| Summary: | The open access harvesting of the invasive but commercially valuable species, C. Opilio (Snow Crab) in the Barents Sea generates a positive externality by slowing the spread of the species into sensitive benthic ecosystems. Reclassification of the species to a ‘sedentary species’[1] shifts the regulatory environment so that the crab no longer resides in international waters but is now part of the extended Russian Continental shelf, subject to Russian harvesting regulations. We argue that, as the Russians have maintained a closed, limited experimental fishery for C. Opilio, the positive externality of the open access harvesting will disappear, hastening the spread of the crab. The spread to new areas has both known ecosystem and commercial fishery risks and unknown risks, particularly to uncertain ecosystem values. Therefore, not only will knowable damages accrue more rapidly, there is less time for research and evaluation of ecosystem risks and damages about which we currently have poor understanding. The question of whether the capture of resource rents by Russian fishing interests is greater than global losses from the spread of the invasion westward is an open one complicated by standard bio-economic concerns regarding profitability in fisheries but also by several intriguing property rights and game theoretic questions. As the global fishing commons has shrunk over the past half century, we have seen how the details matter in determining the net benefits of what simply applied economic theory would define as a clear boon. We delineate and examine this complex story here in order to bring awareness to dimensions of commons management that the literature has yet to address.
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