While rights-based management is generally purported enhance economic efficiency in fisheries and reduce over-capitalization, the social and economic outcomes due to this regulatory regime are less comprehensively understood. Relatively recently, industrialized and export-oriented Latin American fisheries began adopting individual transferable quota (ITQ) regimes to recover collapsed fish stocks. While these...
This talk will introduce this special session on coastal and marine spatial planning (MSP). An overview of how MSP is interpreted and implemented in the United States at different geographic scales will be discussed. An emphasis on data and research needs will be given as well as context for the...
Fisheries management currently claims for fisheries governance (FG), a more balanced scheme that proposes to share the power among government, civil society and economics. In Mexico and other developing countries, the lack of operational regulations has delayed its implementation. Several authors state that topological analysis is useful to identify key...
Eco-labels have been developed to face the difficulties faced by States in managing fisheries. They promote the voluntary adoption of sustainable practices, through market differentiation of sustainably produced items. In fisheries, the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) is the most commonly used eco-label. The label is presumed to increase the social and...
The UN Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Small-scale Fisheries, along with the Voluntary Guidelines for Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries, and Forests, recognize the role of secure tenure in ensuring the livelihoods, well-being, and basic human rights of small-scale fishing (SSF) communities. Rights-based management (RBM), which works to secure...
Recently, the U.S. Departments of Agriculture (USDA) and Health and Human Services (HHS) recommended that pregnant and nursing women consume at least 8 to 12 ounces of seafood per week as part of a well-balanced diet. Thus, the seafood market has been flooded with health benefit/risk information targeted at women...
Marine spatial planning (MSP) is a process that planners can use to make decisions about different, sometimes conflicting, ocean uses. The process is intended to be participatory and to facilitate the sharing of information about multiple uses of the marine environment. In the U.S. an important component of MSP is...
In the last several years a number of U.S. policies and directives have laid the foundation for Ecosystem Service Valuation (ESV) to be incorporated into ecosystem-based management (EBM), the current management paradigm for U.S. oceans and coasts. In 2010 the Final Recommendations of the Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force instructed...
This work reports on how resource rent is distributed among owners of exclusive fishing grounds in the spiny lobster (Panulirus argus) fishery of Punta Allen, Mexico. This MSC certified small-scale fishery is co-managed through Territorial User Rights. Members of the local fishing cooperative, have exclusive access to individual fishing grounds....
A behavioral study on fishery participation and fishing location choice for the West Coast Salmon fishermen was undertaken to determine the effect of salmon fishery closures on the distribution of fishermen across alternative fisheries and fishing locations. A dataset describing fishing trips from West Coast salmon vessels from 2005 to...
Acute hepatopancreatic necrosis disease (AHPND), initially referred to as early mortality syndrome (EMS), is an emergent bacterial disease that has resulted in substantial economic losses for the global shrimp farming industry. Its occurrence was first reported in China in 2009, rapidly spreading to Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, and eventually Mexico in...
This paper is the result of a project that began with NAAFE 2015 special session on Fisheries Certification, which asked what forces are driving the market for sustainable seafood. Many previous studies looked at consumers' demand, but in this paper we looked at the entire supply chain (from producers to...
The trans-boundary migration of fish stocks creates spatial externalities, and hence, makes international cooperation beneficial. This study provides a model for the management of straddling and highly migratory fish stocks and examines the relationship between fish migrations and the benefits from cooperation. Previous studies on trans-boundary fish stock management have...
When evaluating potential government interventions economists often consider whether a proposed policy is efficient. However, changes in policy can also result in changes in wealth. When politically influential individuals or groups see losses, efficient policies can become politically infeasible even if they increase wealth in aggregate. This paper examines political...
The objective of this paper is to provide an analysis of the current state of fisheries subsidies worldwide, and how they are likely to affect the sustainability of fisheries. More specifically, I will review previous investigations of global subsidies issues, and give a brief overview of the impact of subsidies...
The goal of this research was to characterize the trade-offs between profitability and sustainability when managing a valuable commercial fishery. The Florida finfish fishery generates over $75 million in annual dockside value; the snapper-grouper complex constitutes over half of that total. Currently, federal stock assessment procedures focus on stock size...
