Fishers exploit populations that are heterogeneously distributed in space and time without full knowledge of species distributions and with fishing gear that is not fully selective. The ability to change catch composition is limited by species mix at a particular location and time and the capture characteristics of the fishing...
A primary objective of fishery management is profit maximization, accomplished by managing externalities associated with catching fish, while acknowledging that some margins of fishing fall beyond regulatory bounds. Regulation often does not address the larger economy of which the fishery is a part, focusing instead on the cost--benefit structure of...
Fisheries economics has recently earned a seat at the global fisheries governance table, with everything from subsidies, to high seas fisheries, to Indigenous rights, food security, and human rights now being open for global assessment. The papers in which these studies are housed are in high impact journals, are highly...
This paper examines the regulatory decision problem facing fishery managers tasked with balancing desirable fish catch with undesirable bycatch. I approach the problem using Bayesian decision analysis. I first estimate a model of production, accounting for the fishery’s joint production of desirable and undesirable outputs. I then use the estimated...
Iceland had several disputes with its neighboring countries during the fifties, sixties and seventies over expansions of sovereign waters and control of fishing rights, known as the cod wars. Iceland was successful in securing exclusive fishing rights for its people. However, the problem of overexploitation, which lay at the heart...
Socio-economic analysis of seafood production is important for the conservation of aquatic ecosystems and the management of fisheries and aquaculture activities. Understanding how the livelihoods of people, dependent on the exploitation of aquatic resources, are affected by various changes is essential for decision making. The two main seafood production sectors,...
Based on a simple model of firm profit maximisation in a multispecies ITQ fishery, market clearing quota lease prices are modelled as a system of linear equations with dimensions dependent upon the number of quota species in the fishery and the number of different harvesting technologies. Finding a set of...
Climate change has been observed to have a significant impact on the distribution of aquatic species and productivity of aquaculture systems across the globe. This affects the level of food production, the livelihoods of communities that depend on fisheries and aquaculture, and the future sustainability of these sectors. As in...
The fisheries sector faces the challenge of determining effective management, in an ecosystem perspective in order to mitigate the Global Warming Potential (GWP).The main focus of the study was to analyze the resource utilization in the value chain of Maldives fish processing and the environmental performances of the steps involved....
The fisheries sector is a vital oceanic resource that build the core of the Blue Economy. However the realization of the full potential of the Blue Economy calls the requirement of effective inclusion of all societal groups, especially women whose contribution is not well acknowledged. The study focused to investigate...
In Nigeria, women play major roles of at least 75% in the fisheries and aquaculture value- chains from production, processing, storage, marketing and trade. Unlike the men, women have not received commensurate levels of attention and empowerment largely because their roles are perceived as ‘invisible’, poorly evaluated and undocumented without...
Stated choice random utility frameworks are a valuable tool for eliciting the preferences of fishermen. In typical applications, choice outcomes are known prior to choice selection, which may confound results when outcomes are uncertain. To evaluate the importance of uncertainty in decision making, we applied a contingent sequential stated choice...
Sophisticated computer simulations can support effective science-based evaluations to facilitate better governance of the marine space. We developed a range of spatial fisheries models, integrating biological with fisher decision-making dynamics and management for assessing management of multiple activities. We present the outcomes of case-specific evaluations with different ecological and socio-economic...
The first-hand market for wild-caught fish in Norway is subject to much uncertainty for both buyers and sellers. Factors such as changing quotas, seasonal variations in availability of important species, and sudden changes in market conditions creates instability in volumes and prices both on the demand and supply side. For...
Indonesian tuna fisheries are complex due to variation in the scale of fleet in the fisheries, their multi-species nature and problems with data collection. Moreover, like many developing-country fisheries, their management needs to take into account many other goals besides rents maximization, such as the distribution of rents and the...
The importance of land infrastructure for supporting coastal fisheries has long been acknowledged; its role in remote and geographically challenged fishing communities in the Nordic Arctic has visibly impacted community structure and development. This paper explores the Red King Crab (RKC) fishery in Norway and the ways in which its...
