4 Rights over Fisheries and Fish

• Main Author: Scott, Anthony
• Format: Book Part
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford University PressOxford 2008
• Subjects: Iceland
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198286035.003.0004; https://academic.oup.com/book/chapter-pdf/44993171/book_5350_section_148129822.ag.pdf

Abstract This chapter follows fishing rights from primitive monopolies to rights granted over medieval sea-fisheries to fishery regulation to property-like licensing. Most medieval rights were for fresh-water fisheries in the ‘common of fishery’ a manorial sharing arrangement similar to those for the common fields. However salt-water private rights, mostly for tidal stretches of rivers or for shellfish, were abolished in the Magna Carta, to be succeeded by the English ‘public right of fishing’ in tidal waters. The chapter argues that there was neither a demand nor a supply of the exclusivity characteristic for creating a private sea-fishing property right. In the nineteenth century when powerful vessels began depleting ocean stocks, the ‘over-fishing problem’ was recognized and attracted government fishing rules and laws internationally. Such regulation began to include requirements for licenses, which were later limited in number, season, species, gear-types, and area. Thus they were given some enforced exclusivity. Their duration and transferability were also adjusted. The chapter recounts how governments transformed these limited licenses into individual catch quotas (ITQs), first in Iceland and New Zealand then worldwide. It examines fishermen-run fishing co-operatives and ‘TURFS’ for many-vessel and many-species fisheries. It notes their similarity to condominium-type shared rights.