It is likely that no one in the American fishing industry can remember a time when a federal fisheries policy of individual transferable quotas (ITQs) was not part of the theoretical discussion on how best to manage ocean resources. With a congressional moratorium on ITQs due to expire at the end of September, it is more than likely the discussion will go beyond mere theory.

ITQs now have limited use in this country – surf clams and three finfish species – but this management system is in industry-wide use in countries from Iceland to Canada to Chile to New Zealand. The benefit, at least in theory, is that ITQs are easy: complex and confusing rules, expensive regulatory oversight and a lot of litigation can be replaced with a system that simply sets a total allowable catch and divides that among boat owners according to each boat’s catch history.

In practice, ITQs have produced a side effect that is unintended yet entirely predictable. Because small boat owners have no way to grow their businesses, they are under great pressure to sell their quotas to large fleets. Everywhere ITQs have been implemented, the result is an industry that once was the work of thousands of independent owner-operators controlled by a few fisheries corporations.

The implications for Maine are obvious, and they are uniformly negative. This state is perhaps the last stand of the independent owner-operator on the Eastern Seaboard; the industry sustains not just fishing families but entire communities. The owner-operator may enjoy a substantial profit from a quota sale, but the sale causes nothing but harm to the locals who once worked as crew, to the boatyards and supply shops, to the fuel dealers and to that community’s entire social and economic fabric.

The pro-ITQ coalition is an odd alliance. Regulators like its simplicity. Some of the nation’s most influential conservation organizations like having a definite cap on catch (they especially like the potential to constantly nag for a lower cap). Large corporate fleets really like the prospect of controlling a resource and, consequently, the marketplace (not to mention the potential to nag for a higher cap). The negative implications are addressed with the comforting assurance that an ITQ plan can be developed that favors small owner-operators, despite the complete absence of such plans anywhere ITQs are used.

But the very real threat ITQs pose to small fishing communities pales in comparison to the larger issue of privatizing the ocean, of turning a public resource into assets that can be bought, sold and consolidated. The experience elsewhere – especially well documented in New Zealand – is that replacing thousands of affordable small boats with a few dozen multi-million-dollar floating factories does nothing to reduce fishing pressure while free markets are stifled and stewardship suffers. As Congress prepares to debate whether this moratorium should be extended or scrapped, it would do well to bear in mind that the only demonstrated benefit of ITQs is that they’re easy, something no one ever said fisheries management was supposed to be.