Property Regime or Development Policy? Explaining Growth in the U.S. Pacific Groundfish Fishery

The Professional Geographer, 53(3) 2001, pages 384–397 © Copyright 2001 by Association of American Geographers.Initial submission, July 1999; revised submission, April 2000; final acceptance, June 2000.

Published by Blackwell Publishers, 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, and 108 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JF, UK.

Property Regime or Development Policy?

Explaining Growth in the U.S. Pacific Groundfish Fishery*

Becky Mansfield

The Ohio State University

Researchers often blame problems in fisheries on the property regime under which a fishery is practiced. Dependingon their perspective, researchers locate the cause of problems in either common property or open access regimes.However, because these approaches rely on the assumption of the “economically rational individual,” they obfuscatethe specific cultural, political, and economic practices that shape resource use. Analysis of the U.S. Pacific groundfishfishery shows that growth and subsequent problems in this fishery are the result of a state-led fisheries developmentprogram implemented through a series of national, regional, and local policies designed to extend sovereign controlto include ocean territory. These policies both created a climate of fisheries development and provided the means bywhich the fishery could grow. This analysis highlights the need to examine historic and geographic specificity to ex-plain resource use, rather than relying upon generalized models that posit a deterministic relationship between prop-erty regimes and socioenvironmental outcomes.

Key Words: common property, Exclusive Economic Zone, fish-eries development, fisheries policy, Pacific.

Introduction

n January of 2000, the U.S. Department ofCommerce declared the Pacific groundfish

fishery to be in a state of disaster (NOAA 2000).

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This announcement, which made fishing com-munities eligible for federal disaster relieffunds, came nine months after the NationalMarine Fisheries Service announced that severalimportant species of groundfish are severelyoverfished. Strikingly, five of these species arenow at less than fifteen percent of their pre-exploitation abundance (PFMC 1998, T-47;1999a). These announcements came after severalyears in which the Pacific Fishery ManagementCouncil (PFMC), the governmental manage-ment body, had already reduced allowablecatch of several key species; the Council hasnow further reduced allowable catch of thesefish by 50–80 percent (PFMC 1998, 1999a, b).Because the groundfish fishery is a mixed fish-ery, these cuts also limit the amount of otherspecies that can be caught, thus affecting theentire fishery.

While many claim that climate, not justoverfishing, has contributed to the current re-ductions in fish abundance, problems in the

fishery have actually been building for two de-cades. By the late 1980s, domestic fishing andprocessing capacity had surpassed that neces-sary to sustainably exploit these fish (PFMC1992). A recent report argues that “overcapital-ization is the single most serious problem fac-ing the West Coast groundfish fishery” (PFMC2000, 1). Overcapitalization leads to a variety ofother problems, including fisheries conflict andoverfishing. Throughout the 1990s, the ground-fish fishery was fraught with conflict as eachsector fought to maintain its access to the fishat the same time that the Council placed limitson the total catch. For example, sablefish fish-ers disagreed over whether trap fishers or trawlfishers should be allowed more fish (PFMC1994); the U.S. and Canada disagreed over howmuch whiting each country should take (Dornet al. 1999); and the shore-based processorscompeted with the factory trawlers for accessto whiting (PFMC 1993). The Council is alsoembroiled in conflicts of its own, as fishers andfisheries scientists often disagree over the sta-tus of individual species of fish and the infor-mation used in stock assessments. Further, tominimize the economic impact of management

* I extend my deepest thanks to my mentor, Dr. Carolyn Cartier, for her unwavering support and constructive criticism throughout the researchand writing process. For their comments on an earlier version of this article, I would also like to thank all of the participants of the conference onMarine Environmental Politics in the 21st Century, sponsored by the MacArthur Program on Multilateral Governance of the Institute forInternational Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Comments from two anonymous reviewers were also very helpful for clarifying myarguments. This work was supported in part by a fellowship from Resources for the Future and an International Trade and Development GraduateFellowship from the Oregon University System.

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and to reduce conflict, until the current crisisthe Council allowed fishers to continue tocatch several depleted species. The Council setcatch limits for groups of fish, which allowedsome species to be overexploited so that fisherscould continue to catch the more abundantspecies in the group (PFMC 1998, 1999a).

The problems in this fishery are particularlystriking because until the late 1970s the domes-tic Pacific groundfish fishery was relatively un-important. Small-scale fishers caught a fewnearshore species, mainly for local markets.Large-scale fishing was conducted by a fleet ofdistant-water vessels from the Soviet Union,which targeted mainly Pacific whiting, a spe-cies American fishers considered to be a “trashfish” because of a parasite that gives the fish asoft texture if it is not processed immediately(OCZMA 1985b). Starting in the late 1970s,the domestic fishery grew dramatically (see Fig.1). Between 1976 and 1991, domestic catch ofPacific whiting increased over one-thousand-

fold, so that today whiting accounts for over 75percent of the entire West Coast groundfishfishery (Dorn et al. 1999, 39; PFMC 1999b, T-1).Catch of other groundfish species doubled be-tween the mid-1970s and early-1980s, when itpeaked (PFMC 1982, 3–35; 1990, 11–41;1999b, T-1).

