Book excerpt: This book examines the development of property rights in marine fisheries, and asks whether the obstacles to their continued development cannot be more easily overcome. The contributed chapters generally focus on the consequences of a lack of property rights of commercial and small-time fishers globally. National governments have recognized that the absence of such rights coupled with the technological advances in commerical fishing have resulted in widespread economic and environmental problems (e.g., overfishing, bycatching, highgrading, increased physical dangers, and lower profits). The most significant solution to these problems, and the predominate concern of this book, is the institution of Individual Transferable Quotas (ITQs), also known as Individual Fishing Quotas (IFQs). These are national and global policies, public- and private-sector managed allocations of the amount of various species of fish, at certain qualities can be harvested at particular times by fishers.