This study investigates optimal catch of Barents Sea stocks, namely Northeast Arctic Cod and Capelin in multispecies ecosystem. We solve a multispecies age structured bioeconomic model for predator-prey interaction. Barents Sea stock data from ICES are employed for model application. Among others, we also include sustainability constraint in the model...
In recent decades, distant-water fishing vessels (DWFVs) have drawn increasing criticism for exacerbating misery in developing nations. As part of a resolution to this issue, a coalition of academics, fishers, processors and others developing nations are field-testing new technologies to extend the fishing power and reach of local small-to-medium-boat artisanal...
Interest in sustainable fishing communities suggests the need to understand fishermen’s decisions about where to land fish. In this paper, we apply techniques used extensively to analyze fishing location choices to study landings location choices. We analyze detailed microdata from Norwegian groundfish vessels that land fish in fourteen different ports...
When making policy recommendations, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council balances community stability with efficiency in resource utilization. The Council is considering an action that, for part of the year, would effectively limit the harvest of Aleutian Islands Pacific cod to vessels that deliver to a shore plant in the...
While studies have long examined the economic viability of oyster industries along the Pacific and Atlantic coasts of the mainland United States, Hawai`i has had no industry to speak of in modern times. This may soon change due to the recent establishment of a long-absent water quality monitoring program required...
Indigenous fishing rights are partially recognized via allocation of commercial quota rights to tribes. Concern exists, however, that the allocation of commercial quota rights to indigenous groups without restrictions on how the benefits from quota holdings can be allocated and exchanged will lead to class segregation within indigenous groups. Scholars...
The rapid pace of climate change and increased human disturbance of ecosystems in the Arctic is bringing urgency to concern over non-native species introductions and their potential threats to the marine environment and its economic productivity, where before environmental conditions served as a barrier to their establishment. The same characteristics...
Quota allocation mechanisms have distributional effects with important issues concerning the economic organization of the fishery and acceptability. Yet, these distributional effects are rarely studied. In France, where fishing rights are not transferable, the quotas are shared between producer cooperatives based on the historical landings of their members. Each cooperative...
Electronic monitoring (EM) systems hold promise for the future collection of fishery-dependent data, either to supplement human at-sea observers or replace them. Several pilot studies have been conducted on EM in the New England groundfish fleet, though there are still on the water operational and shore-side protocols to further test...
The paper puts forward a model of the Pearl River Delta (PRD) fishery in the South China Sea that integrates the ecological, social and economic costs and benefits of fisheries activities in a multidisciplinary framework. In particular, In particular, we developed integrated model by linking a regional Social Accounting Matrix...
The Measuring the Effects of Catch Shares Project is a webportal-based effort that continues to compile and analyze data on ecological, economic, social, and administrative changes in groundfish catch share fisheries on the West Coast and in the Northeast. The purpose of the five-year project is to make the best...
Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia have all developed nutrient trading programs to defray the cost of achieving mandated nitrogen load reductions in Chesapeake Bay, and there is increasing interest in the role oysters can play in generating credits. A number of bioeconomic models highlight the impact these credits have...
The potential economic impact of a fully developed mariculture industry in Alaska is not well understood by industry or policy makers. It is also not entirely clear what is needed to move from Alaska’s current micro industry (approximately $500,000 in annual sales) to a fully developed industry. In general, the...
The Agricultural Act of 2014 (Public Law 113-79) amended legislation regarding the U.S. catfish inspection program to include “all fish of the order Siluriformes,” encompassing imported species: basa, tra, and pangasius. Furthermore, the amendment finalized the transition of catfish and catfish-like product inspection responsibilities to the USDA Food Safety and...
Commercial fishing is generally hazardous, but some types of commercial fishing are more dangerous than other types. Since much of the fishing industry is composed of small family-owned businesses, commercial fishermen have to rely on the private health insurance markets, health insurance offered through a landside job, spouses’ plans, social...
Alaska is the largest seafood producing state in the US. In 2013, Alaska landed 1.88 billion USD worth of seafood, with a volume of 2.63 million MT. This consists of 34% of the total value and 60% of the total volume landed in the US. Of the top 20 fishing...
