Book Description

The introduction is a reminder that the extension of national jurisdiction over world fisheries has three major consequences: the immediate transfer of the production of deep sea fleets to control by coastal states, the possibility of reducing economic waste and overfishing which are the inevitable results if competition for resources is not regulated, and a shift of approach to pay more attention to specific local conditions and perspectives, and national fisheries development methods in the past. The first section reviews the consequences, at the biological, economic and social levels, resulting from two fundamental aspects of fishery resources: (a) because of their natural and biological character their output is limited: the maximum catch level can only be attained and maintained if the total number and composition (size and species) of catches are kept within certain limits; and (b) their mobility makes their exploitation by the private sector difficult, if not impossible; consequently, without the intervention of a central authority and the emergence of a consensus, the fishermen are drawn into fierce competition which is ultimately harmful to the profitability of the exploitation as a whole.