Fishing on Common Grounds: The Consequences of Unregulated Fisheries of North Sea Herring in the Postwar Period
By Schwach, Vera
Fishing on Common Grounds: The Consequences of Unregulated Fisheries of North Sea Herring in the Postwar Period. By Hrefna Karlsdottir. Goteborg, Sweden: Department of Economic History, School of Economics and Commercial Law, Goteborg University, 2005. 221 pp. Maps, tables, figures, and bibliography. Paper SEK 200.00. The book explores the growth of a fishing industry in the Northeast Atlantic waters after the Second World War, including issues related to the management of open-sea fisheries. Href na Karlsdottir’s case is the North Sea herring fishing industry from 1947 to 1977, and the establishment and failure of the regional North-East Atlantic Fisheries Commission (NEAFC). NEAFC was one of the early attempts to regulate an international fishery of a pelagic stock. The years after 1945 were marked by a rapidly increasing effectiveness in the North Sea and North-Atlantic fisheries. The fishing fleets of many nations expanded and the introduction of new technologies contributed to larger catches. New forms of international fisheries management were introduced with the aim of regulating fishing resources. Only in 1970 did fisheries management turn from exploitation to conservation as its overall goal for the fisheries management was realized. Until then there seemed to have been a tendency to use scientific uncertainty as a reason to continue the fishing.
The topic “depleted fishing stocks” is not novel. Ever since Garrett Hardin’s essay “Tragedy of the Commons” was published in Science (1968), biologists, social scientists and economists have examined the various problems connected to fisheries as compared to overgrazed common pastures. Fishing on Common Grounds fits into an established, multidisplinary tradition of studies of unregulated fisheries and different management systems set up to enable regulations, their successes and-alas, more frequent-failures. But research done by historians on the multinational fisheries of the North Sea in the postwar years is limited. This may be due partly to the fact that historians by virtue of their disciplinary tradition tend to view their national fisheries as a “natural” spatial boundary. Thus, a value of the book lies in its transnational character.
Karlsdottir is well aware of previous research in the field, and she links established knowledge competently to her study. A main focus is the interaction between the fishing industry and the managerial processes during two decennia. The longitudinal dynamics often tend to get lost in the works of social scientists and biologists.
In the Hardin tradition, ocean overfishing is seen as the tragic outcome of individual fishermen acting in their best interest. A weakness of the perspective, as implicitly seen in this book, is the failure to problematize the influence science played in the (over)utilization of the fishing resources. Two vital questions remain unanswered in the book. Did the fisheries biologists through the lack of sufficient knowledge and the weight they put on the uncertainty play a significant role in the rapid depletion of the North Sea herring? From 1973 a new regime based on quotas of total allowable catch (TAC) (pp.143-168) was established. TACs are based on scientific models about species and the effect their mortality (natural death and human fishing) has on the stocks. What was the influence of science in the new regime?
Overall Karlsdottir succeeds in her attempts to analyze the overfishing and regulation of the fisheries in the North Sea and in her analysis of the dymanics of a very complex topic over time. Those who work in the history of fisheries or resource management ought to take an interest in this well-written book. The same recommendation goes for social scientists, marine scientists, and public managers.
Vera Schwach, a senior research at the Norwegian Institute for Studies in Innovation, Research and Education, has conducted research in science policy in Norway. From 2004 to 2006 she worked with Hrefna Karlsdottir in an InternNordic history project, “The Nordic Shrimp Industry, 1890-2000,” supported by the Joint Committee for Nordic Research Councils for the Humanities and Social Science.
Copyright Environmental History Apr 2008
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