Resolved: That the United States federal government should establish an ocean policy substantially increasing protection of marine natural resources. We interpret this resolution to mean that the federal government should encourage the conservation of marine resources in a way that is beneficial to both sealife and humans. Unfortunately this is not what the government is doing today.

Something Is Wrong: For centuries, America's oceans have ranked among the most bountiful on the planet. Five hundred years ago, the English explorer John Cabot reported that the waters off Newfoundland were so thick with cod that you could catch them by hanging baskets over the ship's side. In the waters of the Chesapeake, oyster beds were so thick they posed navigational hazards for ships. Today things are different:

• According to a recent study, in the past fifty years, populations of large fish species - including tuna, swordfish, marlin, sharks, cod, halibut, and flounder - have decreased by 90 percent.

• In U.S. waters, the fisheries containing these same species have now been reduced to 10 percent of their historic levels.

• Altogether, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) lists 98 species of fish as overfished.

• To take one prominent example, Atlantic cod (once so abundant in American waters that they were called the "beef of the sea") have been fished to the verge of commercial extinction.

• Due to overfishing, the NMFS reports that half of all U.S. fisheries, and a quarter of the major fish stocks around the globe, are in jeopardy of an abrupt, severe decline from which they may never recover.

Unless something is done quickly, American waters may - in the space of a few years - go from being the world's most abundant fisheries to a virtual undersea wasteland.

Contention I: Inherency

Why is this problem occurring? For one basic reason: unlike cattle, sheep, and horses, fish in the ocean do not have owners. They are common property - to which everyone has access. Because they have no owners, they have no protectors or defenders. The result is what economists call the "tragedy of the commons."

Each commercial fisher gets immediate benefits from overfishing - they get to sell the fish they catch. Yet the decline in the fish stock as a result of their actions is a cost that will be shared by all who fish. Thus, as individuals, fishermen who overharvest fish get the full benefits but bear only part of the costs of their actions. Conversely, those who show restraint in order to protect the fisheries from decline bear the immediate, full cost of their forbearance - they catch and sell fewer fish. But, they reap only a small portion of the benefits of their actions because the benefits of their conservation efforts are shared by all fishermen, not just those who limit their catch. Everyone, therefore, faces perverse incentives to overfish. To the degree that they act on those incentives, marine resources decline.

There are three basic public policy approaches to this problem (see backgrounder): anarchy, regulation, and property rights.

Under anarchy, people are free to do whatever they want without impediments imposed by others. Anarchy is the system that has been in place for most of human history, and even today is probably the best policy for most ocean resources, most of the time. However, as fish become commercially valuable, anarchy can have disastrous results. For example, when it was discovered in the 19th Century that sperm whale oil could be used to make candles, fuel, soap, and lubricants, sperm whales were hunted to near extinction.

Under the regulation approach, the government attempts to prevent overfishing by:

• Limiting the times during which fishing can take place, such as the hours of the day and the days of the year.

• Limiting the types of devices that can be used by fishermen, such as the types of boats, traps, nets, etc.

• Limiting the number and size of the fish that can be caught.

The problem with regulations is that fishermen have an economic interest in avoiding and evading them - through both legal and illegal means.

• Prevented from fishing on some days, they make a greater effort to fish on days when fishing is allowed.

• Forced to use smaller boats, they use more of them.

• Forced to use smaller nets, they use greater numbers of nets and use them more often.

• And in response to limits on the number of fish they can bring back to harbor, they continue to overfish and throw the smallest ones overboard, before their return; for example, in U.S. waters, 2.3 billion pounds of dead fish are thrown back into the ocean every year.

The lesson: Fishermen, like everyone else, are rational, profit-maximizers. To make matters worse, regulations are often accompanied by government subsidies. Sometimes to alleviate the economic harm fishermen suffer as a result of regulatory constraints, the government has:

• Given money to fishermen to purchase boats and other equipment.

• Provided tax breaks to increase fishermen's incomes.

• Provided price supports to increase the market value of fish stocks.

• Provided rebates on fuel and equipment.

• Given money to ports for the construction of docks and other harbor facilities.

Subsidies contribute to overfishing and help sustain an overlarge fishing fleet.

Under the property rights approach, ownership rights give the people economic incentives to conserve ocean resources. Resources that are owned by individuals have protectors and defenders. Owners have a self interest in maximizing the value of their own property. Owners also bear the full costs of their bad actions and reap the full benefits of their good ones. Several illustrations of this principle can be found in American history. For example:

• One hundred years ago, the nation had three billion passenger pigeons and very few chickens. But because chickens were privately owned and pigeons were common property, today there are three billion chickens and the passenger pigeon is extinct.

• Two hundred years ago, bison greatly outnumbered cattle in America. By the turn of the century, privately owned cattle were flourishing, while the commonly owned bison almost became extinct.

There is also evidence that a property rights approach is a far more successful way to preserve wildlife than the regulation approach. For example:

• Elephant numbers have decreased by two-thirds in Africa as a whole, and have reached critically low levels in countries like Kenya, where no one can own an elephant or buy and sell ivory.