This article argues that both the growth ofthe Pacific groundfish fishery and the subse-quent problems of overcapacity and overfish-ing are the result of a concerted effort to de-velop this fishery. In 1976, the U.S. passed the

Fishery Conservation and Management Act of 1976

(

FCMA

), which simultaneously extended polit-ical jurisdiction over coastal waters from 12 to200 nautical miles and launched a massive fish-eries development program on the West Coast.In the late 1970s to early 1980s, a series of in-terrelated federal, regional, and state policiesworked to replace foreign fishing with domes-tic fishing, develop domestic and internationalmarkets for West Coast groundfish, and pro-

Figure 1 Total catch of groundfish on the Pacific coast, 1966–1998 (thousands of metric tons). After thecreation of the 200-mile zone in 1976, the U.S. domestic Pacific groundfish fishery rapidly displacedthe international fishery. Domestic catch of groundfish other than whiting expanded in the late 1970s andearly 1980s. Joint venture fishing for whiting expanded throughout the 1980s, and was replaced by a fullydomestic industry in 1991. Sources: PFMC (1982, 1990, 1999b); Dorn et al. (1999).

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Volume 53, Number 3, August 2001

vide financial assistance for the high-tech ves-sels, gear, and processing equipment that en-abled fishers and processors to exploit theresources of the 200-mile zone.

In making this argument, this study uses apolitical ecology framework, emphasizing thatto understand specific resource use patterns itis also essential to analyze how local situationsare influenced by processes beyond the localscale. As many political ecologists have high-lighted, state policies and practices often play avital role in shaping access to and use of naturalresources (Peluso 1992; Bryant 1997). Eco-nomic development policies in particular areoften central in creating socioenvironmentalproblems; these problems are rooted in the his-torical geography of development practice (Peetand Watts 1996). Using a framework that fo-cuses on how growth in the groundfish fisherywas actively produced through complex, multi-scalar processes, this article challenges one ofthe more common frameworks for analysis ofproblems in fisheries, that of property regimes.Depending on their perspective, property theo-rists claim that either common property or openaccess regimes inevitably lead to environmen-tal degradation. This article argues that theseproperty-oriented frameworks are unable to ad-dress the complexity of historical-geographicalprocesses that create resource-use problems.Property theorists overemphasize the importanceof property by positing a deterministic rela-tionship between certain property regimes andsocioenvironmental outcomes. This is not toargue that property is therefore irrelevant; rather,property must be viewed as one social institu-tion among many that influence resource-usesituations. Property structures may influenceregimes of access, but property does not deter-mine how people will use natural resources.

The next section briefly outlines differenttheoretical approaches to understanding prop-erty. It then shows that even divergent perspec-tives rely on similar assumptions about individ-ual behavior under different property regimes.The following section, on the history of devel-opment of the groundfish fishery, offers an al-ternative explanation for this fishery that doesnot rely on generalized models of behaviorgoverned by property regimes. Instead of ex-plaining this fishery in terms of open access orcommon property, it develops an explanationthat is rooted in the specificities of state fisher-

ies policy in the era of extended jurisdiction.Even though groundfish was managed as anopen access fishery during the period of devel-opment, the property regime is not the properfocus for analysis of growth and problems inthis fishery.

Explaining Fisheries

The Tragedy of the Commons?

The Council has attributed growth and prob-lems in the groundfish fishery to the prevailingopen-access regime, in which anyone couldfish. Writing in the early 1990s, the Council as-serted that “the underlying cause of [fisheriesproblems] is the ‘olympic [sic] system’ underwhich most of the fishery is currently managed.Under this system, there is a lack of clearly as-signed ‘property’ rights . . . for harvesting ofthe resource” (PFMC 1992, 2.13). Based onthis type of analysis, the Council adopted a lim-ited entry program in 1991, which was imple-mented in 1994 (PFMC 1992, 1995). Limitedentry changed the fishery from the open accessregime that prevailed during development ofthe fishery to a closed access regime. TheCouncil has also considered a form of individ-ual transferable quotas, which would privatizethe right to fish (PFMC 1994). The Council’sanalysis and solutions are based on “the tragedyof the commons,” which posits that environ-mental degradation inevitably occurs in a com-mons because individual incentives are notcommensurate with either sustainable use ofresources or economic efficiency. The tragedyoccurs because when an individual conservesfor tomorrow, that simply provides someoneelse with the resource today (Gordon 1954;Hardin 1968).

The tragedy of the commons has become thedominant model for fisheries managementaround the world. According to fisheries econ-omists, “one of the most robust results in eco-nomic theory is the theorem that common prop-erty resources will be overexploited, possibly tothe point of ultimate depletion” (Hannesson1991, 401). Similarly, the “lack of propertyrights has motivated fishermen to race eachother for the fish. This race usually leads to in-dustry overcapitalization and overexploitationof fishery resources” (Boyd and Dewees 1992,179). As the U.S. National Research Councilrecently explained in its report

Sustaining Marine


387

Fisheries

(NRC 1999, 71), the main cause of prob-lems in fisheries is “the ‘commons,’ where a lackof clear property rights leads to a difference be-tween individual and short-term interests onthe one hand and societal and long-term inter-ests on the other . . . Other problems, such asovercapitalization, derive from this one.”

