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Sounds like capitalism will be the MOST effective means of regulation. As fish become more scarce prises will rise, demand will drop and number of fishing vessels will drop accordingly.

Yeah...Just like the unregulated, capitalist free-market system preserved the buffalo and the passenger pigeon. Supply/Demand curve is irrelevant when you cannot increase the supply in response to rising demand.

I am SO tired of people who don't know diddly about economics making these dumb assertions....

Er, actually capitalism DID save the buffalo. Buffalo Bill Cody---the man who killed more than anyone else---maintained a herd for his Wild West Shows. He took them back east, where private (and public, too, I won't distort) investors decided to act, starting buffalo farms. But the first herds, from what I have found, were PRIVATE.

There are several new studies on this, if you would be at all interested in informing yourself. You might try Dan Flores book.

By the way, how did socialism do on this issue? The latest work by anthropologist Shepard Kretch, "The Ecological Indian," found that despite vastly inferior technology, the Plains Indians were probably slowly killing more buffalo than could be replenished, especially because they seemed to have an affinity for bison fetuses. (Sounds oddly liberal and "socialist" in the modern sense, doesn't it?) Capitalism is the ONLY alternative, and our challenge is to find a way to ensure that there are genuinely enforced "property rights" or market rights in the oceans. Then, like the forests under Weyerhauerser's control---where they PLANT FIVE TIMES MORE TREES than they cut down---we'll have all the fish we, or anyone else, needs.