Commercial Fishing

Individual Fishing Quota (IFQ) programs are a type of limited access privilege program (LAPP), which provide individual fishermen or corporations the exclusive privilege to harvest a certain percentage of the total allowable catch (TAC) of a fishery. IFQ programs allow individual licenses or "shares" to be bought and sold in the marketplace. Market-based fishery management programs are recognized as as an effective way match the amount of fishing capacity in a fishery with the amount of fish that may be taken by the fishery. A priority of the Bush Administration outlined in the Ocean Action Plan is to double the number of LAPPs by the year 2010.

IFQ programs implemented in the United States include The Mid-Atlantic surf clam and ocean quahog IFQ (1990), The South Atlantic wreckfish IFQ (1992), The Alaskan halibut and North Pacific sablefish IFQ (1995), The Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands crab rationalization program (2005) and the Gulf of Mexico Commercial Red Snapper Fishery Individual Fishing Quota (IFQ) Program(2008).

Benefits of Individual Fishing Quotas

By ensuring each program participant the opportunity to harvest a specific amount of the TAC each year, IFQ programs eliminate the need to compete for the TAC under derby-style fishing conditions and, consequently, the incentive to over-invest in fishing capacity. The fishermen are able to invest viable time, equipment and money more effciently when harvesting their share of the TAC.