A whole Danish fishing community that went for ITQs now risks to be wiped out after the local bank collapsed.
When Danish fishing quotas were made transferable in 2007, many fishermen on north-western Jutland cashed in, sold their boats and whole communities moved on to other ways of making a living.
In the village of Thorup Strand, however, 20 fishermen formed a co-operative, mustered support from a local bank and bought fishing quota for a total of 6 million euros. Making it possible for youngsters as well to enter the trade without taking massive bank loans, the co-operative then rented out quotas to the members.
The future for the fishing community of Thorup Strand looked bright until the global financial crisis brought the local bank to its knees, then broke it. The Government took over the collapsed bank, but only in order to terminate all its activities.
Meanwhile, also in the wake of the financial crisis, the quota values had decreased by half.
In late May, the Government gave the Thorup Strand co-operative an ultimatum: by July 1, it had to secure a new bank loan, or else the fishing rights would be auctioned off. In effect, the fishermen say, that would mean the death of Thorup Strand as a fishing community.
With falling quota values and the economy still not recovered from the crisis, the task of enrolling new bank support is not easy, and the fishermen are hoping for a helping hand from their government, or other outside sources.
Popular with tourists, Thorup Strand is the only remaining fishing community in Denmark where boats are still hauled on to the beaches.
At a seminar on regionalisation in Brussels last year, an American fisherman, active on Cape Cod in Massachusetts, described how the system of Individually Transferable Quotas (ITQs) had, he said, failed dramatically and almost destroyed the fabric of local fishing communities there.
After big sector interests had bought up most of the rights, he and other fishermen in the community had seen as the only way to save their trade to form a consortium which worked much in the same way as the Danish cooperative.