to mitigate rent dissipation amongst users, as while a TAC can be set, if entry into the fishery is left open or effort is too great, the TAC will be spread amongst too many users. Conditions may be attached to licences, for example to include specific safety training and courses designed to inform upon local natural idiosyncrasies such as tidal movements and in most cases a fee is charged on an annual basis.

3.3.3 Minimum size limit

A minimum size limit is commonly established to protect the breeding population of a fish stock. In the case of cockles in the UK, this varies across the country (cockles are sexually mature at around 18 mm - this varies regionally) where cockles are not harvested until 24 mm in the English Solway (Lancaster, 2007), 30 mm in the Scottish Solway (Solway Shellfish Management Association, 2004; Davis et al, 2006) but a small minimum landing size ( MLS) - 16 mm is taken in the Thames (Kent & Essex IFCA, 2014). Cockles are easy to measure and controls on a MLS limit can be established relatively simply e.g. specifications on equipment such as a riddles to not exceed minimum size. Various management regimes are applied in different areas , and in relation to target markets. Some of these allow site specific and in season changes in MLS, providing they offer sufficient protection to breeding stock.

3.3.4 Individual (Daily) Quota Allocations

Individual quota ( IQ) allocations allow monthly or seasonal TAC to bedivided amongst licensed users within the organisation over a defined time period. Typically, IQs are allocated to users on a daily basis which has produced gains in terms of selectivity and quality as users do not have to competitively race to take the maximum share and can instead spend time improving the quality of the catch. Criteria through which daily IQs are allocated is normally at the discretion of the management group, which could take the form of: 1) an egalitarian division of the TAC, as is practised in some cockle fisheries in Wales; 2) allocation based on workers' productivity (to account for age, ability etc.) or; 3) historical performance in the fishery (when available). These approaches have worked to not only to protect individuals against wasteful competition, and a race to the beds (in some cases to the best beds through which juvenile year classes can be damaged), but daily quotas also allow the total harvest ( TAC) to be closely monitored and markets to be supplied with a steady volume of product.

3.3.5 Closed Areas

The option to close individual beds is an important flexibility that can be used for successful internal management. Cockle recruitment is unreliable and tends to be patchy which results in variability between individual bedsin terms of cockle density, recruitment and growth rates. These variations can affect the viability of different fishing methods and also impact on stock sustainability. Spatial flexibility is successful in Dundalk Bay, where fishing activity is not allowed in areas unless cockle density is greater than 4 m-2 (Hervas et al, 2008). In other fisheries such as the Wash and Morecombe Bay specific beds and in some cases, the whole fishery, is not opened unless there is a minimum spawning stock biomass. Alternatively, beds containing significant proportions of juvenile stocks may not be opened (in the Wash beds must contain 70% adult stock to be opened).

3.3.6 Rotation of Beds

While an IQ can mitigate against some perverse economic incentives, conflicts amongst users in terms of space can occur when the area within the TURF is not allocated amongst users. The rotation of beds could be implemented on an individual or a collective basis. Individual users could be allocated equal access across the TURF on a rotating basis to avoid favouritism and avoid competitive exploitation of areas of high productivity. Alternatively, collective rotation could take place within the area, with all users working within one areas at a time, and rotating en masse. This would protect against individual user conflict and ensure that all beds are exploited, and 'hot spots' are not over exploited at the expense of more marginal areas.

3.3.7 Harvest/revenue pooling

In some international TURF systems, the pooling of harvests is promoted. This approach can help to avoid internal conflict, non-compliance with internal rules and minimise risk for individuals. Pooling arrangements have been implemented in order to protect operators from receiving bad harvests in certain areas. The aggregated revenue is then redistributed amongst the group according to prearranged rules. The criteria for the re-distribution process could include worker productivity etc. in order to mitigate free-riding. Alongside minimising risk and conflict, the pooling mechanisms means that operators no longer have an incentive to beat competitors to better ground and intensify effort, thereby protecting against wasteful competition.