Despite the apparently simple logic employedto explain resource degradation, and despite thewidespread use of the model, the tragedy ofthe commons does not accurately explain resourceuse. Over the past two decades, scholars havecriticized the model for ignoring the historicalcontexts from which specific resource-use situ-ations arise (see, e.g., McEvoy 1986; McCayand Acheson 1987b; Berkes et al. 1989; Feenyet al. 1990; Ostrom 1990; Bromley 1992; Robertsand Emel 1992; Dyer and McGoodwin 1994;Feeny, Hanna, and McEvoy 1996; Ruddle1998). These researchers have documented manycases in which people are able to successfullymanage resources within a commons. Further,concentrating on the diverse cultural and insti-tutional contexts of resource use, in recentyears researchers have focused on identifyingconditions under which the commons can bemade to work (see, e.g., Pinkerton 1989; Ostrom1990; Bromley 1992; Dyer and McGoodwin1994; Hanna and Munasinghe 1995; Hanna,Folke, and Mäler 1996).

The Tragedy of Open Access?

Nonetheless, this body of literature has notfully abandoned some of the basic tenets of thetragedy of the commons argument. A key con-ceptual framework that researchers use to chal-lenge the tragedy of the commons is the dis-tinction between

common property

and

open access.

According to these researchers, by portrayingthe commons as a free-for-all, tragedy of thecommons proponents “confuse common-propertyresources with open access—the absence ofproperty rights” (Berkes et al. 1989, 93). Tochallenge this view, theorists argue that prop-erty held in common has cultural and institu-tional rules regarding its use, while open accessis devoid of these rules (see, e.g., Ciriacy-Wantrupand Bishop 1975; McCay and Acheson 1987b;Berkes et al. 1989; Grima and Berkes 1989;Bromley 1992; Ostrom 1992; Emel and Roberts1995; Fairlie 1995; Feeny, Hanna, and McEvoy1996; Hanna 1997). “By equating commonproperty with open access, the tragedy-of-the-

commons approach ignores important social in-stitutions and their roles in managing the com-mons” (McCay and Acheson 1987a, 34). Thus,in this formulation, open access regimes becomethe proper locus of concern about environmentaldegradation arising from tragedy of the com-mons formulations. “The evidence supportsHardin’s argument concerning degradation dueto the inability to regulate access to resourcesheld as open access” (Feeny et al. 1990, 6).

However, by defining open access as the lackof social institutions, common property theo-rists simply replace the tragedy of the commonswith the “tragedy of open access.” Both of thesetragedy perspectives rely on the same assump-tion of the “economically rational individual”who maximizes profits in the short term; this isthe key to the tragedy, whether in a commonsor under open access. Common property theo-rists have expanded the original tragedy of thecommons framework by emphasizing that cul-tural norms and social institutions can close ac-cess to the commons, but this perspective stillassumes that the economically rational individ-ual is the norm in open access situations. In thisview, the individual profit motive dominateswhen unfettered by cultural constraints. How-ever, the existence of an economically rationalindividual is itself an unwarranted assumption.As Barnes has argued (1987, 1988, 1996; Barnesand Sheppard 1992), reliance on “homo eco-nomicus” is “based upon

reducing

the complex-ity of economic events at any time or place tothe

universal

trait of rational choice making”(Barnes 1996, 86; emphasis in original). Thisassumption of universality is untenable whenindividual actions are “grounded precisely inthe realities of place . . . The only mystery iswhy the theoretical category of the individualwas ever abstracted from the reality of spaceand place” (Barnes and Sheppard 1992, 16). Thisis not to challenge the idea that profit may beone motivation for exploiting natural resources,nor to deny that there are effects when resourcesbecome commodified and places are incorpo-rated into market economies. Rather, what isbeing challenged is the idea that economicrationality is natural and universal, rather thansomething that needs to be explained.

One way to bridge concerns about the out-comes of individual behavior and the type ofgeographical specificity that Barnes’ demandsis through an understanding of what Bourdieu

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(1977) terms the

habitus.

Simultaneously con-stitutive and normative, the habitus is knowledgethat is enduring yet unconscious, perceived asan objective truth and experienced as an objec-tive reality. The habitus appears universal be-cause our culturally specific positions remainunspoken, known yet not-known. Because thehabitus is unspoken and invisible, it is constructeduncritically through the everyday practices ofpeople, rooted in the specifics of history andplace. The outcome of individual behavior isthat the particular is normalized to seem uni-versal. By recognizing that individuals and theiractions are grounded in the complex realities ofspecific times and places, this perspective un-dermines the idea of rationality, which pre-sumes that individuals can perform the “god-trick” (Haraway 1988, 582) of transcending theirspecific circumstances to be objective about theworld. Thus, both of the tragedy perspectivesarise from particular yet unacknowledged world-views that depend upon false notions of uni-versal economic rationality as an explanation ofhuman behavior. Tragedy perspectives natural-ize the economically rational individual as some-thing outside of and prior to cultural norms,instead of treating it as something that is pro-duced through particular historical-geographicalprocesses. As political ecologists advocate, anal-ysis of individual behavior requires examininghow people’s actions articulate with larger-scaleprocesses (e.g., Vayda 1983; Blaikie 1985).

