The evolution of a fishery is not controlled by the fisheries management system. Neither is it controlled by fisheries management measures selected under that system. These are merely words on paper. The actual control of the fishery is by enforcement of the fisheries management measures selected. In this sense, fisheries enforcement is the real fisheries management. This observation raises the question of the optimal path of fisheries enforcement over time. Given the initial state of the fishery, a time path of fisheries management measures, and a set of enforcement tools and penalty levels, what would be the optimal enforcement effort over time?

This article deals with that issue. Given an efficient fisheries management system, it attempts to characterize the solution to the problem of optimal enforcement of fisheries management measures over time. Not surprisingly, it turns out that the optimal enforcement effort would normally not be constant over time and usually not produce 100% compliance. On the contrary, the optimal level of enforcement and, therefore, compliance is generally a function of the state of the fish stocks at each point in time. More specifically, it appears that optimal enforcement effort may typically be a monotonically declining function of the size of the fish stocks. The article proceeds to investigate optimal paths of other enforcement controls such as penalty levels and allowable catches (announced TACs) and their dependence on the size of the fish stocks.

JEL Codes; K4, K42, Q2, Q22