the landings of low retention types of fishermen at the expense of “meat hunting” high retention
33
types.
In the case of a tariff or quota on discards, the case for anglers bearing the burden seems
less compelling. After all, per-angler harvest (the portion of the discard identity of harvest minus
landings that is not controlled by an external instrument) in our model is an outcome of vessel
owners’ decisions, not anglers’. If all anglers utilize homogeneous gear provided by the vessel
owner and fish equally assiduously, then there seems to be no efficiency gain from levying
discard taxes on anglers. This observation is robust to the presence of exogenous variation in
angler skill that makes certain fishermen more effective at catching fish than others, as harvest in
this case remains predetermined from the perspective of the angler. However, the introduction of
variable angler “effort” into the model (possibly combined with heterogeneity in the intensity of
harvest preferences across anglers) clearly changes matters.34 The argument parallels that
employed for landings and hinge upon the ability of direct levies on anglers to influence their
behavior in an efficient way that is encompassing of heterogeneity. Barring the low-cost
development of a perfect pass-through market for discard fees on vessels, the direct levying of
discard penalties is likely to have superior efficiency properties, although there may be
compelling political deterrents to the establishment of such a system.35
33 A further advantage of individually-levied landings taxes or quotas is that they are robust to the sort of between-
angler trading or purchasing of catch that is often experienced on vessels (but not explicitly modeled here) as long as
the fees are levied at the dock after all trades have occurred. In this system fish will flow to those anglers with the
highest willingness-to-pay and these fishermen will in turn face the full user cost of their retention decisions.
34 Harvest is not likely to be purely predetermined from the viewpoint of individual anglers. Although key decisions
affecting harvest are made at the vessel level (fishing location, angler density, etc.) there may be a number of
behavioral “degrees of freedom” open to anglers. For instance, anglers may be able to supply some or all of their
own gear, thus potentially increasing their harvest rate.
35 Landings fees are likely to enjoy considerable political advantages over discard or catch fees given the likelihood
that fishermen may view the ability to freely catch and release fish as a “natural right” whereas a charge for the
retention of catch may seem more natural due to the fact that retention is consumptive in a more traditional,
immediately tangible sense.
31