Recognizing that particular knowledges andpractices come to seem natural over time re-quires an approach that examines how theseknowledges and practices come to be, ratherthan one that assumes that they are universal.Applying this approach to understanding therole of property, instead of relying on assump-tions of universal and transcendent rationality toexplain problems and solutions in either com-mons or open access regimes, we should focuson how specific resource use situations areshaped by specific cultural, political, and eco-nomic practices. Focus on diverse practicesshifts analytical attention from static defini-tions of property (open access, commons, pri-vate, or state), to the ways in which access, op-portunity, motivation, and the like are createdand constrained. This focus also opens up thepossibilities of property relations, such thatmultiple regimes can coexist: e.g., state prop-erty managed as open access. This approach,

then, demands analysis of social relations, insti-tutions, and processes without conflating accesswith property or insisting upon deterministicrelationships between property regimes and en-vironmental outcomes (see Ribot 1998; Leach,Mearns, and Scoones 1999). This view of accessand property reverses the view of institutionsput forth within the common property litera-ture: rather than locating social institutions andpractices within common property but not openaccess, property itself is recognized as a type ofsocial institution. As Ribot (1998, 312) has ar-gued, “‘access’ does not replace the term ‘prop-erty’, but rather it encompasses property, put-ting property (and other forms of) rights intheir place among the whole array of mecha-nisms, structures and relations at work.” In thisview, property remains relevant, but instead ofseeing property regimes as either the containerfor or absence of social institutions, property isviewed as one type of social institution that mayinfluence regimes of access.

This theoretical approach to understandingthe relationship between human activity, prop-erty regimes, and environmental degradation issupported by recent arguments made by Mc-Cay and Jentoft (1998). Early pioneers on thebenefits of the commons, they (1998, 24) re-cently criticized this literature for focusing ongeneral models while not giving enough atten-tion to how “systems of resource use [are] em-bedded . . . within discrete and changing histor-ical moments, social and political relations, andenvironmental conditions . . . Numerous situa-tions of resource use and abuse are analyzed al-most entirely in terms of ‘common property’ or‘open access.’ This may be so even when prop-erty rights are not the issue at all.” This per-spective is echoed in a much earlier work byMarchak, Guppy, and McMullan (1987) onfisheries in British Columbia, in which the au-thors argue that focus on the commons is mis-placed and instead focus attention on state fish-eries management and economic relations.

Neither the tragedy of the commons nor thetragedy of open access is able to explain changesin the Pacific groundfish fishery because theyrely on generalities about rational individualbehavior, which is presumed to create a deter-ministic relationship between property regimesand socioenvironmental outcomes. The remain-der of this article analyzes place-specific politi-cal and economic processes to show that many


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factors beyond the property regime have shapedthe structure of this fishery. Through the casestudy of how the

FCMA

and subsequent poli-cies transformed the groundfish fishery in the1970s an 1980s, the article shows that, even inan open access situation in which there areproblems that property theorists ascribe to in-dividual decision making, the property regimeis not the underlying problem.

Development of the

Groundfish Fishery

Extended Jurisdiction and LocalEconomic Development

The Pacific groundfish fishery was profoundlyaffected by changes in the governance structureof the world’s oceans. Motivated in part to ben-efit domestic fishers, in 1976 the U.S. govern-ment unilaterally created its 200-mile ExclusiveEconomic Zone (EEZ), and claimed all rightsto control fishing activities within this new ter-ritory.

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This declaration came toward the endof decades of global negotiations concerningpolitical jurisdiction of ocean space. Debates overthe political status of the oceans revolved inparticular around the desire of coastal states todevelop the resources of the coastal zone. Thethree UN Conferences on the Law of the Sea(1958, 1960, 1973–1982), following the 1945Truman proclamation asserting U.S. controlover resources of the continental shelf, werespecifically aimed at balancing territorial claimsto ocean space with global interests in main-taining access to the high seas (Steinberg 1999).By the time the UN Law of the Sea Conventionwas concluded in 1982, a 200-mile economiczone was customary international law.

3

Extendedjurisdiction by all states enclosed about 30 per-cent of the world’s marine area and 95 percentof the world’s fish catch, with the U.S. gainingmore marine territory than any other countryin the world (Nadelson 1992; Woodworth 1994).

Extending the rhetoric of sovereign nationalidentity into the oceans under the rubric ofeconomic protection for hard-working localfishers, the goal of the U.S. government withinthe EEZ was Americanization of offshore fish-eries. To achieve this goal, the governmentlaunched “a national program for the develop-ment of fisheries which are underutilized or notutilized by United States fishermen,” so thatthe EEZ could generate “the greatest overall

benefit to the Nation” and provide economicopportunities in coastal communities of the Pa-cific Northwest (

Fishery Conservation and Man-agement Act of 1976

, 332, 335).While the rhetoric of Americanization en-

couraged fishers nationwide to fish, there weredifferent forms of Americanization in differentregions of the country. In New England, wherea well-developed domestic fishery was compet-ing with international fishing fleets, American-ization was a matter of removing competitors whowere blamed for depletion of local fish stocks(Stencel 1992). In contrast, on the West Coastthere was no domestic fishery that could easilydisplace Soviet factory trawlers, so American-ization was also a process of fishery development.