The importance of land infrastructure for supporting coastal fisheries has long been acknowledged; its role in remote and geographically challenged fishing communities in the Nordic Arctic has visibly impacted community structure and development. This paper explores the Red King Crab (RKC) fishery in Norway and the ways in which its...
The ocean salmon fishery on the US West Coast has faced periodic closures of varying extents in order to protect vulnerable runs. These closures can have serious consequences for fishers and fishing communities, and have necessitated the release of millions of dollars of federal disaster aid. The 2017 ocean Chinook...
Pelagic fish stocks are subject to fluctuations that are driven by climate change, overfishing and changes in market conditions. The fluctuating nature of pelagic fisheries creates uncertainties in fishers’ income, thereby adversely affecting their livelihoods. The aim of this contribution is to reduce the risk and vulnerability fishers face by...
The PrimeFish project aims to improve the economic sustainability of the European fisheries and aquaculture sectors under the perspective of the sectorial participation. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme. PrimeFish engages a large Industry Reference Group (IRG) that facilitates the access...
Implemented in 2011, the West Coast Groundfish Trawl Catch Share Program was designed to achieve multiple economic goals and objectives for a diverse multispecies fishery, including increasing net benefits, profitability, flexibility, and utilization of harvest allocations. Here, we leverage seven years of comprehensive cost and earnings data to evaluate progress...
The importance of small-pelagic species in marine ecosystems and their economic contribution to coastal communities are increasingly recognised by many fishery managers. However, the management of small pelagic species faces many challenges due to environmental factors that periodically impact on recruitment of the species. Delayed responses in management to these...
The ‘blob’ of anomalously warm surface water that persisted in the North Pacific Ocean from 2013-2016 resulted in a massive harmful algal bloom (HAB) of Pseudo-nitzschia along the entire U.S. west coast. The bloom produced record-breaking concentrations of domoic acid, a marine neurotoxin, that contaminated seafood and necessitated fisheries harvest...
Regulators in many countries have adopted quotas as a means of dealing with the open access problem inherent in fisheries. Unit quotas for the Norwegian purse seine fleet were introduced in 1996 but consolidation of licenses has been in place since 1978. The current Norwegian regulatory system does allow for...
We present a bottom-up analysis of the proportion of global marine fisheries subsidies to small-scale fisheries (SSF). Using existing data, we split the reported national subsidy amounts into the fraction that goes to small- compared to large-scale fishing sectors. Results reveal a major imbalance in subsidy distribution, with SSF receiving...
This study develops a dynamic model of the harvesters’ choice of when to use individual fishing quota (IFQ), considering time-varying rates of potentially limiting bycatch, and a time-varying outside opportunity. The temporal allocation of IFQ over a season by harvesters has not been well-studied empirically due to complexity of the...
Even in the absence of commercial fishing, Coho salmon (Onchorhynchus kisutch) originating from the Interior Fraser River (IFR) watershed have yet to recover from the low returns experienced since 1992. Coho are in a low productivity regime in which the number of recruits per spawner (R/S) averages around one, coupled...
Feedbacks between the ecosystem and the economy are important to consider when measuring impacts from a disturbance but are often missed in representations of the economy and the food web. Moreover, regional general equilibrium models often focus on how humans respond to ecological changes and do not consider that in...
Coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch) were once a thriving species in Southern British Columbia, providing cultural, economic and ecological benefits to First Nations and coastal communities. Nonetheless, with Coho salmon abundance starting to dwindle dramatically in the 1990s, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) decided to implement radical conservation measures...
Sablefish is a commercially important species with catch allocated across multiple sectors and gear types on the U.S. West Coast. A flexibility provision in the West Coast Groundfish Trawl Catch Share Program sanctions those with trawl permits to target Sablefish with fixed gear, such as longlines or pots, allowing the...
