Moral Obligation in the Fisheries: When Conscience Is the Enforcer

by Tony Corey Rhode Island Sea Grant

One hundred twenty people came across a wallet like this; 80 returned it intact. 

The wallets were planted for a "Reader's Digest" survey reported in the magazine's December 1995 issue. "Losing" wallets in towns and cities across the country, the "Reader's Digest" editors watched finders' responses to see how honest people really are. The 67 percent honesty rate suggested to the editors that most people will do the right thing, spurred not necessarily by expectation of reward or praise, but simply by their own sense of morality. 

Looking at compliance and enforcement issues in fishery management, Jon Sutinen initially "considered only the financial perspective-that wealth enhancement was the purpose for doing something." Sutinen, Rhode Island Sea Grant researcher and University of Rhode Island resource economics professor, has been exploring compliance motivators since conducting Sea Grant­supported studies of lobster and quahog fisheries in the 1980s. Those studies took off from a premise advanced by Gary Becker, Nobel prize­winning University of Chicago economist-that compliance with laws stems from an expectation that losses or penalties will outweigh whatever gains might be achieved by breaking the laws. Applying that theory to fisheries, however, Sutinen had to revise his notions about financial motivators. 

His findings part company with Becker's theory in the study of the Massachusetts inshore lobster fishery that Sutinen conducted with then graduate student John Gauvin. "Our results showed that it would be in [the lobstermen's] financial interest to violate catch regulations. There was a chance to make a lot of money and only a fraction of a percent of getting nailed," Sutinen relates. "Even if they were caught, the penalty was relatively minor. Yet compliance was very high." That being the case, says Sutinen, "We began looking for nonfinancial reasons for compliance." 

Those nonfinancial reasons he identifies as the forces of conscience or innate morality-buoyed by peer pressure-that compel people to return a lost wallet or throw back an undersized fish even if no one would ever know the difference. 

There's always been a cultural ethic for conservation among fishermen," maintains Frank Mirarchi, a fisherman from Scituate, Mass. Historically, he says, fisheries have been self-regulating: Lobstermen, for example, came up with their own rules about minimum size, and "people who didn't abide by those rules usually had their gear cut off" by fellow fishermen. 

The lobster fishery is particularly strong in self-regulation and, yes, self-enforcement, concurs Phil Coates, director of the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries. "Lobstermen fish close together, they're on the water together, they tie up at the same dock. They can look over and see what the other guy is doing. So there is peer pressure, and there's a high level of compliance. 

"Certain things are sacred in each fishery," Coates continues. "In the lobster fishery, you don't take egg-bearers, you don't take shorts [undersized lobsters], and you don't mess with the other guy's gear." Trap limits, he concedes, leave a little more fudge room. But the truly inviolable rules have come out of the industry itself. Evolving on an ad hoc basis, as Sutinen points out, these rules "have merely been codified by the state via formal regulations." 

Grassroots regulation, in fact, is becoming a rallying point for the struggling fisheries. Sutinen speaks of it as a critical element in fishery policy. And Ted Ames, a gillnetter and former marine resources director for Maine's sustainable fisheries organization, the Island Institute, considers it the basis of "mores for governing the commons. If people don't buy into the regulations, it's all for nought anyway," he says. Having watched Northeast fisheries go from carefree plenty to husbanded dearth, he acknowledges that the downward spiral is the legacy of attention to profit over resource protection. 

"We had economics dictating ecology: The idea was that spawning stock was protected and the rest was excess and would be divided among the fleet," he says. "But the reality is, there is no excess." The hard fact of collapsed stocks has shifted fishermen's focus from 'How much can I hold in my boat for myself' to 'How can I sustain the resource.' "You have to protect juveniles and reproducing adults, you have to try to maintain a brood stock, and you have to protect habitat," Ames states bluntly. "The way to do that is to mark out a management unit and have everyone who wants to fish there take part in a management plan to protect and sustain the fishery." 

The northwest Atlantic groundfish fishery, more than many others, has felt the hurt of stock depletion, reduced fishing opportunities, and what some fishermen feel as the stranglehold of regulation. The rich fishing grounds that Ames fished 20 years ago, and his father fished before him, once ensured a credible living from cod, herring, flounder. Now, even if fishermen were relieved of the regulations they chafe against, they still couldn't revive the glory days of New England's fishing fleets: The fish simply are not there. 