Local economic conditions influenced theseregional differences. The center of the Pacificgroundfish fishery is the coastal region of Oregon.Because its economy has traditionally beenbased on natural resources and tourism, this re-gion has faced a chronic problem with total andseasonal unemployment (Oregon EmploymentDivision 1988–1989, 1990–1991; PFMC 1993).During the mid-1970s, as the

FCMA

was beingdrafted, there was a permanent downturn in boththe timber industry and the high-value salmonand shrimp industries, causing several coastalcounties to experience higher rates of unem-ployment than ever before (Radtke and Davis1988; Oregon Employment Department 1993).Because of its reliance on a few declining indus-tries and its perpetually peripheral status, thecoastal region became the target of post-

FCMA

state and national fisheries development strate-gies. Oregon Congressman Jim Weaver statedthat “the fishing industry is critical, particularlynow, when the wood products industry is in [a]deep, deep slump” (House 1980a, 42). He pro-posed that “the development of a healthy pro-cessing industry for [groundfish] could signifi-cantly alter the employment situation in everycoastal county from northern California to theOlympic peninsula” (House 1978, 557). Politi-cians and residents alike viewed “underutilized”species of fish as a possible salvation for the re-gion because they could provide employmentin fishing, processing, marketing, and other fish-related industries.

Fisheries Development Policy

The idea of sovereign control over territorycombined with the promise of jobs provided the

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context within which individual fishers alongthe coast made decisions about fishing activi-ties. This atmosphere was translated into ac-tion via the

FCMA

, subsequent federal policymeasures, and series of diverse fisheries devel-opment plans over the next decade (e.g.,

FisheryConservation and Management Act of 1976

; Combs1979;

American Fisheries Promotion Act of 1980

;PFMC 1982; WCFDF 1982; OCZMA 1985a).This section of the article addresses three in-terrelated categories of policy aimed at fisheriesdevelopment. First, the government curtailedforeign fishing in the EEZ while encouragingdomestic use of these waters. Second, the gov-ernment was actively involved in developingdomestic and international markets for Pacificgroundfish. Third, the government expandedfinancing for both the harvesting and processingsectors of fisheries for “underutilized” species.

Kicking out the foreigners

To develop amechanism for removing foreign fishing fleetsfrom the EEZ, Congress deployed “optimumyield,” defining it for maximum flexibility as theyield of a species of fish that provides the greatestlong-term economic, social, and ecological ben-efits. Foreign fishing was allowed only if therewas a surplus in optimum yield. To eliminateforeign fishing and simultaneously facilitatedomestic fishing, the Council (1982, 1.1) setoptimum yield as “all fish which are harvestedunder regulations adopted by the PFMC,” ratherthan setting a specific, numerical optimum yieldfor each individual species. This immediatelyeliminated foreign fishing, because the optimumyield for Pacific groundfish was simply theamount of fish domestic fishers caught.

4

By de-fining optimum yield in this way, the Council(1982, EIS.14, 20) worked to “create a climatefor controlled growth and minimal disruptionof the domestic fishery. . . . [If] optimum yieldsare assigned to logical groupings of species, thenfishermen can try to harvest the maximum yieldfrom the group, even though one species in thegroup may be fished at slightly higher than itsoptimum yield or another slightly lower.” Thusthe Council encouraged overfishing of less-abundant species in the name of fisheries devel-opment. These flexible definitions of optimumyield provided the baseline for managing thefishery to benefit the domestic fishery whileeliminating the international fishery.

Marketing

While the federal government andthe Council used Americanization to activelyencourage West Coast fishers to expand theirfishing activities, the local industry faced manybarriers to expansion, including lack of marketsfor West Coast groundfish (House 1979;

PacificFishing

1980a; WCFDF 1982). In the late 1970sPacific groundfish was sold mainly in local, freshfish markets in major West Coast cities (

PacificFishing

1980a). One reason for lack of marketswas that Pacific groundfish varieties were notwell received domestically, where they were per-ceived to be inferior to fish from New England,such as cod (WCFDF 1982). To address thelack of consumer familiarity with Pacific ground-fish, local fisheries organizations tried to stimu-late groundfish markets through programs toeducate retail fish sellers and consumers. Forexample, the Pacific Coast Fisherman’s WivesAssociation started a seafood marketing pro-gram, funded by the federal government, to teachgrocery store meat department managers howto buy, handle, and display their fish to main-tain quality and increase retail sales of WestCoast fish (

Pacific Fishing

1980b). In 1979, theOregon legislature tried to further stimulatedomestic markets by making it legal to call fishby different names for marketing purposes. Thestate renamed rockfish species as “snapper” andsablefish as “butterfish” or “black cod.” To breakinto the already developed market for “whit-ing” (in reality a number of species from severaldifferent regions), the state renamed hake as“Pacific whiting,” a name change that was ap-proved by the federal government.

