For the last 25 years, property right based approaches to natural resource management (such as Individual Transferrable Quotas – ITQs in fisheries) have gained increasing attention from both academics and regulators.  (National Research Council 1999 ; Diekert et al. 2010 ; Leal 2005 ; Anderson 1989 ; Arnason 2007)  Most recently, the National Marine Fisheries service has been actively encouraging fisheries to adopt “catch shares,” a management approach that at its core embraces the ITQ approach. (NOAA, 2010)  However, in the process of translating ITQs from academic theory to a regulatory practice there has been an assumption that ITQ regimes are more or less similar: sharing an emphasis on transferability of catching rights and an (assumed) focus on efficiency. 

In this study, we use systematically examine two different ITQ-based regimes: New England’s mixed groundfish fishery, and New Zealand’s deep-water trawl fishery.  Using a selection of criteria developed for Ostrom et al’s approach to evaluating social-ecological systems (Ostrom 2009 ; Ostrom and Cox 2010) we examine the two management approaches and find that, although the two fisheries theoretically share the same management approach, there are fundamental differences in their social structure and regulatory details that differentiate the two systems.  These results suggest that more care needs to be taken when both defining management approaches, and considering their long-term implications. More precise definition of management regimes will lead to better understanding of both the challenges and solutions of natural resource management dilemmas.