The North Atlantic U.S. groundfish and scallop processing industries are a tale of two fisheries. The groundfish processing industry has suffered a steep, almost continual decline in landings starting in 1984 that resulted in 2014 landings that were only 16% of 1983 landings. US scallop landings increased from 5 million...
In this paper we study whether environmental bureaucrats share preferences for environmental policy with the general public. We use the choice experiment method to elicit preferences for improvements in coastal cod abundance along the Swedish West coast. This is done for the general public, Swedish EPA (SEPA) bureaucrats, and for...
Atlantic sea scallop fisheries in Iceland and the United States have been subject to outbreaks of ‘gray meat’, a disease caused by infestation by a new species of apicomplexan parasite that causes progressive myodegeneration of scallop meats that kills scallops and reduces recruitment. Due to reduced exvessel value, fishermen discard...
This research analyzes the effects that a redistributive fishing quota policy, within a collective rights quota assignment system, might have on the profits and employment of artisanal fisher organizations. The Chilean authorities have been pursuing a deliberate quota redistributive policy between ship-owners of different vessel categories. This policy has affected...
Sablefish (Anoplopoma fimbria) are distributed from Japan to Baja California. Alaska is the world’s principal supplier of sablefish with the majority of commercial landings occurring in the Gulf of Alaska and the Aleutian Islands. This demersal, long-lived fish is in one of Alaska’s highest value commercial fisheries. In terms of...
From 2012 through 2013, NOAA Fisheries Service conducted a study to collect participation, effort, and expenditure information related to ocean recreation activities in the United States. This study collected information from all 50 states and the District of Columbia in six, two-month waves. There were eight ocean recreation categories of...
New Bedford’s share of Atlantic sea scallops landings and revenues increased from 44% in 1996 to 67% in 2013. Explanations for industrial agglomerations often focus on the relative importance of natural advantage and economies of scale or scope. We use the absolute and relative Theil indices of disproportionality to examine...
The Baltic fishery is managed under the European Union Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) which defines procedures for setting annual total allowable catches (TAC) for major commercially harvested species. TACs are given as fixed shares to each member state by applying the principal of relative stability. Poland uses non-tradable individual vessel...
Purchases made by marine recreational anglers are an important source of economic activity in coastal areas around the United States. In recognition of the economic contributions anglers make to coastal state economies, NOAA Fisheries conducts surveys every three to five years in order to gather data on expenditures made by...
Many of the tangible benefits of catch share programs (e.g., reducing overcapacity) are dependent on the trading of shares. Additional trading-related questions (such as whether landings will change port or be concentrated geographically) are also important to the overall evaluation of a fishery, but are often asked only during post-implementation...
Multispecies fisheries pose a considerable management difficulty with respect to quota allocation between species. Externalities of direct control over the harvest may include, among others, creation of unbalanced predator‐prey relationships in the environment. That, in turn, may affect the individual economic incentives of fishing vessels. Combining economic and ecological factors...
The paper analyzes a situation in which the fishing fleet is subject to restrictive regulation regarding the harvest of its primal target species due to biological overfishing that in turn reveals a high level of overcapacity. The goal is to model fishermen’s expectations and likely responses to the government initiated...
A brief overview of changes in the distribution of permanent entry permits in Alaska’s limited fisheries is provided in this presentation. From 1975 to 2014, 79 permit types have been issued in 65 fisheries. This presentation provides an overview of Alaska’ limited entry program, gives statewide data and some fishery-specific...
In an environment of limited resources and expanded management expectations, fisheries regulators face hard decisions about how intensively to regulate different stocks. The Fishery Management Councils are required to regulate harvest of all stocks in a sustainable manner, but have discretion on how much regulatory effort to invest in individual...
In 2011 an individual fishing quota (IFQ) system was implemented for the limited entry trawl component of the Pacific groundfish fishery in the US. The IFQ system allocates quota shares (QS) for 29 IFQ stocks and individual bycatch quota (IBQ) shares for Pacific halibut. Each year quota shareholders are issued...
Fisheries sustainability is a much sought-after goal. Yet, “sustainability” is often too ambiguously defined to be of much practical guidance to policymakers. Furthermore, fisheries managers are increasingly expected to assess and manage fisheries in an “ecosystem-based” manner – accounting for the ecological interdependencies of species and their coupling with the...