What is the impact of the recent spike in Eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean bluefin tuna catch on the global price of bluefin and its substitutes? Will boosting the eastern bluefin quota even further benefit the fishing industry? And who stands to win and lose from supply increases? Using a novel...
European seabass and gilthead seabream are two economically important cultured fish species along the Mediterranean coast. Both species represent respectively 10.9% and 13.5% of the total value of the European aquaculture sector (Eurostat, 2013). The EU is one of the largest producers of seabass and seabream in the world, being...
In the North East Atlantic there are several straddling stocks, including herring, mackerel, and blue whiting, which are exploited both within coastal states' 200 nautical mile Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) and on the high seas. The pelagic fisheries of the North East Atlantic are all harvested by the same six...
Fishery management actions focused on the conservation of non-target species may impact the productivity of fisheries in terms of target species. This article studies California’s drift gillnet swordfish (Xiphias gladius) fishery and investigates the impact of a recent regulatory measure aimed to protect leatherback turtles. A parametric approach is used...
In the FPI framework, input indicators are those attributes expected to influence the outcomes of fishery management. One subset of those indicators is comanagement, measured by 11 input scores spread over four dimensions (collective action, participation, community, and gender). After applying FPIs to 13 Japanese coastal fisheries that varied in...
As changes in climate and corresponding ocean shifts threaten U.S. fisheries with uncertain change, West Coast marine scientists and fishery management institutions have newly emphasized ecosystem-based analysis and management. The development of the West Coast-specific California Current Integrated Ecosystem Assessment (CCIEA) has accordingly allowed for economic analyses and the social...
Catch shares are being increasingly adopted worldwide to halt overfishing and improve ecosystem outcomes. Rights-based fisheries management generates economic efficiency, and fishers with a financial stake in the fisheries are believed to have the incentive to become ecological stewards. However, the empirical evidence shows no significant impact of catch share...
Commercial fishing can provide a source of economic opportunities for coastal communities; however, little is known about how large such effects may be. In particular, there is limited empirical research on what indirect impact commercial fishing may have on local economic activity in other sectors through spillover/multiplier effects. While such...
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) executes a number of activities that support a more holistic way of studying and managing marine resources, namely an ecosystem-based approach to management (EBM). This presentation will provide an overview of NOAA’s Integrated Ecosystem Assessment (IEA) program as well as Large Marine Ecosystem...
Managing internationally-shared fish stocks, those that migrate from one country’s coast to another is incredibly difficult and requires international cooperation. The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) is the regulatory body responsible for managing tuna and tuna-like species in Atlantic and adjacent seas fisheries. Although ICCAT has...
The U.S. Atlantic pelagic longline fleet pursues highly migratory species (e.g., swordfish, tunas, and sharks) over an extensive range in the Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico, and Caribbean Sea. Because of the fleet’s diverse range and vessel characteristics, fuel can be a major component of vessel operating costs and can make...
Situation: UK scallop fishing is input measures, with effort limits applied to >15m vessels only. There are no output limits. Industry members noted a decline in profits, and suggested that the effort regime was to blame. Government asked for evidence to support the claim and asked Seafish for economic analysis...
Given the high pressure in fishing resources, the interest of going beyond the resources and understanding market trends, market barriers, and fisheries value-chain inequities, has increased in the last decade. This knowledge is necessary to improve those chains and to promote better financial returns for fishers and market participants, in...
Demand for science and advice to address economic considerations is increasing, but the International Council for the Exploration of the Seas (ICES) does not engage many economists or address economic issues in many member countries. The Strategic Initiative on the Human Dimension (SIHD) has raised the profile of economics, but...
The assessment of data-limited fish stocks is crucial for the sustainable management of marine living resources. Dependent on the scope and type of available data, a range of assessment methods are available, such as catch-only, length-based, or catch and survey-based methods. However, these methods suffer from several shortcomings, such as...
Understanding and quantifying the behavior of fishers is important given the role human behavior plays in fish population dynamics and fisheries management. Various quantitative and qualitative methods have been used to collect information on the behavior of fishers. This study discusses the benefits and drawbacks of three of these methods:...