The government also actively supportedmarket development by facilitating joint ven-ture operations, which provided a market fordomestic fishers by allowing them to sell theircatch to foreign processing vessels, mainly fromthe Soviet Union, stationed within the EEZ.Under these nonequity joint venture arrange-ments, American fishers would contract withspecific Soviet processors to deliver their catchimmediately to the processing vessels withoutever bringing the fish to shore. After passage ofthe

FCMA

, local fishers rapidly developed theircapacity to catch groundfish, especially Pacificwhiting, but coastal processing plants did notas quickly expanded their capacity to processgroundfish (House 1978). Testifying to Con-gress about the lack of domestic processingcapacity, one fisher stated “We invested money


391

in this fleet and we invested heavily and weinvested in good boats, and none of us didthis without attempting to assure that therewould be a market. . . . The [domestic] marketshave not come forth” (Barry Fisher in House1980b, 397).

Domestic processors, however, felt that theywere put at a disadvantage by foreign competi-tion in the form of joint ventures. The fleet ofSoviet factory trawlers had a substantial advan-tage, especially in the whiting fishery, in whichthey could rapidly process and freeze the fishand thereby prevent the parasite from turningthe fish to “mush” (House 1978; OCZMA 1985b,52). Further, domestic processors complainedthat foreign enterprises had an unfair advantagebecause they did not have to comply with U.S.environmental and labor laws, such as mini-mum wage (House 1977). Processors claimedthat they would never be able to raise the capi-tal to build local processing plants and market-ing operations if they faced foreign competi-tion (House 1977, 1978). One processing plantowner testified that “the minute there was con-sideration by the council of allowing the Rus-sians [sic] to process, the interest . . . on behalfof . . . [Arthur] Treachers . . . [and] McDonalds. . . absolutely died” (Ted Bugas in House 1978,125). The executive vice president of the Na-tional Fisheries Institute (Lee Weddig in House1977, 213) argued that joint ventures wereagainst the intent of the

FCMA

because theydid not “utilize the entire industry—producer—processor—marketer.”

The federal government mediated betweenfishers and processors in a 1978 amendment tothe

FCMA

known as the “Processor PreferenceAmendment” (

Fishery Conservation and Man-agement Act Amendment of 1978

). Combiningpractical needs for fishery development of “un-derutilized” species on the one hand with na-tional sovereignty and domestic control over newterritory on the other, Congress allowed jointventure fishing to continue, but only if proces-sors were unable to show that they had both the

capability

and the

intent

to process all the fishcaught by domestic fishers. Thus, the govern-ment gave the processing sector priority to thefish within the EEZ. The federal governmentagain expressed its support for joint ventures in1980. That year, it placed sanctions on the So-viet Union for its invasion of Afghanistan andcurtailed all direct fishing by the Soviet fleet.

However, U.S.-Soviet joint ventures were al-lowed to continue because of the opportunitiesthey provided to American fishers (House 1980b).As Representative Les AuCoin (House 1980b,382) argued, “cancellation of the United States-Soviet [joint venture] is an example of an inef-fective sanction that is just dripping with sym-bolism but disastrously off-target.” The Councilalso played a critical role in facilitating jointventures by making an exception to their non-numerical definition of optimum yield. Theyset a

numerical

optimum yield for whiting, thusmaking foreign involvement possible, citing astheir rationale that joint ventures would benefitlocal fishers (PFMC 1982).

Joint ventures were also the main beneficia-ries of the “fish and chips” portion of the 1980American Fisheries Promotion Act, in whichthe federal government used the desire of othercountries to continue fishing in U.S. waters asleverage to open international markets forAmerican fish products. Under this portion ofthe act, the government used eligibility criteriafor international fishing permits to compelcountries that wanted to fish in the EEZ tocontribute to the development of U.S. domesticfisheries in return. These criteria included theextent to which a country reduced import bar-riers, bought U.S. fish, invested in the U.S.fishery, or transferred technologies (

AmericanFisheries Promotion Act of 1980

, 3297–98). Coun-tries such as the Soviet Union saw joint ven-tures as the best means of conforming tothe fish and chips policy, and by the late 1980sU.S. fishers had joint ventures for Pacificwhiting with processing fleets from Japan, SouthKorea, China, Poland, Greece, and Bulgaria, aswell as the Soviet Union (WCFDF 1982, 7.6;PFMC 1990).