Fishing impacts biodiversity on multiple levels, potentially resulting in unintended feedbacks to economic performance of the fishery over time. For example, targeting observable traits within a population can impact genetic diversity, targeting populations within a species can impact population diversity, and targeting valuable species can impact biodiversity at the ecosystem...
Electronic monitoring (EM) systems hold promise for the future collection of fishery-dependent data, either to supplement human at-sea observers or replace them. Several pilot studies have been conducted on EM in the New England groundfish fleet, though there are still on the water operational and shore-side protocols to further test...
"Rationalization” or the change to catch share management in fisheries has been shown to lead to the slowing of fishing activity, input and effort consolidation, cost savings, as well as new market and product development. The effects of rationalization on fishermen’s behavior become more complex when one accounts for the...
Over the last decade direct exports to China and Hong Kong of Pacific Geoduck have grown to encompass more than 80 percent of U.S. geoduck production. In December 2013 China shut its doors to U.S. geoduck over possible arsenic contamination and imports from the U.S. fell from over 250 MT...
In this paper we measure the value of sanitary restrictions in terms of forgone profits. For this we model the trade-off between biosecurity and profits in the salmon aquaculture industry. We introduce the concept of “sanitary desirable volume” of the salmon industry, as a goal in a bi-objective model. We...
Recreational fishing for popular species like red snapper and grouper in the Gulf of Mexico has followed a familiar pattern to that observed in many commercial fisheries: fishing under regulated open access has promoted a “race to the fish” with cascades of shorter seasons, shrinking bag limits, and significant fishery...
Almost one half of the EEZs of the world are subject to so-called foreign fishing arrangements (FFAs), in which foreign fishing states (distant water fishing states in particular) gain access to EEZs under access arrangements with the relevant coastal states. The FFAs may take the form of “fee fishing” arrangements,...
Ecosystem externalities arise when one use of an ecosystem affects its other uses through the production functions of the ecosystem. We use simulations from a size-spectrum ecosystem model to investigate the ecosystem externality created by fishing of multiple species. The model is based upon general ecological principles and is calibrated...
During the first three years (2007-2009) of the Gulf of Mexico red snapper IFQ program most quota lease trades were local, involving fishers that lived in the same communities. In 2010, the red snapper quota lease market changed as more IFQ participants began trading quota with fishers from different regions...
As fisheries management becomes more collaborative by seeking input and involvement from stakeholders, it is important to understand and address the diversity of those stakeholders. Gulf Coast fisheries communities include diverse racial and ethnic groups, particularly a large number of Vietnamese Americans involved in all aspects of the seafood industry....
The Pacific sardine fishery is shared but independently managed by three nations: Canada, USA and Mexico. As a result, potential conflict scenarios may arise. A stochastic optimal control methodology is presented to analyze potential conflict scenarios by first considering a deterministic logistic stock growth function and adding a stochastic term,...
Cooperatives in the Rights-based Fisheries Management have the potential to overcome some of the limitations of Individual Transferrable Quotas. The New England groundfish sector management, a new regime under which fishermen can voluntarily form sectors with each sector constrained by a total allowable catch or Annual Catch Entitlement (ACE), is...
National Standard 1 states that a primary function of fisheries management in the single stock case is the determination of the annual allowable harvest, and it is based on the selection of a target stock size and a control rule that will specify a harvest path that that will cause...
Data scarcity and weak institutional governance make the implementation of top-down, quota-based fisheries management in much of the developing world’s fisheries difficult. An alternative to quota-based management is the use of space-based rights such as territorial use rights fisheries (TURFs). In spite of wide spread use of TURFs as a...
Climate change and continued fishing pressure threaten to increase recruitment variability for many stocks globally. Shifts in the inter-annual stability of an exploitable renewable resource may have dramatic consequences for the industries and communities which depend upon them. In this talk, the link between resource volatility and industry structure is...
The traceability practices of 48 seafood businesses were assessed as part of an evaluation of nine global seafood value chains (from harvest to retail). The research was conducted through direct interviews and written surveys in order to assess the reasons why traceability systems were used to strengthen business performance. The...
We empirically disentangle the efficiency mechanism of revenue sharing, in which a group of harvesters shares catch and/or revenue among members of a fishery cooperative, by incorporating the influence of social capital. In addition to each of revenue sharing and social capital influencing a fishery independently we hypothesize social capital...