In Maine's lobster fishery, informal 'harbour gangs' defend customary fishing territories, documented by James Acheson, while elected zone councils created by a 1995 law set trap limits. The case shows how informal property rights and state co-management can conserve a fishery, and at what cost.
Maine's lobster fishery is carried out by owner-operators fishing traps from small boats out of hundreds of harbours along the coast. Since the 1970s the anthropologist James M. Acheson has documented an informal institution that sits alongside state law: harbour gangs. Fishermen from a given harbour or island regard a stretch of bottom as their territory and resist the setting of traps there by outsiders. Acheson's book The Lobster Gangs of Maine (1988) made the case a reference point in the study of common-pool resources, showing that a fishery often treated as open access was in fact divided into customary territories.
Two layers of governance coexist.
Informal territories. To fish from a harbour, a newcomer usually needs to be accepted by its gang, which depends on kinship, residence, behaviour and persistence. Gangs defend their boundaries mainly by warnings and, if those fail, by surreptitious destruction of trap lines or traps ("trap cutting"). Acheson distinguished nucleated territories, whose boundaries fade with distance from the harbour, from perimeter-defended territories, typically around islands, whose boundaries are sharp and strongly defended. His 1975 study found that these differences in how strictly exclusive rights are maintained affect fishing effort, with strong biological and economic effects. The territories are not recognised in law; trap cutting is illegal.
Formal co-management. State conservation laws have long protected egg-bearing females, set a minimum and a maximum legal size (the maximum protects large breeding animals), and protected females that fishermen mark with a V-notch in the tail before release. A 1995 law (Public Law 1995, chapter 468) created lobster management zones along the coast, each with a council elected by licence holders who fish there. Councils can propose rules on the number of traps per fisherman, the number of traps on a trawl and the hours of fishing; some proposals must first win two-thirds of the votes in a referendum of zone licence holders before the commissioner of marine resources can adopt them. The 1995 law also set an overall cap of 1,200 traps per licence holder, and zones then set lower limits. The commissioner set up the zones by rule under 12 M.R.S. §6446; Acheson and Gardner (2014) describe seven zones, all of which had adopted trap limits by 1998, and six of which had passed limited-entry rules by 2004.
The fishery is a private, competitive business, but the stock is a common-pool resource. Public goods include conservation of breeding stock, scientific monitoring and enforcement by the state's marine patrol. Territoriality limits the number of boats in a given area, which raises catches for insiders and reduces gear conflicts; it also creates rents that insiders protect. Lobster became Maine's most valuable fishery and the economic base of many coastal towns.
Boundary conflicts between gangs occasionally escalate into "cut wars" in which large numbers of traps are destroyed, and occasionally into violence. Exclusion falls hardest on newcomers, people from other towns and those without family connections, so the system can be unjust even when it conserves the resource. The move to formal zones and trap limits in the 1990s was itself contested: Acheson and colleagues describe how fishermen pressed the legislature for trap limits after decades in which the number of traps had risen sharply. Conflicts with federal regulators over North Atlantic right whale protection and the effects of warming in the Gulf of Maine are newer pressures that local institutions cannot handle on their own.
For much of the 20th century Maine's lobster catch averaged 15 to 22 million pounds a year; since 2000 more than 50 million pounds have been landed every year, according to Maine Department of Marine Resources figures charted by Acheson and Gardner (2014). Over the same period Gulf of Maine groundfish declined. Acheson and Gardner contrast the two cases and note that the causes of the lobster boom are not known with certainty: studies point to August water temperatures (which govern larval settlement), the scarcity of large groundfish that eat small lobsters, and a conservation ethic among fishermen that reduced illegal fishing and supported effective rules. The relative weight of governance and environment is debated.
Customary territories limit entry and shape fishing effort; since 1995 elected zone councils have set trap limits with referendums of licence holders. Landings, 15-22 million pounds a year for much of the 20th century, have exceeded 50 million pounds every year since 2000, while Gulf of Maine groundfish declined. The roles of governance and of ocean warming in this success are debated. The zones are statutory; the gang territories have no legal standing. Founding year shown is the 1995 zone law; the gangs are much older.
Acheson distinguished 'nucleated' from 'perimeter-defended' lobstering territories, which differ in how strictly exclusive fishing rights are maintained, and found that these differences affect fishing effort, with strong biological and economic effects.[1][2]
Maine's 1995 zone management law created councils elected by licence holders that propose trap limits, trawl sizes and fishing hours, some of which require a two-thirds referendum of zone licence holders.[1]
The causes of Maine's lobster boom (over 50 million pounds landed every year since 2000) are uncertain: Acheson and Gardner cite August water temperature, the scarcity of large groundfish that eat small lobsters, and a conservation ethic among fishermen that backed effective rules.[1]