Seafood is one of the most valuable and highly traded commodities worldwide, and thus highly susceptible to fraud. The Norwegian fisheries sector is subject to a wealth of regulatory requirements ensuring an environmentally and economically sound fishery. Nonetheless, studies have shown that there exists a, at times significant, discrepancy between...
A World Bank/Global Environmental Facility funded project aims to explore the potential for incentive based tools and third-party financing to improve the performance of highly migratory fisheries with a high seas component (ABNJ fisheries). Under this World Bank project, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF-Inc.) is responsible for the work of...
This paper is designed to “set the stage” for the Special Session on Game Theory and Fisheries. It traces the origins of the application of game theory to fisheries economics, noting that, for the first quarter of a century after the publication of H. Scott Gordon’s 1954 seminal article, the...
The Gulf of Mexico (GOM) is characterized by fishery resources which spatially and temporally overlap in different ways with several important non-fishing uses including oil and gas production, shipping, tourism, habitat for endangered species, and economic support for coastal communities. Given this overlap, the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill affected fishing...
This study explores the optimal spatial strategy for fishing efforts for subdivided on fishing grounds for different economic performance. We analyze the Japanese off-shore longline fishing vessel groups targeting swordfish and blue shark in the North Pacific. The seasonal dynamic optimal spatial strategy to maximize the economic performance is explored...
Conservation impacts on protected sea turtles and marine mammals are a longstanding concern in U.S. swordfish fisheries, including the Hawaii shallow-set longline (SSLL) fishery and the west coast drift-gillnet (DGN) fishery. Observer records for these fisheries document a history of rare-event interactions with large cetaceans and endangered sea turtles. Since...
In France, the absence of further development of marine fish farming over the last 20 years has been attributed to regulatory constraints, and to the difficult access to new farming sites, due to high competition between different uses in the coastal zone. The Regional schemes for the development of marine...
Highly migratory species (tunas, billfish, swordfish, and sharks or HMS) are pursued by a dedicated group of anglers that spend significant amounts in pursuit of these “big game” fish. From 2013 to 2016, NOAA Fisheries conducted the most comprehensive assessment of the economic impacts of HMS recreational fisheries in the...
Data generating processes for trip-level commercial fishing data feature endogenous targeting of individual fish species and spatially, temporally varying stock conditions that are unobserved by the researcher but partially observed by fishermen. We present a model and identification strategy to address serious challenges that arise in this setting for obtaining...
Strategies for increasing production of goods from working and natural systems have raised concerns that the diversity of species on which these services depend may be eroding. This loss of natural capital threatens to homogenize global food supplies and compromise the stability of human welfare. We assess the trade-off between...
Despite an understanding among consumers that fish is a healthy food, the recommended intake is on average not achieved in many countries. This paper investigates the effect of children in households to the purchase of fish and meat products, using Norwegian household-level panel data on food purchases from 2004 to...
The OECD has been collecting information on fisheries policies for many years. The Fisheres Suppor Estimate (FSE) database represents the latest version of its fisheries policy inventory and classification system. This database contains information on policies in 33 countries (representing about half of global fisheries landings) totalling USD 13 billion...
We provide an initial look at our follow up study on the impact of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) on U.S. commercial fisheries. Earlier work found that in the years immediately preceding the passage of the ACA, North Carolina’s commercial fishermen were more likely to purchase health insurance coverage on...
Fishermen are often advised to be more patient and limit catches now, in order to increase stock size and catches in the future. Such scientific advice is usually based on the maximum sustainable yield (MSY) objective. This biological criterion is often consistent with economic interests at low discount rates. The...
Birds, mammals, and fish eat Atlantic Herring. For the first time, fisheries managers in New England are explicitly considering these, and other, predators when setting harvest control rules for the Atlantic Herring fishery. Based on single-species biological reference points, the herring stock is currently well above MSY levels. However, management...