"Originally, there were stocks of cod and haddock in every major bay along the coast," Ames recalls. "In the '30s and '50s, large boats fished the stocks, flattened them out, and then moved on. I see this pattern repeated over and over." Overcapitalization of the industry exacerbated the problem, bringing more and bigger boats and better technology into the fishery until "the size of the harvesting unit got so large that it destroyed local fish stocks." 

When a resource is held in common, as the fisheries are, each user is motivated to take what he can get before the resource is used up. The unfortunate reality of the free and common fishery is, "If I don't take it, someone else will." (See related story in Nor'easter (5)2:16-21.) That thinking, of course, accelerates the exhaustion of the resource. 

"To be able to utilize the natural resource, you have to maintain it," Fred Mattera says matter-of-factly. Mattera, captain of the Travis and Natalie out of Point Judith, R.I., once trawled for haddock, cod, and yellowtail flounder. Now, with those stocks protected and the fisheries closed, he concentrates mainly on squid and whiting. "You've got to look at the long term. You can't kill all the babies and expect the stocks to sustain themselves." 

Despite some disagreement with regulatory methods for achieving it, Mattera understands that keeping spawning stock at sustainable levels is a paramount consideration. He says it's human nature for people to strive for excess till they're forced into a corner, but "for the most part, people have got religion. They see that stocks have dwindled." Still, when compliance isn't uniform, noncompliance tends to seep back in. "When you're fishing next to a guy who's bringing in 1,000 pounds of flounders every tow, and you're bringing aboard 100 pounds every tow because you're a good guy, pretty soon you say, 'That guy is getting rich while I'm letting $6,000 go through my codend.' It forces people to short-circuit the rules." 

Sutinen acknowledges the dilemma. Lacking the tacit father-to-son "territorial rights" that characterize the lobster fishery, the finfish fishery is essentially a free-for-all. When regulations were starting to tighten up in the late '80s, "a legal trip could bring in $30,000; an illegal trip could bring in $90,000." Given that today's figures would be substantially higher, "there's much coercion to fish illegally." 

Whether or not fishermen yield to that inducement depends on survival, suggests Coates. If they are going to support conservation regulations, fisher-men need "either a favorable economic return or a belief that their actions are going to bring a positive response." As an example, Coates points to the striped bass fishery, in which compliance with stringent management measures has been high because fishermen can see that those measures are working. 

In the early 1980s, one reasonably encouraging year class of striped bass emerged from a period of dismal recruitment, explains Mark Malchoff, New York Sea Grant fisheries specialist. Regulators jumped to protect that population, annually "raising the bar" on minimum size till the minimum topped out at 36 inches. The strategy worked: In late 1995 the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission declared the striped bass population officially restored. Determining that the resource, if properly managed, could support a higher level of harvesting, the fisheries commission gave states several options for relaxing management measures. New York and New Jersey responded by reducing the minimum size for striped bass to 28 inches. "Yet quite a few [sportfishing] clubs argued for maintaining the status quo," Malchoff reports. Even though the 36-inch size limit effectively created a one-fish-per-season bag limit, people had gotten used to it. "For most people, the fishery had become strictly a catch-and release movement," Malchoff says. Besides, "Many of these folks lobbied long and hard for better management of striped bass and have therefore invested some of themselves in the restoration of this resource." 

It has not been such a happy story for the groundfish fishery. Estimates of cod, haddock, and flounder populations are still so low that the New England Fishery Management Council at one point contemplated reducing fishing days this year to 14. "When you get to that bottom line and the resources aren't responding as hoped," says Coates, "it's a matter of survival." 

"You need a long-term time horizon to be a conservationist," agrees Mirarchi. Facing, at best, 88 days at sea this year, Mirarchi says simply, "It's hard to be a conservationist when you don't expect to be in business next year. 

"The resources are stretched to the limit, and everybody's looking over their shoulder. If someone else is cheating, my sacrifice is for nothing. All I have is the economic cross," he says. "If you lose personally but gain nothing for the ecosystem while you're sacrificing...." He pauses, then adds pointedly, "It's difficult to be a hero." 

