K. Beadle TURF-Reserves Designing Effective Area- Based Catch Shares

What is a TURF-Reserve? Exclusive fishing privileges in a defined area Usually allocated to Cooperatives Accountable to catch limit or other controls on fishing mortality No-take reserve provides additional protections for fish stocks Territorial Use Rights for Fishing (or TURFs) are a type of catch share in which secure, exclusive fishing privileges in a defined area are allocated to groups or individuals They are usually allocated to Cooperatives, a term we use generally to refer to any organized group of fishermen The Cooperative is responsible for complying with a catch limit or other controls on fishing mortality within the TURF In a TURF-Reserve, a no-take reserve is located within or near the TURF to provide additional benefits

Why TURFs? Enable local management Compatible with other spatial management Multi-species / ecosystem approach Benefit local communities Practical or accepted for some fisheries There are various reasons people have chosen to use TURFs to manage their fisheries Allow for local management Compatible with other spatial management (marine protected areas) They can be appropriate for a multi-species or ecosystem-based management approach They can provide direct benefits to local fishing communities And in some fisheries, TURFs may align well with people’s customs and so may be a more practical approach in these contexts

No-take reserves When TURFs are paired with no-take reserves Fishermen in the TURF benefit from the no-take reserve Fishermen are incentivized to enforce the no-take reserve When TURFs and no-take zones are combined, there can be additional biological benefits for the managed species, and there can be benefits for fishermen Fishermen within TURFs receive direct benefits from spillover from no-take zones As a result they are incentivized to protect the no-take zone So there is a two-way positive feedback where productive no-take zones benefit the fishery and responsible fishing practices and enforcement support the productivity of the no-take zone K. Beadle

No-take reserves No-take reserve  TURF TURF  No-take reserve We’ve gotten some questions about whether the reserve should come first or the TURF, and the answer is that the order depends on the local context The no-take zones can drive implementation of TURFs as fishermen want to directly benefit from the closures Or, fishermen who have a TURF may be incentivized to implement no-take zones K. Beadle

How are TURFs designed to meet fishery goals? We see TURFs all around the world, and they are customized to the local context to meet biological, economic, and social goals And there are key features that we look for in the design to support sustainable fisheries, and these features are captured in our SEASALT mnemonic

Secure Exclusive All Sources Scaled Accountable Limited Transferable A TURF-Reserve may not have all of these attributes, but the more they do have, the more likely they are to be successful I’m going to walk through each of the attributes and explain how they are applied in TURFs

Secure Exclusive All Sources Scaled Accountable Limited Transferable The Security and exclusivity in a TURF are what ensure fishermen have a long-term stake in their fishery These features are what make catch shares inherently different from other types of management Because they have long-term privileges, fishermen have a direct incentive to protect their fish stocks

Secure Exclusive All Sources Scaled Accountable Limited Transferable It’s important for any fishery management approach to address all of the significant sources of fishing mortality And in the places we will be working as part of the fish Forever project, fishing mortality will probably result from both commercial and subsistence fishing In some cases, there may also be multiple fleets that need to be incorporated in to the program So when you think about designing a TURF at a particular FF site, it’s important to keep this in mind

Secure Exclusive All Sources Scaled Accountable Limited Transferable Because TURFs are a spatial management approach, it’s really important that they be appropriately scaled to the biological and social characteristics of the fishery

TURFs are scaled appropriately Pescadores de Vigía Chico, Punta Allen, México Japanese Common Fishing Rights System TURFs can be implemented individually, or there may be systems of TURFs And this spatial design can depend on a variety of biological and social factors We’ll look at two examples of TURF systems that are designed to be appropriately scaled – the Punta Allen spiny lobster fishery in Mexico and the system of TURFs that covers all species along the entire coast of Japan flickr/mikemedia flickr/dmytton

Scaled Scaling according to the biology of the stock is important for sustainability There are two dimensions of scale that are important for TURF design – biological and social Scaling according to the biology of the stock is really important for sustainability If the spatial range of targeted species goes beyond the boundaries of a TURF, as shown here, fisheries management within the TURF may not be effective because fishing activity outside the TURF can interfere with sustainability Additionally, fishermen within the TURF don’t have the full incentive to protect the stock because their good practices may be undermined by unsustainable fishing outside the TURF

Scaled Scaling according to social factors affects incentives Scaling according to social factors affects incentives too If fishermen within a TURF aren’t part of one cohesive group, they might lack the ability to organize and participate in managing their TURF I will think about these two dimensions—biological and social--in terms of what I call a “functional unit”

