Purging the frontier from our mind: Crafting a new fisheries policy

American fishery policy is imprisoned by mental models that defeat coherence concerning the formulation of promising management futures. The idea of the frontier is at the core of current policy incoherence. Images-and specious accounts-of: (1) unowned fish; (2) IFQs/ITQs as property rights; (3) private ownership as necessary and sufficient for individuals (called owners) to suddenly become far-sighted stewards of nature; and (4) rights-based fisheries combine to defeat innovative thought about how to extricate ourselves from deep conceptual confusion. Until we purge the frontier-with its associated images-from our mind it will be difficult to undertake ecosystem management. More seriously, it will be impossible to rectify existing governance and management arrangements that are responsible for the degraded state of America's fisheries.