To fish or not to fish: Small-scale fishing and changing regulations of the cod fishery in northern Norway

Quotas and access limitations were introduced to Norway in 1990 to secure future cod fisheries. Comparison of small-scale fishers' practices before and after 1990 pose interesting questions concerning the models for resource management on which these regulations are based. Prior to the regulations, exploitation and expansion inherent in the small-scale production were curtailed informally. Instead of limiting economic expansion, the introduction of formal bureaucratic regulations provided fishers' incentives to expand. I explain the unforeseen outcomes of the new fisheries policy by reference to small-scale productive capacity in prevailing resource-management theories and practices. In the case of Norwegian small-boat fisheries, defining capacity by technical measures alone overlooks two important factors: I) variation within that technological category of fisheries; and 2) social incentives and constraints on technology in use. Focusing on small-boat fishing productive logic, the article addresses the need to integrate a more qualitatively oriented concept like "capacity in use," which relates actual fishing behavior to resource-management theories and practices.