One of the reasons over-fishing happens is that seas that contain certain fish are not really owned by anybody. If you compare it to woodland areas that are privately owned, most wooding companies (in North America) use a chop one plant two policy so as not to deplete their own supply of trees. If you compare it to Borneo or Brazil, where loggers just go to public woods and chop them down, deforestation happens at an alarming rate. Now to the problem of over-fishing, when you designate sea areas that can be privately owned, a fisher would have an incentive not to catch all the fish at once, but to give his fish an opportunity to regenerate, and so the problem of over-fishing could be solved. Thoughts?
You might be interested in some of Becky Mansfield’s work for a contrasting view. The privatization of fisheries is pretty much her area of specialization, and as she’s definitely not a libertarian, her perspective provides a fascinating counterpoint in this area of research. You can find a full list of her work on her faculty website.
Tyrannicidal, I`ve put up a few posts that touch on the topic of fisheries and link to various resources: