A leading proponent of this approach is economist Francis T. Christy, a founding researcher at RFF who coauthored The Common Wealth in Ocean Fisheries for RFF in 1965. The book foresaw conditions worsening through depletion of stocks, decreased economic returns, and increases in local conflicts. Now an independent consultant in fisheries management and economics to such clients as the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the International Institute for Fisheries Economics and Trade, Christy sees rights-based fishing rapidly becoming the dominant paradigm throughout the industry. Such an approach can best reflect local and regional conditions and user needs. Comparing Open and Closed Access Managing fisheries based on open access, Christy contends, removes fishermen from the center of the stage where they belong.
Public officials tend to encourage decisions that create and preserve jobs.
Often these jobs are in the processing industries, whose owners have a vested interest in keeping the fishermen from having property rights, and thus some control over supply and pricing. Traditional fisheries management is further hindered by incomplete and imprecise biological information about the fish, as well as by the often prevailing notions that what's good for the fish is good for humankind and that governments, given correct information, will make the correct decisions. Conservation controls, even when improving fish stocks, can damage economic interests and still not ultimately remedy overfishing. The status of the scientific information is such that management decisions tend to be risky and short term, based on a hope that a fishery's condition might really be better than available information indicates. The need for impartial analysis, economic appraisals in particular, is too often ignored.