Fishing For Bright Spots in a World of Sick Reefs

Jun 15, 2016

Climate Central has an article quoting Suzi Kerr about international fish stocks: Fishing For Bright Spots in a World of Sick Reefs.

“The literature on common property resources would suggest that communities that are dependent on fisheries might care for them better, because the returns from successful cooperation are higher,” said Suzi Kerr, an economist at Victoria University in New Zealand who wasn’t involved with the research. “There will be a strong incentive to invest in developing local institutions.”

Kerr warned that more data and analysis will be needed to understand the relationships between fishing and environmental conditions and the size of a fishery that a reef supports. In particular, she said it’s often difficult to separate causes from effects.

“If you observe dependent communities associated with intact fisheries, this may not mean that dependence led to protection,” Kerr said. “You might also suspect that the communities that are still dependent on them are the ones who have, in the past, managed to sustain cooperation – they haven’t yet destroyed the resource.”