• By contrast, in South Africa, Botswana and Zimbabwe, where villagers have property rights in elephants, herds have increased by almost 600 percent.

Can this approach work in the ocean? In some places it already is working:

• Property rights have been established for herring and salmon in Iceland, for salmon Greenland, for sea scallops in parts of Canada and for oyster beds in Washington State.

• In New Zealand, property rights are used to manage 30 species of fish including blue fin tuna, abalone, and lobster.

• In Australia, property rights are used to manage 15 species of fish - including orange roughy, blue fin tuna, and lobster.

• Almost all of England's inland salmon fisheries are privately-owned.

• In the U.S. property rights are used for four fish stocks: the Atlantic bluefin tuna fishery, the mid-Atlantic surf clam fishery, the Alaskan halibut and sablefish fishery, and the South Atlantic wreckfish fishery.

How can one create property rights in marine resources?

• One way is to have ownership of shore land that is covered with water at high tide. This is the system that is used in many areas to manage species like clams, mussels, and oysters.

• A second way is to create ownership in parcels of the ocean floor, allowing, for example, the creation of artificial reefs.

• A third way is to "fence off" areas of the ocean. This method has been used to manage migratory fish that move in large schools, like bluefin tuna in Australia and salmon in Scotland.

• A fourth way is to create rights to harvest part of the catch - rights that can be bought or sold like shares of a stock.

Altogether, since the early 1980s, 17 countries have introduced property rights for managing their fisheries, and in each case the condition of the fish stocks and the profits of the fishers have improved significantly:

• Even as herring stocks dwindle in other North Atlantic regions, the stocks are thriving in Iceland's system of property rights.

• Because of property rights in Greenland and Iceland a million salmon a year are saved from overfishing. By constrast, California's government-regulated salmon are being considered for the endangered species list.

• In 1984, stocks of blue fin tuna were near collapse under government regulation in New Zealand and Australia; yet, under a property rights approach they had completely recovered a decade later.

• After years of public ownership, English rivers were, by the early 1960s, the most heavily polluted in Europe, with almost no remaining salmon stocks. Since the introduction of property rights, British salmon stocks are flourishing.

• Since the introduction of property rights, Canada's population of scallops has increased to between 80% and 100% of its natural levels, whereas in the United States, using a regulatory approach, the scallop population is at about 20% of its natural levels.

• While Washington state's privately-owned oyster farms maintain healthy, profitable oyster stocks, publicly-owned oyster beds in Mississippi have become depleted.

• All four of the federal fisheries that have been privatized now have smaller fishing fleets, higher incomes for fishermen, and larger, healthier fish stocks.

Contention II. Harms and Significance

A. Current policies are harmful to fish populations

Our current policies are largely a combination of anarchy (on the open seas) and regulation (in U.S. coastal waters). These policies give fishermen perverse incentives to deplete fish populations. The impact of overfishing is felt, not only by species of fish that are commercially valuable, but by other fish as well. For example, 2.3 billion pounds of fish a year are killed as a by-product of fishing and through the disruption of marine ecosystems.

B. Current policies are harmful to fishermen.

The regulatory approach to fisheries management is costly and inefficient. It leads to overcapacity and overcapitalization (too many fishermen and too many boats relative to the number of fish.) Fishermen are also hurt when regulations idle them for much of the year, leaving them underemployed or on social assistance, when newly enacted equipment restrictions encourage them to fish during dangerous weather conditions or undertake huge debt loads leading to bankruptcy or when they are driven to over-harvest fish in the current season to service their debt thus leaving reducing harvests for future seasons.

C. Current policies are harmful to society and the U.S. economy.

Society is harmed by the social ills (alcoholism, spousal abuse, parental neglect, etc.) which often accompany increased bankruptcies and unemployment. The economy suffers becuase capital and labor are devoted to commercial fishing that might better have been devoted to other economic pursuits.

According to the U.S. Commerce Department, restoring American fisheries could double commercial fishing revenues, create 300,000 new jobs economy wide, and have a $25 billion overall impact on the U.S. economy.

But overfishing also hurts people other than fishermen. Overall, fish make up a fifth of all animal protein in the human diet. In fact, more than 1 billion people depend almost exclusively on fish for protein. Global production of fish exceeds by far the global production of land animals like poultry, beef, or pork. The depletion of fishing stocks will therefore result in many cases, in malnutrition and poverty.

Contention III: Solvency

The problem with the management of marine resources is not bad people but faulty institutions and the incentives that they foster to overexploit marine resources. The Affirmative team proposes to eliminate those government policies that create incentives to over-harvest marine resources and replace them with property-based solutions that create incentives for conservation. This means:

• Ending subsidies and tax breaks that encourage overinvestment in commercial fisheries.

• Replacing the current command-and-control system approach with a system of property rights.

• Encouraging other countries to adopt similar property-based fisheries policies.