This research combines a utility-theory consistent model of demand for recreational fishing trips with an age-structured stock dynamics model to provide policy relevant advice to managers of the groundfish fishery in the Northeast United States. We provide an overview of the model and describe the challenges encountered with using this...
The Biodiversity Impact Mitigation (BIM) hierarchy provides an overarching conservation framework for bycatch reduction, and more broadly for biodiversity conservation. This framework includes four steps, which are implemented sequentially to: (i) avoid and (ii) minimize impacts; (iii) rehabilitate/restore impacted biodiversity; and (iv), compensate such impacts, usually elsewhere. The first three steps...
The vaquita, a critically endangered marine mammal, is a bycatch to shrimp strawl and gillnet fisheries in the upper Gulf of California. Reducing vaquita bycatch, however, is complex. The fisheries are smaller-scale and major contributors of income and employment to coastal communities. Although tourism is increasingly important, fishing remains an...
This presentation provides an overview of a session presentation held at the NAAFE Forum 2017 in March, 2017. The title of the session was: Rights-Based Management. The title of the presentation was: We Need to Restore Ourselves First: The Story of El Manglito.
In this paper we characterize changes in the level and spatial distribution of fishing effort during the extreme ocean temperature event known by oceanographers, climate scientists, and the public as “the Blob.” The Blob was an unprecedented marine heatwave that occurred off of the Pacific Coast of North America from...
Achieving economic viability is an important goal when it comes to developing policies for sustainable fisheries management, especially for small-scale fisheries (SSF). SSF are vital for many coastal communities, however, often economically and politically marginalized. Here, we develop and estimate what we denote as ‘basic economic viability’ of SSF, using...
Fisheries subsidies have been roughly estimated to be as high as $35 billion worldwide, of which about $20 billion have been categorized as capacity-enhancing subsidies that directly contribute to overfishing. Since 2001, the necessity for reforming fishing subsidies has been part of the discussions in the World Trade Organization (WTO)....
Influence of the Skipper Effect in fishing efficiency of a mixed fishing fleet, looking at a Mexican case study. Understanding the factors that define technical efficiency in a fleet is a requirement to define strategies to regulate the fishing pressure. In industrial and semi-industrial fleets more weight has been given...
The Resource Evaluation and Assessment Division’s Social Sciences Branch (SSB) in the NOAA Northeast region is preparing for an external review in 2017 to evaluate its programs alignment between the strategic objectives of SSB, NEFSC, NMFS, and NOAA. In previous SSB and NEFSC wide reviews, much attention has been drawn...
The Gulf of Mexico Red Snapper IFQ Program (Program) was the first catch share management program implemented in the Gulf of Mexico. IFQ management was implemented to reduce overcapacity and eliminate the problems associated with derby style fishing. The Program was successful, the number of vessels harvesting red snapper decreased...
Management objectives of vulnerable fish species must focus on maintaining healthy population status. Hence, reference points should be constrained to ensure recruitment. We assessed bioeconomic reference points for the totoaba (Totoaba macdonaldi), an endemic fish to the Gulf of California, reaching lengths of 2 m and 25 years. Totoaba fishing...
As anthropogenic changes interact with natural climate cycles, the variability of marine ecosystems is likely to increase. This variability influences the behaviour of fishers, which can affect the profitability and sustainability of stocks and may have wider economic and ecological effects. We use data from the US West Coast salmon...
Fishing for Pacific Hake Merluccius productus in the Gulf of California is carried out by shrimp trawlers. When the shrimp fishing season ends, these boats shift to catching Pacific Hake and other finfish. The Pacific Hake fishery is relatively new and has the potential to grow as an industry. Therefore,...
A significant proportion of catch by artisanal fishers in Ghana is sold through wealthy middle-women, known as “fish mothers,” who often pre-finance fishing trips. This study examined the determinants of catch sales through fish mothers. Data used came from artisanal fishermen at major coastal fishing communities in Ghana. The effects...
Seafood markets are the inflection point in the fish-to-food transformation, and act as windows into revealed consumer preferences for seafood selection. These preferences have far-reaching implications for fisheries management, food security, and marine conservation. This study reveals consumer preferences for seafood in San Diego County by quantifying the relationship between...
This presentation provides an overview of a Special Session presentation held at the NAAFE Forum 2017 in March, 2017. The title of the special session was: Saving the World's Most Endangered Marine Mammal. The session was organized by Oriana Poindexter.
