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realitet, der betyder, at man på den ene side bygger på et
selverhvervende partsfiskeri, hvis kultur man efterhånden/
endnu er ene om i Danmark, og som forvaltningen derfor får
stadig vanskeligere ved at håndtere uden utallige dispensati-
oner, fordi reglerne udformes til en anden produktionsmåde,
med andre problemstillinger og modsatte interesser. På den
anden side skærper de unge fiskeres brugerdrevne innova-
tion (når de ”skriver ny historie”) disse vanskeligheder ved
hele tiden at overskride de forventninger til erhvervets ud-
øvere, som forvaltningens praksis og regler for nærværende
hviler på. Her er samspillet med Fiskeridepartementets ud-
viklingsafdeling afgørende for, at noget sådant kan lade sig
gøre. Det viser sig f.eks. i den måde, hvorpå lauget sammen
med havbådeforeningen eksperimenterer med at inddrage
kulturarv, kulturmiljø og oplevelsesøkonomiske aspekter i
deres virksomhed på nye måder, hvilket samtidig er et lang-
sigtet satsningsområde i departementets udviklingsafde-
ling.
11. Det lykkedes således den nedlagte fiskeriforenings
tidligere formand Erik Petersen og de lokale ressourceper-
soner Jan Middelboe og Erik Braad at få udredt de juridi-
ske ejendomsforhold og i overensstemmelse med fiskernes
ønske at få overdraget landingspladsens matrikel og gamle
bygninger til brug i havbådeprojektet, samtidig med at mil-
jømyndighederne gav havbådeforeningen tilladelse til at
genaktivere landingspladsen og opføre et nyt havbådebyg-
geri på Slettestrand.
Summary
The twenty-sixth of October 2005 will be a historic date in
Danish fisheries. Until this date, Danish fishing was based on
a free right to catch which was protected by the state, but on
the latter night, it was decided to base future fishing on pri-
vate ownership of Denmark’s share of the EU sea’s quotas.
Since then, most Danish fishing communities have shrunk
to shadows of their former selves. In their place, a smaller
and smaller, but financially well-endowed, company-owned
fleet of trawlers with employees on fixed wages has taken
over the quotas from the independent fishermen’s fleet.
Local forces have, however, set an alternative develop-
ment in motion in the north Jutland fishing hamlet of Tho-
rupstrand, where the independent fishermen have taken
matters into their own hands and formed a guild which will
ensure the rights to their future catches in place of the state.
At the same time, they have formed a sea-going boat associ-
ation together with tradesmen and other people in the area,
making it possible to continue the maintenance and new
building of the coast’s unsurpassed lapstrake oak boats.
The privatisation of the sea’s fish resources is a modern
example of the Enclosure of the Commons which has been
hotly debated since Marx described it as the ruling class’s
use of state power to deprive another and weaker class of di-
rect producers of the ownership of their own means of pro-
duction. In fishing today, it is possible to follow the process
at close quarters and illuminate the way in which people in
various life-modes relate to each other and to the state in
all its complexity and fundamental contrast. In the present
case, the EU is playing a decisive role via its support sche-
mes, which have created over-investments in fishing ves-
sels and a catching capacity which has finally driven the fish
populations down to a size which can no longer sustain the
increased fishing.
An important lesson from this process is that share
fishing will disappear in step with the deprivation of the
general right of the individual fishermen to catch. For the
trawler companies to be profitable, it has been necessary to
directly deprive the individual fishermen of their catching
rights and transfer them as exclusive property to the boat
owners. Common values of a magnitude exceeding ten bil-
lion Danish kroner were handed over on 1 January 2008 to
an exclusive circle of boat owners, leaving several thousand
individual fishermen empty-handed. But the fishermen and
the skippers of Thorupstrand have denied to let the market
undermine the town’s resources, and they have formed a
cooperative guild based on the ancient organisational prin-
ciples of the share fishermen with a new item - the major
buying up of quota rights. The fishermen share these rights
as members of the guild, where each member has a vote.
But no private person can take the quotas’ growth in va-
lue (exchange value) out of the guild. Payment is made for