Biological functional unit A self-sustaining fish stock I’ve defined a biological functional unit as a self-sustaining fish population or sub-population. This unit reflects the appropriate biological level for managing the resource based on the spatial distribution of the species It may be small for some species, such as abalone But it may be much larger for mobile species

Social functional unit A group of people with the ability to organize A social functional unit is a group of people who have a capacity to organize and participate in managing their fishery It may be a cooperative or other organization of fishermen; they may share common gears or fishing grounds; or they may all be from the same community

Sometimes design is simple In some fisheries, the fishing area of a group overlaps with the spatial range of a stock, and there is a one-to-one ratio between the social functional unit and the biological functional unit This is most likely to occur in remote areas where communities are isolated and for benthic species, such as abalone

Punta Allen Spiny Lobster Cooperative, México The Punta Allen Spiny Lobster fishery is an example There is a single highly organized cooperative that targets a single isolated lobster stock within an enclosed bay This is a fairly simple design because the biological and social functional units are congruent The TURF covers the whole biological functional unit (Sosa Cordero & Ramirez Gonzalez 1993)

But most fisheries are more complex But most fisheries are more complicated, with multiple overlapping biological and social functional units To address this challenge, you can create networks of TURFs based on the most appropriate social functional unit for managing the fishery with coordination across TURFs to address biological needs

Japanese common fishing rights system The common fishing rights system in Japan is a well-known example of this concept In this system, cooperatives are defined geographically because fishermen have traditionally been organized in this way; so, while there are many different types of fishermen that may be defined as many different social functional units, the most appropriate social functional unit for managing the fishery was to have spatially-defined cooperatives The cooperatives are allocated territorial use rights for all species in their coastal waters, including invertebrates and mobile finfish DTPs (Yamamoto 1995)

Scaled Coordination between TURFs can solve mismatches between biological and social functional units By having a network of responsibly managed TURFs, this system ensures that all stocks in coastal waters are managed responsibly Appropriate biological management is supported by multiple coordinating entities: At the local level, there are additional organizations of fishermen within cooperatives and between cooperatives that address the management needs for certain species At the regional and national level, the government oversees management across cooperatives, and cooperatives form federations Additionally, there are special committees to manage migratory species All of this coordination enables opportunities for appropriate biological management even in a complex social system (Yamamoto 1995)

Secure Exclusive All Sources Scaled Accountable Limited Transferable A critical part of any fishery management system is ensuring fishermen are held accountable to complying with fishing regulations Cooperatives are usually collectively accountable for fishing responsibly in their TURF

The role of Cooperatives Share responsibility Organize to fulfill responsibilities Ensure compliance with controls on fishing mortality and enforce boundaries Cooperatives often share management responsibilities with the government A Cooperative’s most important role is to stay within the group’s catch limit, or comply with other fishing mortality controls Cooperatives come up with various ways to stay within limits, ranging allocating quotas to individuals, to full effort coordination for all members, to establishing and enforcing appropriate fishing rules A key part of this responsibility is ensuring that the Cooperative has systems for tracking how much each fisherman catches Good cooperatives are well organized and have strong leaders, social cohesion, and clearly defined rules, roles, and responsibilities for their members And it’s important to cooperatives to build this capacity to fulfill their responsibilities K. Beadle

The role of Cooperatives Share responsibility Organize to fulfill responsibilities Ensure compliance with controls on fishing mortality and enforce boundaries In addition to ensuring members are accountable to controls on fishing mortality, cooperatives are often responsible for helping enforce TURF and reserve boundaries And the benefits they receive from their exclusive privileges make their efforts worthwhile K. Beadle

Secure Exclusive All Sources Scaled Accountable Limited Transferable Controls on fishing mortality are essential in a TURF It’s critically important that fishing mortality controls be based on sound science, which may require use of data-limited stock assessment methods Catch limits are the preferred method because they ensure overfishing is not occurring when they are set at the right level and enforced Other controls on fishing mortality include effort limits and spatial management approaches No-take reserves are a good way to support thriving fish stocks; it’s important to understand that they are usually not sufficient as the sole control on fishing mortality, especially if they are small; without other controls, fishing pressure can just increase outside the reserve Ideally, no-take reserves and other mortality controls will be designed to complement each other

Secure Exclusive All Sources Scaled Accountable Limited Transferable Transferability can take a variety of forms in a TURF system Groups could transfer their area to others, or what we see more often is people granting access to their TURF to outsiders If the TURFs also have quota associated with them, people may transfer the quota (either within or between TURFs) Transferability allows for flexibility that can sometimes be beneficial, but I think we can all understand why it’s important to think about how transferability can affect social goals in a TURF system

Secure Exclusive All Sources Scaled Accountable Limited Transferable

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