Hedonic models reveal the marginal implied prices of attributes; these premia represent the intersection of supply and demand for those attributes. Understanding the demand for these attributes is critical for policy analysis that may influence those attributes. While Rosen (1974) proposes a two-step method to recover demand, Kristofersson and Rickertsen...
This work is part of the SUCCESS project (Work Package 4: Competitiveness and sustainability of European fisheries and Aquaculture sectors) funded by the EC (H2020, GA 635188). The dynamics of the value chain in eight different species at the Spanish market has been studied using price integration methodologies. Cases of...
Industries extracting natural resources are confronted with a trade-off between maximizing their income and limiting their impact on the ecosystem they exploit. Commercial fisheries produce negative impact via their pressure on the seabed and the additional mortality from discarding. One approach to limit the discarding impact is to introduce discard...
A suite of metrics may be required to characterize ecosystem status and its resilience. Simplistic models, not accounting for the age composition complexity, can fail in predicting the impacts of anthropogenic activities and may not appropriately evaluate long-term consequences of management. Old-growth age structure is necessary for maintaining long-term sustainable...
Humans are increasingly considered more than simply “part of the ecosystem” by natural scientists and natural resource managers. However, the integration of economic and social sciences into Integrated Ecosystem Assessments (IEAs) is advancing at different rates worldwide. Over the past several years, The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)...
Lake Michigan is the only Great Lake that supports an economically viable salmonid population, but a collapse may be on the horizon. Biomass of Chinook Salmon, the most popular sportfish in the region, decreased by 70 percent between 2013 and 2015. The decline is thought to be irreversible. Managers must...
Stated preference (SP) methods such as contingent valuation and choice experiments are often used to estimate values associated with marine and coastal ecosystem services. However, applications do not always apply best practices, leading to questions regarding the validity and relevance of welfare estimates. This presentation outlines contemporary best-practice recommendations for...
Saltwater recreational fisheries receive little attention compared to their commercial counterparts. Yet recreational fisheries can suffer from many of the same symptoms of open access as commercial fisheries. Regulations designed to allocate a scarce supply, such as seasonal closures augmented with bag and size limits, can result in significant losses...
Quantitative fish stock assessment methods have become increasingly complex. However, the quality of available data may still restrict their applicability, being a particular concern in data-poor situations and where management decisions rely on either commercial fisheries or scientific survey data. In this study we address this issue by proposing a...
A well designed regulatory regime has a number of structural (design) features that will facilitate the achievement of regulatory objectives. For tuna and highly migratory fisheries in areas beyond national jurisdiction, our main objectives are preventing overfishing and destructive fishing practices, whilst enhancing the nutritional, social and economic returns from...
Safety outcomes are one measure of the performance of a commercial fishery. Catch share management, which allocates fishing quota to individual vessels or entities, may reduce economic incentives to engage in risky behavior in the “race to fish”. The Multispecies Fishery in the Northeast region of U.S. is considered the...
Although the formal process of Brexit has started, there is high uncertainty about Brexit’s impacts on the future of demersal mixed fisheries in the North Sea. As migratory demersal stocks (e.g. cod, haddock, hake and saithe) traverse the zones of various countries, one challenging issue is to agree on how...
The recognition of the complex biological and economic interactions occurring in mixed-demersal fisheries have long underpinned the development of fleets- and fisheries-based models and data collection in European fisheries. More recently, mixed-fisheries management plans are being designed and implemented in the frame of the EU Common Fishery Policy. The central...
As net exporter of seafood products, investigation of potential impacts of domestic regulatory measures such as ban on export of certain fish species and ban on demersal trawl fishing on seafood export performance is of eminent practical importance to Oman. To this aim, the main purpose of this empirical work...
In the light of on-going debates about the sustainable agricultural intensification and sustainable development paradigms, this paper examined the linkages between integrated aquaculture-agriculture (IAA) value chain participation dynamics and the welfare of marginalized extremely poor indigenous households using a three-wave household panel dataset from Bangladesh. The distributional effect of IAA...
