The world's oceans used to be thought of as a limitless resource to be exploited. But the world's booming population and a huge increase in the number of fishing vessels has proved the ocean's bounty to be finite. A new solution to setting limits for individual fishermen has been developed. It's called catch-share. It basically sets a limit on the number of fish that can be taken for groups of fishermen - and those shares can be traded.
WUSF's Steve Newborn talks about the trend with Kate Bonzon. She's director of the catch share design center for the Environmental Defense Fund, based in San Francisco. Bonzon says the catch share program in the Gulf of Mexico to stopped overfishing of red snapper is a model for the rest of the country.