This presentation provides an overview of a Special Session presentation held at the NAAFE Forum 2017 in March, 2017. The title of the special session was: Saving the World's Most Endangered Marine Mammal. The session was organized by Oriana Poindexter.
This presentation provides an overview of a Special Session presentation held at the NAAFE Forum 2017 in March, 2017. The title of the special session was: Saving the World's Most Endangered Marine Mammal. The session was organized by Oriana Poindexter.
This presentation provides an overview of a Special Session presentation held at the NAAFE Forum 2017 in March, 2017. The title of the special session was: Saving the World's Most Endangered Marine Mammal. The session was organized by Oriana Poindexter.
This presentation provides an overview of a Special Session presentation held at the NAAFE Forum 2017 in March, 2017. The title of the special session was: Saving the World's Most Endangered Marine Mammal. The session was organized by Oriana Poindexter.
This presentation provides an overview of a Special Session presentation held at the NAAFE Forum 2017 in March, 2017. The title of the special session was: Saving the World's Most Endangered Marine Mammal. The session was organized by Oriana Poindexter.
Most regulations for recreational fishing in Mexico focus primarily on offshore boat fishing. However, regulations for inshore recreational fishing in Mexico are insufficient. Every year hundreds of European and American fishermen visit Punta Allen, Mexico to practice fly-fishing. Punta Allen is a coastal village located in the Sian Ka'an Biosphere...
Annual socio-economic surveys, pared with third-party landing monitoring data, have allowed a multi-year analysis of the economic impacts and perceptions of implementing an individual vessel quota rights-based management system in the gulf corvina (Cynoscion othonopterus) fishery. This fishery is targeted by four communities, including an indigenous one, in the Upper...
The effects of regulations on recreational fishers are especially difficult to predict. Data lags typically prevent in-season management, so regulations restrict aspects of individual fishing activity in the hopes of achieving collective catch limits. This study began with discrete choice surveys to elicit angler preferences among various types of fishing...
Early studies of economies of scale show that ownership limitations imposed large costs on salmon farming firms prior to the deregulation of the industry in 1991. Since then a number of mergers and acquisitions have taken place and the industry has become far more concentrated. Despite this, a number of...
Washington state is currently developing a marine spatial plan for its outer coast under a mandate from its Legislature. One key mandate for the plan involves mapping areas that have “high potential for renewable energy production with minimal potential for conflicts with existing uses and sensitive environments.” Fisheries are a...
Information on the total costs associated with commercial fishing is essential to quantitative estimation of fisheries performance measures that indicate the fleet’s economic health over time as biological, management and cost conditions change. NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC) collects fixed and labor costs on a periodic basis through voluntary...
While the importance of international trade in fish products has long been recognized, international trade in fishing services (TIFS), involving harvesting, processing, transportation and marketing has received but little attention. Yet, one half of the world’s EEZs involve foreign fishing arrangements, resulting in such trade. The World Bank report, Trade...
The evidence of the destructive economic and biological consequences of “bad” fisheries subsidies is now all but overwhelming. Yet still these subsidies persist, in spite of the evidence. This paper looks at ways of escaping the fisheries subsidies trap, by pursuing and developing a theme, which this author first put...
Maps of fishing locations are important in assessing fishery exposure to management alternatives and facilitates stakeholder outreach (e.g. the New England Fishery Management Council’s Omnibus Habitat Amendment 2, http://www.nefmc.org/library/omnibus-habitat-amendment-2 and the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council’s Amendment 16 to the Atlantic Mackerel, Squid, and Butterfish Fishery Management Plan, https://www.greateratlantic.fisheries.noaa.gov/regs/2016/September/16msbamend16ea.pdf). Fishing location...
Parasites and diseases represent major challenges in aquaculture. In the Norwegian salmon farming industry, costs associated with treatment of sea lice are surging and reached 5bn NOK or 10% of the industry’s total export value in 2015. In addition to the direct impact on production, sea lice affect the industry...
Countries exploiting transboundary fisheries face strong incentives for over- exploitation. This basic economic insight has been validated empirically; transboundary fisheries tend to be in worse condition than fisheries in single nations. Thus, transboundary fisheries pose a significant, and globally ubiquitous, management challenge. Attempts to solve this challenge through cross-country cooperation...
