are open to all conch fishermen, and because any conch that youcatch is a conch that Icannot catch,

fishermen tend to overharvest common resources like the conch.

The problem of overharvesting common resources is not a new one, but ecologist Garret Hardin put the tag

“tragedy of the commons” to the problem in a 1968 article in the magazine Science. Economists view this as a

problem of property rights. Since nobody owns the ocean, or the conch that crawl on the sand beneath it, no

one individual has an incentive to protect that resource and responsibly harvest it. To address the issue of

overharvesting conch and other marine fisheries, economists have advocated simple devices like fishing

licenses, harvest limits, and shorter fishing seasons. One approach that has been turned to more recently is

the implementation of catch shares, whereby regulators establish a total allowable catch, and then fishermen
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