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...
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...
The Alaska non-pollock multi-species catcher processor trawl fishery, referred to as the Amendment 80 fishery since 2008, is an endlessly fascinating subject from the perspective of an economist. A diverse group of companies and vessels, emphasizing different species mixes from a multi-species ecosystem, targets fish across the Eastern Bering Sea,...
Fisheries managers are increasingly expected to manage fisheries in an “ecosystem-based” manner – accounting for ecological interdependencies across species and their coupling with the physical environment. Yet managers lack rigorous, bioeconomic EBM indicators to assess tradeoffs and measure whether the natural capital in exploited ecosystems is sustainably managed. We build...
Recreational fishing 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 discards. These restrictions may have significant effects on angler...
Many recreational fisheries are managed under regulated open access governed by seasonal closures and bag limits. This approach has often promoted a “race to the fish” with cascades of shorter seasons and shrinking bag limits. These restrictions may have significant effects on angler welfare by inefficiently allocating fish across anglers,...
Multispecies fisheries add additional complexity for rights-based management implementation. Imperfectly selective fishing gear may make it difficult for fishermen to match their catch composition with the portfolio of total allowable catches chosen by management. If fishermen can perfectly target their catch, the problem of matching catches with quota allocations declines...
The notion of individual transferable quotas (ITQs) has permeated the fisheries economics literature over the last 40 years. The most long-standing prediction about ITQs has been extensively documented, namely that transferable property rights to harvest induce changes along the extensive margin via consolidation of quota among a smaller number of...
The incidental catch of non-targeted species is a significant issue in fisheries management. Most current approaches to bycatch control have viewed it as a purely technological problem; however, there is growing evidence that fishermen are able to control their bycatch, albeit at a cost, by their choice of where to...
Recreational fisheries are severely understudied by fisheries economists, in
spite of their growing importance in the context of fisheries management.
While recreational demand models have been extensively applied to
recreational fisheries, they have rarely been successfully integrated with
bioeconomic models to evaluate policy changes. Furthermore, theoretical
models of open access...