The US government agency responsible for fisheries is speeding up efforts to halt overfishing to fill demands set up by Congress, goals generally much more ambitious than EU policy.
The focus lies mostly on enforcing a system of Individually Transferable Quotas (ITQs), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration NOAA) recently announced that it is ramping up efforts to expand the ITQ system.
Still, even with the new policy NOAA will not be able to fully meet deadlines to end overfishing. Congress gave NOAA until 2010 to end overfishing on unhealthy stocks, and 2011 on all stocks in U.S. ocean waters.
NOAA chief Jane Lubchenco, a marine biologist, has pushed catch shares as part of a comprehensive national ocean policy endorsed by President Barack Obama. Under the American system, much, if not most, of the management power then rests with eight Regional Councils, working at the coastal state level.
A much-discussed program point at a regionalisation seminar in Brussels last September, however, was a presentation where a Cape Cod fisherman/conservationist vividly described how the US fisheries management system in his region, under a system of tradeable rights and effort-control (days-at-sea), had failed dramatically and almost destroyed the fabric of local fishing communities.