Property rights are the foundation of institutions that shape economic decisions ranging from individual transactions to the performance of a country’s economy. The incentives generated by the institutions in place also translate into measures of vulnerability and recovery in the face of natural disasters. Using the example of Chilean fisheries...
The South Pacific Tuna Treaty has existed as a model of international fishery cooperation since 1988. However, in 2016, changing economic conditions led to an impasse between United States purse seine interests and the Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) over payment of vessel day fees. The impasse resulted in the United...
This research incorporates unique household survey data and a discrete shift in fisheries management into a model of migration in order to analyze the drivers of outmigration in rural Alaskan communities that traditionally depend on fisheries for income. Although there is evidence that a transition to rights-based management decreases the...
This paper is to investigate how climate change affect fisheries resources and economic performance of fishing sector and coastal communities in the Arctic with a focus on Svalbard Fisheries Protection Zone. Climate change is projected to alter the productivity of our oceans, the distribution, abundance, composition, quality and quantity of marine...
We investigated the own- and cross-price elasticity of supply (PES) of 20 fish and shellfish species, caught in mixed fisheries off southwestern Taiwan and serving the local fresh seafood market. Because the licensed fishermen face little regulation constraining their behavior, we hypothesize that they adjust their catch profiles so as...
In May 2016, the NOAA Science Advisory Board, Ecosystem Services and Management Working Group, submitted a report to the NOAA Administrator entitled, An Assessment of the Use and Potential Use of Ecosystem Service Valuation (ESV) within NOAA: A Report from the NOAA Science Advisory Board”. While the report covers all...
It has long been argued that the Gulf of Mexico commercial reef fish fishery would benefit economically by being managed by “a system of tradable harvest permits” (Weninger and Waters 2003; Waters 2001). Between 2007 and 2010, all the major species in this fishery were transitioned into catch share management,...
The literature on ecosystem service valuation has grown considerably in the past decade as nations around the world have moved towards adopting more holistic, systems-level frameworks to managing both marine and terrestrial resources, ones recognizing and accounting for the interconnectedness of all parts of the ecosystem. In these frameworks, economic...
We develop econometric models to jointly estimate revealed preference (RP) and stated preference (SP) models of recreational fishing behavior and preferences using survey data from the 2007 Alaska Saltwater Sportfishing Economic Survey. The RP data are from site choice survey questions, and the SP data are from a discrete choice...
Los Islotes is the southernmost breeding site of the California sea lion (Zalophus californianus) in Northern Hemisphere and represents one of the most important economic activities for the city of La Paz, Mexico. The increasing tourism activity grew without any control until researchers and organizations started to be concerned about...
In February 2010, two agreements were finalized by Federal, State, and Tribal governments and PacifiCorp, a utility company that owns dams on the Klamath River: the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement (KBRA) and the Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement (Settlement Agreement). These agreements included provisions that would affect the Klamath River Basin...
The U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service, and its precursor agency, has collected information about the cost of commercial fishing since the 1950’s. The efforts were intermittent and geographically sporadic until 2000 when a systematic approach was developed and supported by ongoing budgetary commitments. Information about which fisheries within each region...
For centuries, the Icelandic people has relied on its abundance of natural resources and fisheries in particular. In today’s volatile and homogenous economy of Iceland, fisheries is one of its main export industries, together with power-intensive manufacturing and tourism. Consequently, movements in fish prices have a significant effect on the economy...
An empirically-estimated production function for a Japanese off-shore longline fishing vessel for swordfish fishery is integrated with a demand model and operating costs. This integrated model is used to explore optimal fishing efforts, a combination of days for (a) searching fishing grounds and (b) actual longline fishing operations. The results...
Fisheries management has been traditionally single-species oriented. Only recently more pressure has been put on developing a holistic, science-based approach that considers the ecosystem as a whole. This approach is widely known as ecosystem-based fisheries management (EBFM). One of the most often highlighted aspects of EBFM is the relevance of predator-prey...
Information acquired by fishermen while fishing play a crucial role in their decision-making process. Those are used to form the basis for update of beliefs on productivity of a range of available fishing grounds while acting in an uncertain environment. In this paper, we focus on the formation of fishermen's...