The landing obligation in Europe has been in place since January 1st 2015. Experiences gained so far point out that a number of institutional initiatives have been launched, but in practice little has changed regarding discard reduction and use of discards ashore. In parallel, the wide-ranging EU research project H2020...
This presentation describes the impact of transitions to catch share management on risk-taking among commercial fishermen in three fisheries. Catch share management has been associated with a decline in the speed and intensity of fishing activities and longer fishing seasons. This is expected to improve safety in fisheries. Using wind...
When fisheries management creates the incentive to “race for fish”, a fishing season can be reduced to only a few days and involve around-the-clock fishing in life-threatening weather conditions. Catch shares management, or the individual allocation of tradeable fishing quota, can improve safety by reducing economic incentives to fish as...
Lake Chapala’s fisheries have been the support of an important economic activity for hundreds of years. At the end of the XIX century, in addition to the fishers, the processing industry employed hundreds of families in the drying and salting of fish. The later introduction of carpe and tilapia forced...
European carp farmers face many challenges in our days. Changed consumer habits, droughts, fish loss through birds endanger their profitability. Our study have selected two European carp regions as case study: The Aischgrund in Germany and Barycz Valley in Poland. Since the new millennium, opinion leaders have introduced initiatives to...
Coping with climate change is one of the most serious issues confronting small scale coastal fishing communities today. This study examined how small scale fisherwomen diversified their livelihood as an adaptation strategy against climate related risks. The study was conducted in Nilwella fishing village of Southern Sri Lanka. Focus group...
Under the Global Environmental Facility, the overarching framework for the Caribbean Billfish Project (CBP), fishery science experts have developed a tool, the FPIs, to rapidly assess the generation of ecological, economic and community wealth from commercial fisheries, and to identify the management structures, governance methods, and regulatory instruments that promote...
The World Bank’s Global Environmental Facility’s empanelled the Global Think Tank (GloTT) to examine the use of incentive compatible management (ICM) in Area Beyond National Jurisdiction (ABNJ) fisheries. This presentation summarizes the conclusions project that compiled examples of the use of ICM principles in ABNJ fisheries management. This larger effort...
Historically, cod fishing along the coast of northern Norway has been about fishing as much as possible with the least possible resource effort. This traditional logic is rooted in biology (cod’s migration pattern), meteorology (weather conditions) and traditional capture technology (small and not as seaworthy boats). The logic is further...
In this paper we discuss dynamic adjustment paths towards economic optimal steady-state equilibrium in a fishery where two species interact through a traditional predator-prey relation. We set-up a general bio-economic predator-prey model based on the assumption that fishing effort is a public input applied when exploiting the fish stocks. By...
The paper focuses on the combination of the cooperative fisheries management with the non-cooperative literature. It has important modeling contributions by creating a new framework on co-management. The structure of the model is repeated coalition game with the possibility to deviate combined with introduction of a variation of a club...
This paper analyses evidence about fishermen collectively organized bargaining over ex-vessel prices with a monopsony-like buying sector. Government allocation of collective catch quotas to fishermen organizations triggered the voluntary formation of cooperative fishermen’s bargaining associations, while a highly concentrated processing sector started behaving as a countervailing monopsony. This drove ex-vessel...
South Pacific albacore is a species of primary importance in the longline fishery of a number of Small Island Developing States in the Western and Central Pacific Ocean. Despite the fact that the stock is assessed as not being subject to overfishing, nor overfished, economic returns have declined significantly over...
The welfare gains from incorporating ecosystem considerations into fisheries management are unclear and can vary widely between systems. Additionally, welfare gains depend on how ecosystem considerations are adopted. This paper uses an empirically parameterized bioeconomic model to explore the welfare implications of two definitions of ecosystem-based fisheries management (EBFM). We...
This study accessed household fish demand and supply in the coastal Areas of Ondo State, Nigeria. Multistage sampling technique was used. The study areas were purposively selected because it falls along the coastal areas of the country. Three villages/towns where fishing activities are dominant were randomly selected while 60 respondents...