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Comment by eksu | Hacker News Reader

commercial fishing industries have a vested interest in achieving the maximum sustainable yield.

furthermore, legislation like quota systems are generally supported because it gives companies a golden ticket to harvest while denying newcomers from entering the space.

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yet in practice overfishing occurs in species after species; individual interests do not always align with the macro interests.

that's why i think there's an interesting story lurking here. there were probably a small number of technocratic players involved (maybe even one) who were able to specify how the chain should work.

Monitoring and enforcement have been tough (infeasible). I’ve been away from conservation for a while now, but I’d hope it’s gotten better with satelites, drones.

That sounds logical, but in my experience as a coastal New Englander, boat owner and former Seafood.com employee, (albeit 20 years ago), commercial fishing _communities_ (possibly critically distinct from the "industries" you noted) skew heavily towards anti-fisheries management. Think "NMFS destroys families" bumper stickers.

Ha. My side was saying NMFS hadn’t met a salmon run they couldn’t manage into extinction. I mostly gave up in 2000. Since then, from the popular press, it seems the stakeholders had reduced the friction. Gods, that’d be nice. I’d love to take my (future) grandkids salmon fishing, like my grandpa did us.

Unfortunately overfishing is super common. Tragedy of the commons and all that.

Quota systems and overfishing aren't mutually exclusive either. There's plenty of fisheries quotas that are still higher than a sustainable quota should be.

The cod wars between the UK and Iceland would suggest that fisheries policy is often not exactly the most calmly rational of human endeavours.

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