According to the Council (1992), joint ven-tures were a critical stage in the overall devel-opment of the groundfish fishery because theyallowed for a transition between foreign anddomestic exploitation of the 200-mile zone (seeFig. 1). Whiting joint ventures started in 1978with just two fishing vessels, expanding to overforty vessels by the late 1980s (PFMC 1990,11–32). Throughout their existence, from 1978to 1990, joint ventures accounted for more than95 percent of total domestic harvest of whiting(PFMC 1996, 31). Further, joint ventures en-couraged fishers to invest in new fishing tech-nologies and vessels used not just in the whiting

392


fishery, but also in other new offshore ground-fish fisheries (

Pacific Fishing

1981; Shafer 1981).By providing wholesale markets, joint venturessupplied incentive to build new fishing vessels,capital to maintain and upgrade those vessels,and opportunities that fishers used to obtain fi-nancing for the new groundfish fleet. All jointventure fishing ended in 1990 when the firstAmerican factory trawlers, which had full pro-cessing capacity, entered the whiting fishery.Despite the lack of domestic processing capac-ity up to this point, joint ventures allowed do-mestic fishers to turn groundfish into a lucra-tive business.

Financing fishing

The first vessel built forthe whiting fishery, Barry Fisher’s

The Lady ofGood Voyage

, cost $1.2 million to build and outfit(House 1980b, 418). The average cost for a newwhiting vessel was $1–3 million, and factorytrawlers cost $18–22 million (WCFDF 1982,8.6; PFMC 1993, 34). Vessel costs includednew technologies such as larger nets, strongerand faster winches to raise the nets, and newfish finding gear, such as sonar and net record-ers, that were essential elements of the new off-shore fishing enterprises (

Fishermen’s News

1978). Because of these high costs, governmentfinancing programs became a major emphasis offisheries development, both nationally and locally.Access to government-backed credit was a cen-tral factor in the growth in the number and typeof vessels in the groundfish fishery (OCZMA1985b); a large majority of Pacific groundfishvessels constructed in the late 1970s were fundedthrough federal programs (House 1980a).

There were several types of government-backed financing available to the fishing indus-try. Production credit associations (PCAs) pro-vided direct loans for fishing vessels. In addi-tion, the National Oceanic and AtmosphericAdministration (NOAA) offered two programsfor financial assistance. The Fishing Vessel Ob-ligation Guarantee (FVOG) helped fishers ac-quire expensive loans for which they would nototherwise qualify by offering federal guaran-tees on private loans. The Capital Construc-tion Fund (CCF) was a tax-deferral programinto which fishers deposited deferred taxes andfrom which they then withdrew funds for vesselconstruction or reconstruction. Finally, fundsfor fisheries research and development wereavailable through Saltonstall-Kennedy grants.

All of these programs were expanded andstrengthened after 1976 to promote West Coastfisheries development. In 1971, the governmenthad extended to fishers loans from the PCA,originally targeted only at farmers. In 1978, theloan repayment time for fishers only was ex-tended from seven to fifteen years (

Public Law95-443 of 1978

). By 1980, PCAs had a greaternumber of loans with fishers than farmers andwere the primary financiers of vessels in theWest Coast region (House 1980a, 205;

PacificFishing

1980c).The NOAA programs were used extensively

by groundfish fishers in the late 1970s and 1980s.In 1978, the government altered the FVOGprogram to make it easier to acquire large loansfor catching and processing “underutilized”species by increasing the percentage of the loanthat the government guaranteed from 75 per-cent to 87.5 percent of the total loan (

PublicLaw 95-257 of 1978

). Congress further amendedFVOG in the American Fisheries PromotionAct to include fishery facilities, including land,equipment, and buildings for processors anddistributors (

American Fisheries Promotion Act of1980

). By 1980, NOAA had a backlog of FVOGapplications from the Pacific Northwest, andby the late 1980s, 75 percent of CCF agreementswere with fishers from Oregon, Washington,and Alaska (

Pacific Fishing

1980c; PFMC 1992,5.9). According to the West Coast FisheriesDevelopment Foundation (WCFDF) (House1981, 219), “when the combined Capital Con-struction Fund and Loan Guarantee package ofbenefits was made available to the harvestingsector, it went far toward modernizing and in-creasing the capacity of our fishing fleet.”

Saltonstall-Kennedy grants are given for“research and development projects addressedto any aspect of United States fisheries, includ-ing . . . harvesting, processing, marketing, andassociated infrastructures” (

American FisheriesPromotion Act of 1980

, 3288). The AmericanFisheries Promotion Act expanded access to thisform of funding by broadening the list of thoseeligible to receive these grants, from just thefederal agencies to include individuals, fisherydevelopment foundations, universities, and pri-vate organizations. The WCFDF was foundedas a conduit for Saltonstall-Kennedy funds, andreceived approximately $800,000 per year to“promote and develop seafood” through techni-cal projects such as “exploratory fishing, devel-


393

oping products, processing equipment develop-ment, helping develop markets, and promotingthe products of the West Coast industry” (Yuskaand Ridlington 1985, 4–5).

