Will “small core” fisheries solve the fishery management dilemma?

Pontecorvo and Schrank (Mar. Policy 25 (2001) 43) suggest that a new approach to fisheries management that could solve the overfishing problem would be to establish “small-core” fisheries in which their maximum capacity to harvest the resource would be equal to the safe catches that could be taken from a stock at the lower limit of its natural cycle. Examination of their approach suggests that it would result in the same conflicts and demands on the fishery management system that occur in traditional fishery management. While Pontecorvo and Schranks approach aims to reduce fluctuation in supply/catches as the primary problem in fishery management, the reality is that fishery resources are highly variable. It is suggested that this variability cannot be managed away but needs to be confronted and embraced both in the fishery management process and the economic and social institutions that exploit these resources.