Thirty-five years have passed since Gordon's seminal article on rent dissipation in open access fisheries. Restricted access fisheries, created to solve the problem, have not been successful. Three common sources of dissipated rent are: input substitution, fleet redundancy and· composition. Fisheries policy has focused on finding solutions for the first source. This paper questions the wisdom of past policy by developing and implementing a methodology for the measurement of rent dissipation in restricted access fisheries. Results from the British Columbia salmon fishery suggest that regulators should have concentrated instead on improving fleet composition and removing excess vessels.