Pre-trip blog: Thinking about Resource Management - by Hannah H.

Throughout the past couple of weeks our class has been learning about salmon and their role as a keystone species in the Pacific Northwest. To augment this learning we participated in a fishing simulation as class, to help further understand the effects of overfishing and the politics surrounding it. To play this game, our class was divided into companies. A company was comprised of two people, and each company began the game with three ships. As the game went on, a company could acquire more boats either by building them or buying them at the auction. 

For the first few rounds, there were plenty of fish in both the deep sea and the coastal waters, so most companies bought as many ships as possible and sent them into the more profitable deep sea. As the years went by, the number of fish started decreasing. Suddenly, sending your ships to the deep ocean was a good way to lose money, and soon people began losing money in the coastal waters as well. Companies began desperately trying to auction off ships, trying to halt the quick descent into debt. 

A suggestion was floated amongst the teams to keep the boats in the harbor for a few years until the fish populations recovered, but several companies continued to send ships out despite the agreement. The value of ships plummeted, and soon there were only a few fish left in the ocean. As the game came to an end, the question wasn't "who was winning," but "who was losing the least." 

This was a tragedy of the commons. Each company fished selfishly despite warning signs that soon there wouldn't be fish for anyone, so we held a discussion afterward to talk about possible solutions. We decided that if we had started the game by only sending two ships to the deep water and one to the coastal water, there would be enough fish for everyone. We then took a silent poll: we put our heads down on the desk and raised our hands if we would continue to send three boats to the deep sea, or buy another boat, just to make a little extra profit. More than half the class raised their hands. We then raised our hands if we would continue these practices despite knowing that eventually the rest of the class would learn of our deceit. Still, more than half the class kept their hands raised. 

As we move into the rest of our school year, we are looking more closely at solutions to overfishing and climate change, armed with the knowledge that most people won't do it of their own will. As we end this simulation, we are looking forward to our speaker on Monday, Joe Williams, a Swinomish tribal leader, who will speak on his experiences both as a fisherman and a resource manager for the tribe.