Sharing the sacrifice is more palatable when everyone who uses the resource has a say in its management. That's the basis of a comanagement effort initiated in Maine this past year (See related story in Nor'easter (8)2: 28-31). Rollie Barnaby, Maine/New Hampshire Sea Grant marine educator, has been working with lobstermen and regulators on this "bottom-up" management effort that divides Maine's coast into self-regulating zones. The arrangement puts decision-making power at the most local level, which for fishermen, is the individual, Barnaby notes. Because individual actions affect the resource, "Fishermen have to have the responsibility and the power to make these policies. When there's no ownership, there's no compliance. 

"Until you get all the stakeholders at the table," he elaborates, "the problem is always the other person." Environmentalists say the managers have failed to protect the resource. Managers point the finger at enforcement. Enforcement is labor-intensive and expensive and therefore admittedly scattershot. Regulators look to science for population numbers, but fishermen contend that science is too slow to verify what they already know. Even among fishermen, Barnaby says, "The big boats think the small boats are taking too much from the nursery areas, and the small boats think the big boats will put them out of business." 

Troubling, too, is the absence of a mechanism for prompt regulatory response to changing conditions. Mattera bemoans management's inability to adjust policy when fishermen can see that certain protected stocks are rebounding or that certain free-access areas are yielding almost nothing but juveniles. "If the management councils and scientists trust our information and start working fishermen into the regulatory process, they'll get compliance," he declares. 

Maine's comanagement program is doing this. Zone councils composed of local lobstermen elected by their peers have the authority to determine and enforce regulations regarding fishing days and number of traps permitted in their zones. Particulars are decided by referendum by a two-thirds majority vote, "ensuring that every fisherman has to commit himself to a course of action," says Ames. Not to concur is to jeopardize self-determination. As Barnaby puts it, "If you're given authority to make a decision and you can't make it, the authority moves to another level and someone else makes the decision for you. That's a powerful incentive to find a solution." 

Sutinen has seen the process work in other countries, most notably Japan. Making policy by consensus, Japanese fishermen may take years to come to agreement, but once they do, compliance is a given. Japan's regulations are no less stringent than those of other countries, but fishermen abide by them because their input gives the regulations a stamp of legitimacy, says Sutinen. "If an authority has legitimacy, people will go along with it even if they don't agree with it." 

Locally, though, fishermen see regulations as external and unresponsive to the complexity and variability of the fishery. Says Ames, "It's impossible for top-down management to impose 'Thou shalt' because they can't catch the sinners." With enforcement spotty and sanctions even more so, fishermen don't feel strongly bound to the regulations. Moreover, adds Coates, "The longer the trip, and the farther from shore fishermen get, the more the regulatory process becomes an abstraction. I don't believe fishermen on the water have the feeling that there might be enforcement action." 

Of course, there are always those who obey the rules just because it's the right thing to do. And there are always some who willfully violate rules, usually for economic gain. It is toward the latter that the limited enforcement resources should be targeted, Sutinen says. For the majority in the middle, he advocates another strategy-moral suasion. A combination of persuasion, education, and example, moral suasion appeals to our instinct to do what's right. This is the other component, along with user participation, that Sutinen sees as making up an effective fisheries policy package. 

Programs like Smokey the Bear and Keep America Beautiful have relied on moral suasion to modify people's attitudes and behavior. And while Sutinen concedes there is no hard scientific evidence that moral suasion works, there is anecdotal evidence-including these programs-that has some credence. Several governments are embracing the concept: Sutinen spent his sabbatical this past year developing guidelines and frameworks incorporating moral suasion and comanagement into fishery policies for Australia and New Zealand. 

"Almost every law responds to the notion that people want to do the right thing," he says. And stimulating voluntary compliance is less costly than deterrence through active enforcement. Sutinen comments that countries strapped for financial resources are finding they can save substantially by trusting this instinct and sharing fishery management with the users of the resource. He is persuaded that management and conservation efforts succeed when fishermen bear the full consequences for their actions and the health of their fortunes. 

Ames agrees. "If you create a governance structure where everyone has a voice-and everyone takes a hit when conservation efforts are made-fishermen will come up with something to control the technology and control the effort." He and Sutinen both believe an underlying reverence for the resource will bring the focus around from ownership to stewardship. 

"Fishing is a great tradition," concludes Mattera. "It wouldn't be right to let it go by. You reach a point where you have to back off. Fishermen realize that we have to back off, we have to manage ourselves, and let the resource restore itself." 

 
 Tony Corey is a Communicator for Rhode Island Sea Grant.