In many small-scale fisheries around the world, hookah diving is the main fishing method and gear to catch high-value species like sea urchin, sea cucumber, queen conch and spiny lobster. Decompression sickness (DCS) and carbon monoxide poisoning (COP) are diseases related to hookah diving and are the cause of non-fatal and...
Management of data-poor fisheries typically relies on setting an annual catch limit (ACL) using catch-based methods that are concerned with estimating a sustainable harvest and hinge on the logic that historic catches reflect a level of exploitation the stock can sustain. The resulting harvest control rules routinely set ACLs at...
Catches of several potential choke species in the Pacific groundfish IFQ are highly uncertain and tend to be concentrated while quota is broadly distributed. An analysis prior to implementation of the IFQ suggested substantial risk of individual vessels accidentally exceeding quota allocations for several rockfish species and Pacific halibut. Many...
The California Fisheries Fund (CFF) launched in 2008 as a public-private initiative aimed at demonstrating how to make financial investments in a growing, sustainable commercial fishing industry. Since then, CFF has operated as a nonprofit revolving loan fund, extending 34 loans totaling more than $4.2 million.
CFF’s initial business model...
The status of many sea cucumber fisheries in the world is overexploited. Some of the reasons are: an increase in demand from China, the distance of these fisheries to China, and the high rate of fisheries development. Most sea cucumber fisheries are small-scale with a simple management system. To overcome overexploitation,...
During last decade, the excluding efficiency of circle hooks for sea turtle has given positive and successful outcomes in Oaxaca, Mexico. The research seeks: 1) determine if the change of fishing gear provides positive benefits to local small scale longline fishermen, 2) estimate the benefit and cost functions, 3) determine...
The study presents a bioeconomic analysis of artificial shelter performance in a fishery targeting a spiny lobster meta-population, with spatially allocated, individual exclusive benthic property rights for shelter introduction and harvest of species. Insights into fishers’ short-run decisions and fishing strategies are also provided. Spatiotemporal bioeconomic performance of shelters located...
Pollock recruitment and biomass in the Bering Sea has fluctuated in concert with environmental changes since the early 2000s. As pollock spatial distributions, densities, and abundances varied, fishers have adjusted their fishing behavior. Utilizing ~30,000 trips made by Bering Sea pollock catcher vessels from 2003 – 2014, we found strong...
One of the main concerns surrounding the transition to individual transferable quota (ITQs) is that it could have adverse distributional consequences. Some fisheries, such as the West Coast Groundfish fishery, have implemented moratoria on permanent transfers due to a concern that large-scale firms could take advantage of smaller-scale by not...
Economists have long been interested in empirically modelling/forecasting the price of staple commodities using both structural and reduced form models. The purpose of this paper is to apply Pesaran’s Autoregressive Distributed Lag/ Error-Correction Bounds model for forecasting the ex-vessel price of lobster on the east coast of Canada using monthly...
The sustainability of fish stocks, fishery-derived income and well-being of dependent communities are interrelated and sustainable socio-ecological systems require an understanding of all three. A newly developed evaluation tool addressing these three important facets of fishery systems is the Fishery Performance Indicators (FPIs). The FPIs were designed to associate fishery...
A number of fisheries development projects are undertaken every year in recognition of the important role fisheries play in many coastal communities. The objectives and emphasis varies, but typically goes beyond a limited focus on fisheries management and the ecosystem to include essential economic and social impacts. This makes it...
The Fishery Performance Indicators (FPIs) have been successfully applied to commercial fisheries around the globe and have uncovered key insights into fishery management success. We developed an extension of the FPIs to consider performance of recreational fisheries. The Sport FPIs were developed through multiple iterations of consulting, piloting and revision...
As part of an effort to characterize the dynamics of the small-scale commercial fishery for California halibut, we were provided access to a large, multi-faceted data set. The landings data included price per pound, along with multiple factors that could influence that price. We combined fishery participants’ knowledge with statistical...
Proceedings of the 2017 Forum of the North American Association of Fisheries Economists, held March 22-24, 2017 in La Paz, Baja California Sur, Mexico.
Proceedings of the 2017 Forum of the North American Association of Fisheries Economists, held March 22-24, 2017 in La Paz, Baja California Sur, Mexico.