The Tragedy of the Commons: Fishing

Since fishing rights are shared overfishing can easily happen.  What if fishing rights were sold to specific areas of the ocean like mineral rights.  Then each fishing organization would buy fishing rights and have the incentive to keep the fish polulations sustainable.

This may initially be easiest to do inside each nation's territorial waters.  This would a good way for the government to initally make some cash.  But once the rights are sold the government would stay out because the owner would be able to sell his rights and therefore would have an incentive to keep the value of his rights high.