Interlocked use of inland fish resources: a new management strategy under private property rights

  Interlocked use of multiple inland vendace, Coregonus albula (L.), stocks is a relatively new strategy to exploit asynchronous fluctuations in abundance of natural fish stocks between waterbodies. It combines vendace stocks from different lakes or parts of lakes into one interlocked stock to be managed across waterbody ownership boundaries. Management of interlocked stocks can be regarded as one form of portfolio management. Exploitation of interlocked stocks should reduce the interannual variation in yield, and thus ensuring fishers more constant income and the market more constant material flow. The strategy requires fishers to increase their mobility, to benefit from asynchronous fluctuations in abundance of vendace stocks between exploitable waters. A postal inquire addressed to Finnish commercial inland fishers examined whether existing property rights institutions’ and fishers’ harvesting policies were appropriate to establish interlocked use of multiple vendace stocks. Almost half of fishers had, to some extent, reaped benefit from a fishing strategy that included small‐scale mobility, which is consistent with the proposed strategy. By harvesting three or four lakes and stocks, fishers increased their yield compared with exploiting one fishing ground and one vendace stock. Public ownership provided fishers access to stocks nearer their place of residence than other ownership types.