Since the charter boats can't fish for or keep one ounce of halibut, the IFQs that you glibly suggest that they "purchase" from the commercial fleet is a cost wholly passed on to their customers (us). That is tantamount to the public's buying back its own fish. Or what used to be the American citizens' fish - until the resource was given away to the longliners.

It's really a wondrous scheme that turns resource management on its head: give away (privatize) a public resource in the name of conservation, or management, or safety, or whatever rationalization you can dredge up.

One can imagine all kinds of possibilities emanating from this model: give TICQs (Tongass Individual Cutting Quotas) to the companies which cut there in the '60s and '70s. How about KIGQs (Kodiak Individual Guide Quotas) to Kodiak guides with the longest histories? Heck, give me a salable DPIVQ (Denali Park Individual Visitor Quota), since I have a long history there.

I'd maybe then sell it to buy a halibut IFQ.