All Greek lagoons are the property of the state and under the supervision of the Ministry of Agriculture. The provincial governments can lease out part or all of the lagoons to cooperatives or private investers. A recent adjustment of the respective law formees that extensive and semi-intensive exploitation cooperatives must be given priority, where as for inshore intensive culture equal access of all interested parties in envisaged. The maximum lease period is 10 years in the past most lease granted were however, of shorter duration (some of them only one year). The new law extends lease periods to and beyond 10 years.
Because of the short lease periods in the past, also rather heavy capital investments necessary to establish and maintain fish traps and dikes, and heavy taxation (25% and above of the gross revenue), many coops (especially the large government inspired ones) have failed in the past. Short lease periods have forced the cooperatives to minimize investment (with the effect of long term degradation of trapping installations and hyu raulic structures) while maximizing returns by catching all the fishes, many of them undesired (with negative effects on recruitment).
In order to maintain or raise individual incomes the coops try to keep their number low. Efforts made by the government to enforce minimum numbers have been sidestepped by registering relatives and friends as members and thus complying with the set norme while actually realizing the same percentage of the total revenue.
This practice, as well as the non-selection hervesting methods, has created tension and conflits with the so called independant fishermen. This term refers to individual fishermen who use a limited choice of year (limited, by law, to handlines, longlines and spears, without light and from non-powered boats) in the areas of the lagoon not leased to coops. Being in most cases denied access to the coops, and not being organized, having a weaker position vis-à-vis the middleman they feel unjustly disadvantaged. Coop members argue, in contrast, that the in ependant fishermen don't participate in the infrastructural maintenance of the lagoon, don't comply with regulations regarding fishing gear (many have, in fact, installed out board engines illegally) and reserved areas (the regulation farbids in the areas surrounding the lagoon inlets).
With the development of semi-intensive and intensive aquaculture units, future conflits with the present groups of lagoon users are already programmed, if such efforts exclude them as beneficiaries. As with many other resources for which traditional use rights have been established for centuries, the local coop and fishermen will certainly oppose production schemas which, in their eyes, may limit their access to a resource they consider as theirs.