Conclusion

Whereas in the early 1980s the federal govern-ment provided funds to build new fishing ves-sels and promote a new fishery, today—justtwenty years later—the fishing industry is seekingfederal funds to buy back and decommissiongroundfish vessels (

Oregonian

2000). These con-temporary problems in the Pacific groundfishfishery cannot be blamed simply on the out-comes of rational individuals acting within anopen access or common property environment.While fishers played a large role in the expansionof the Pacific groundfish fishery—making newopportunities real by catching fish—their ac-tivities alone did not create this fishery. Rather,starting with the

FCMA

in 1976, the federalgovernment created a national climate of fish-eries development that led to regionally orienteddevelopment programs. By defining optimumyield, allocating foreign fishing and processingpermits, expanding markets, and providing fi-nancing for the industry for “underutilized” spe-cies, national and regional policies served tocontain foreign fishing and create the meansby which the domestic groundfish fisherycould grow. At the most basic level, this fish-ery could not have developed without the exis-tence of the state-controlled EEZ. The structureof the fishery—the problems as well as thesuccesses—is fundamentally tied to U.S. fisherypolicy, which was developed in the context ofinternational focus on marine resources as asource of national economic development. Thegovernment dedicated itself to Americanizingthe West Coast fishery for what can no longerbe called underutilized species.

Even prior to the creation of the EEZ, theterritory encompassed by the 200-mile zonehad been open to all U.S. fishers. However, itwas not until the U.S. launched its American-ization program that domestic fishers enteredthese waters with the intent of catching ground-fish. The growth of this fishery and subsequentproblems of overcapitalization, conflict, andoverfishing are not explained by the fact thatthis region of the coastal ocean was managedunder an open access regime both before and

for almost twenty years after extended jurisdic-tion. Access to groundfish on the part of U.S.fishers required much more than access to theterritory; access required development of anentire infrastructure oriented toward fisheriesexploitation. This infrastructure of laws, regu-lations, fishing technology, domestic and inter-national markets, funding sources, processingcapacity, and so forth required active interven-tion on the part of the U.S. government, actingwith other state, regional, and local agencies.This intervention was carried out to implementpolitical control over marine territory and eco-nomic development of marine resources. Fish-eries development policy—not the open accessproperty regime—made it possible for fishersto enter and expand the groundfish fishery.

Thus, it is of critical importance that we ex-amine the full implications of the global exten-sion of state jurisdiction over the oceans. Thenew geography of the oceans, in which coastalstates have gained new territory, has creatednew possibilities for resource exploitation as wellas resource management. By defining sover-eignty over EEZs primarily in economic terms,extended jurisdiction has not only encouragedindividual states to take active control over oceanterritory, but has also become an additional in-centive to use this territory for domestic eco-nomic development. Individual states now playa central role in determining how to use marineresources, even though this role is not alwaysrecognized. In the case of the Pacific ground-fish fishery, the new national territory and pol-icies designed to control this territory activelytransformed a small, nearshore fishery into a largeand economically important industry depen-dent upon the resources of the 200-mile zone.

Attention to the dynamics of state controlover ocean space turns away from generalizedaccounts about the relationship between prop-erty regimes and socioenvironmental outcomes.Territorial control, in the form of political juris-diction of the oceans, is central to this story offisheries development, but at the same time,the fishery was managed as an open access fish-ery. That the fishery was open access does notmean that it was devoid of social institutions,cultural norms, political interventions, and soforth. Common property researchers posit thecommons as being culturally rich, with diversecustoms and political-economic histories. In theirempirical work, these researchers have offered

394


complex, place-based analyses of both success-ful commons and the ways that state policies,economic development, and the like can disruptlocal practices to create socioenvironmentalproblems. It is precisely because of the richnessof this literature on the commons that it is allthe more troubling that open access is positedas being devoid of the same type of complexity.When open access regimes are defined as thelack of social institutions and successful culturalnorms, theorists fall back on problematic as-sumptions about the economically rational in-dividual. This “tragedy of open access” placesblame for problems on the actions of individualswhile obscuring the range of practices that shapeand influence resource use.

To identify the causes of problems in resource-use situations, and to develop viable solutions, itis necessary to move beyond generic models ofhuman behavior and property regimes. Instead,it is important to recognize that all types of prop-erty relations are complexly situated within avariety of social relations, which together influ-ence access to and use of natural resources.

j

Notes

1

In this article, I used the terms “Pacific” and “WestCoast” to refer only to the parts of the PacificOcean adjacent to Washington, Oregon, and Cali-fornia; this is the common definition in U.S. fisher-ies management. Alaskan fisheries are categorizedseparately as the “North Pacific.” The term “ground-fish” refers to a wide range of bottom-dwelling fish,of which there are over eighty species in the Pacificgroundfish fishery.

2

The 200-mile zone was called the Fishery Conser-vation Zone until 1983, when President Reaganrenamed it the Exclusive Economic Zone to reflectthe new international law of the sea.

3

Like the United States, many other countries uni-laterally declared their EEZs before the conclusionof the law of the sea negotiations. For example, by1977 Canada and the Soviet Union (the U.S.’s fishingneighbors in the northern Pacific) had declaredtheir own EEZs.

4

The Council made an exception for Pacific whiting,for which an international fishery continued (seethe following section on developing markets).

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BECKY MANSFIELD is an Assistant Professor inthe Department of Geography at the Ohio StateUniversity, Columbus, OH 43210. Her researchinterests include cultural economic and political eco-nomic geography, nature-society relations, and thegeography of the oceans.

Property Regime or Development Policy? Explaining Growth in the U.S. Pacific Groundfish Fishery

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