Photo courtesy of: The Daily Mail
A recent post on the Science Magazine news blog repeats a comment by Elliot Norse of the Marine Conservation Biology Institute. Regarding deep sea fisheries, Dr. Norse says:
“A population of fish is like a bank account, and its productivity is like the interest it earns. In shallow waters, fish reproduce quickly, and populations would tend to expand 10% annually if not checked by mortality, so they can be profitably harvested year after year. It’s like spending the interest from your savings account without ever touching the principle.”
Unfortunately, government created distortions like subsidies (more than $25 billion per year) can introduce incentives to withdraw from the principle (e.g. overfish) when it would be otherwise unprofitable to do so. As Dr. Sumaila is later quoted in the post regarding fisheries subsidies:
“It’s not good economics.”