March 3, 2009:
A new report published by FERU’s Dr. Rashid Sumaila and Renée Sharpe of the Environmental Working Group suggests that fisheries subsidies in the USA were in excess of $713 million annually between 1996 and 2004. Appearing in the North American Journal of Fisheries Management, the authors report that about 44% of subsidies provided through this time period were targeted at reducing the cost of fuel — a subsidy well known to lead to over-fishing.
The work of Sharp & Sumaila is in complement of previous reports by Khan et al. (2006) and Sumaila et al. (2008) who report global estimates of fisheries subsidies. Where these previous studies estimated harmful subsidies to be $332 million for the year 2000, this most recent report suggests that number is closer to $400 million. The Sharp & Sumaila report do not consider subsidies for fisheries management, which, was previously estimated to be $1.1 billion for the year 2000.
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A detailed breakdown of subsidies by type and country is available from FERU through the Sea Around Us Project website. The figures reported include the new estimates from Sharp & Sumaila (2009) as well as data regarding fisheries management. When these sources are combined, total fisheries subsidies for the United States of America in the year 2000 is $1.7 billion with $427 million classified as harmful, $936 million as beneficial and$342 million as ambiguous subsidies.
You can find more information about this project through the Lenfest Ocean Program Research Series including an electronic version of the paper which is also available through the author’s homepage. Printed copies of this study can be obtained from the American Fisheries Society.
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Edit: The story of fisheries subsidies in the U.S.A. as reported by Ms. Sharp and Dr. Sumaila has been quite popular. The report is referenced by the Alaska Report, Radio New Zealand International, and The Fish Site.