Feasibility study on application of shrimp catch Quota in Hormozgan Province

Abstract

The Persian Gulf fisheries are currently managed through regulations that restrict access to the fishery. These controls do not overcome the incentive for overfishing that follows from lack of ownership in open access fisheries. In such situations, more effort is required to maintain fishery resources. ITQ system of fisheries management is increasingly recognized as a practical alternative to traditional regulation methods. Traditional administration of fisheries as a common property has failed to ensure the fishery resource management is a sustainable way. Worldwide, fishery management systems are now turning to sustainable utilization of the fishery resources. ITQ's are part of this transition. Shrimp fishermen's opinion on the current shrimp management system and the possible change to a new ITQ system is examined in this study. We used a questionnaire and a stratified random sampling method, through which a total of 144 fishermen were interviewed in Hormozgan province. Descriptive statistics and contingency tables were used to estimate the agreement of fishermen with ITQ system in the study area. The results indicated that most of the fishermen do not agree with the change in the shrimp management system. Despite this result, the interviews showed that the younger, more experienced, highly educated and lower income fishermen mostly agree with the change in the current management system compared to other groups. Although the overall result does not endorse the move towards using ITQ system, but we believe that the ITQ system provides a new management system that efficiently reduces current problems.