For several years, fishermen, fisheries scientists and fish conservationists – groups not mutually exclusive – have been eyeing Oct. 1, 2002, as an epochal date. It was when the congressional moratorium on individual fishing quotas (IFQ) would expire; what came after would be the dawn of either a new age of enlightened fisheries management or of a bleak future for both the resource and the independent fishermen.

Following the principle, “above all, do no harm,” Congress likely will extend the moratorium for another year – a couple of one-week extensions brokered by Sen. Olympia Snowe will be followed by a more fleshed-out one-year extension with a plan to resolve the issue. This is not, as may be in the case of much other important legislation left unresolved in advance of the election, a case of ducking tough decisions. This is a clear case of too many uncertainties remaining and too many options unexplored. This issue deserves more careful consideration and Congress is right to grant it.

The long, unresolved debate on this matter already has yielded one important result: The proposed new management system is no longer referred to as ITQ, individual transferable quota. This small acronym adjustment means a lot. ITQ makes explicit that a public resource, fish in the ocean, is a commodity that fishermen own without taking the trouble to catch and that can be sold – transferred – for profit. IFQ implies no such right.

This does not mean that a final IFQ plan will not permit transfer of ownership and that is something Congress must guard against. The quota system has enough inherent problems without that completely unacceptable component.

There are quota systems in 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 quotas 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, quotas have produced some undesirable side effects. One that has not been satisfactorily addressed anywhere is high-grading and discards: with a specific quota set, fishermen will land only the highest-quality, highest-value fish; a lot of dead fish get tossed back. Hardly the outcome expected for a management tool designed to conserve a resource.

The most troublesome aspect of any quotas system, however, is transferability – anywhere it is allowed, the result is consolidation. Because quotas are based upon the previous year’s catchy, the small-owner operator simply has no way to grow a business through hard work. The only way to grow, in fact, is to buy out another fisherman’s quota. The record elsewhere shows the buyer is the large corporate fleet, the pressured seller is the small owner-operator.

Nowhere would this have a more devastating impact than here in Maine. 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 there is nothing but loss for 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-quota side is an odd coalition: Regulators like its simplicity, some of the most influential conservation organizations like having a definite cap on catch, large corporate fleets like the prospect of controlling a resource and, consequently, the marketplace. The assurance is always offered that the negatives can be addressed through a quota system that helps preserve small owner-operators and the communities they sustain. Now, supporters of quotas have a little time to do so.