Unalaska, AK – Last week, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that it was seeking to promote "catch share" programs as a way of making America's fisheries more sustainable.

These programs move fisheries away from derby style management and instead assign individual allocations to boats, which they can then fish, lease, or sell. NOAA promotes catch share programs as a way of ending the race for fish. Glenn Merrill works for NOAA Fisheries, and he says that moving to catch share programs makes it easier to control the total harvest by the fleet and improves safety. While the total allowable catch may be the same, the fishery itself is more manageable.

"One of the advantages of moving to a catch share program is that if each fisherman is held to a specific enforceable limit, there's less incentive for them to go out and race for fish so rabidly," says Merrill.

Merrill also adds that fishermen are likely to reduce the amount of gear that they use and less prone to fish in marginal areas.

There are currently 14 catch share programs in the United States, and six of those are in Alaska. Crab rationalization is one of the more controversial catch-share programs, with some critics arguing that a switch to an individual quota system has substantially reduced the size of the fleet without bringing tangible benefits to most fishermen.

"We know within certain fisheries, where there was great expansion and effort, that once you implement a catch share program, there's likely to be some consolidation. And the crab fishery in particular was really characterized as a race for fish," says Merrill. "It became the deadliest catch' because there was this incentive for fishermen to put as many pots as they could on their vessels, to go out and fish as hard and fast as they could, even in poor weather conditions That incentive, once you have a portion of that annual catch limit assigned to you, is greatly diminished."

He adds that some catch share programs, like the rockfish pilot program in the Gulf of Alaska, have not seen any consolidation. He also notes that while NOAA may promote catch share programs, it's up to the North Pacific Fishery Management Council to decide whether to change the structure of additional Alaskan fisheries.

As an incentive toward implementing catch share programs, NOAA is partnering with the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation to award $2.2 million in grants to fishermen and communities considering the policy.