World Aquacluture Magazine - September 2020

WWW.WA S.ORG • WORLD AQUACULTURE • SEP TEMBER 2020 27 anyone else to invest in conserving fish? After all, what will happen to them is that someone else will catch them! At the end of the day, fishermen only earn a level of income no more than the opportunity costs of their labor, an example of what economists call a situation of complete rent dissipation. Research Context: Aquaculture as Solution to the Tragedy of the Commons The idea of the tragedy of the commons was popularized by a paper written by Garrett Hardin in 1968 that dominated thinking of resource economics in the 1970s. This tragedy has been used to describe the social dilemma faced by users of a common pool resource, such as fish in the oceans, whether to exploit it for their own profit or whether to cut back on their use today so as to keep the resource sustainable for the future. The unregulated human tendency is considered to maximize short-term personal gain, resulting in the tragic depletion of the common resource. The complete dissipation of rent happens when an increase in labor (L) or effort to catch fish drives the value of average product L ive seafood has always been much desired by Hong Kong people and expensive fish such as humphead wrasse Cheilinus undulatus , leopard coral grouper Plectropomus leopardus and humpback grouper Cromileptes altivelis are the first choices for home-cooked dishes or banquet parties. Culturally, Hong Kong people like to be served whole steamed fish that is alive before cooking (Lai et al . 2005). This has attracted the criticism of environmentalists who wish to protect coral reef fish from extinction. To explain, coral reef fish are the “common property” of the ocean. Because they are so popular, they are always overfished. As a result, many species have become endangered, affecting the balance of the marine ecosystem. It is a classic example of “the tragedy of the commons.” Why does no one bother about the problem of overfishing or is aware of the need to protect sea fish? The reason can be explained by the idea of property rights. When fish in the ocean are “common property” – belonging to everyone and not to anyone in particular – there is no way of controlling access to them. If anyone can fish them, why would anyone leave them alone by conserving them? If anyone can catch any fish in the wide ocean, why would it be rational for A Triumph over the Tragedy of the Commons: The Hong Kong Story of Sabah Grouper from a Coasian-Schumpeterian Perspective L.W.C. Lai, Rosita Ong Che and K.W. Chau FIGURE 1. A Sabah grouper (with vertical stripes) swimming in front of a leopard coral grouper (orange) in a tank of a live seafoood restaurant at Shaukiwan (Photo: L.W.C. Lai). ( C O N T I N U E D O N P A G E 2 8 )