This thesis addresses the question of how seafood enterprises grow in a constrained resource economyand, specifically, examines the performance of New Zealand’s seafood sector since the introduction ofthe quota management system in 1986. It explores whether the quota management system andindividual transferable quota have led to an increase in industry performance and competitiveness.Conventional theoretical arguments for the institution of quota management and transferable quotapropose that re-regulation will lead to efficiency, and by implication, profitability gains for the seafoodsector. A process-based methodological framework, utilising complementary methodological practicesand triangulation using both qualitative and quantitative approaches is employed to examine NewZealand fishing enterprises across a number of scales. Forty subjects were formally interviewedthroughout the fishing sector in Nelson, Marlborough, Wellington and Auckland. Informal ongoingconversations with many of the interview subjects, amongst others, in a number of fora (academic andindustry conferences, wharves and dockside) also enriched the research. The thesis integrates ideasfrom political economy in order to begin to answer questions concerning the prospects forsustainability and development. The thesis is about what happens when we consider dimensions thatare largely missing in the international literature on fisheries (the firm, region and communities, andterritory, resources and markets). This thesis proposes that we must avoid treating quota managementsystems, individual transferable quota and associated property rights reforms as monolithic. Rather,New Zealand’s quota management system is geographically constituted and co-constructed bystakeholders who play ongoing and changing roles in an emergent dialogue concerning sustainablefisheries, fisheries management and commercial fishing in New Zealand. The thesis finds that volumeand value of seafood has increased. However, this increase is largely at the expense of first foreignfishing companies and part-time fishermen, and later small independent fishermen. There has been arationalisation of fishing effort allied with an increased emphasis in growing more product and morevalue through aquaculture and value-adding strategies. New geographies of production are emergingand some of these geographies may prove to be unsustainable. Lastly, firms that fish, and particularlyquota owners, are actively inserting themselves into debates concerning sustainability, sustainabledevelopment and fisheries management in expected ways that have led to unintended and ongoingpolitical and governmental reconfigurations of fisheries in New Zealand.
