An Experimental Analysis of a Points-Based System for Managing Multispecies Fisheries

Abstract

An industry group has proposed a novel system for managing the Northeast Multispecies Fishery. Each harvester would be endowed with a budget of points, and each species would have a “point price,” or number of points that must be paid out of his budget when landing that species. By varying the point prices throughout the season, management could redirect effort across species. This paper presents a benchmarked experimental testbed of this management system, and shows that harvesters do respond to point prices, which can be chosen to support harvest of most of the allowable catch of each species without severely over-harvesting any of them.