Current fisheries management approaches based on centralised government intervention have proven inadequate to deal with the present management and cannot meet its objectives including reverting stock depletion, resolving user group conflicts, increase profitability and prevent social disruption. There is no easy solution to this problem. New institutions enabling fishing communities...
The study used a combination of fairly standard and often overlapping participatory tools and techniques as well as SWOT analysis in the context of the sustainable livelihoods approach (SLA) which is emerging as a potentially useful way to looking at policies and institutions to address poverty. The adoption of fisheries...
Norway has for years managed its coastal fisheries through a regime that for all practical purposes has acted as open access, that is, open for bona fide fishers. The trawling sector was closed already in the 1930s, and the large offshore fleet was regulated through limited entry licensing from the...
Differences in technical efficiency of fishing vessels are often attributed to skipper skill and differences in technology. While the later can be defined in terms of the technology employed, the former is more difficult to quantify. In this paper, the contribution of technology and skipper characteristics (e.g. level of education,...
New Zealand’s quota management system, the QMS, has for years been considered as one of the most successful rights-based fisheries management system in the world. Although the hard evidence is at best patchy, New Zealand’s fishing industry is performing well ahead of most competitors, both in economic, biological and administrative...
The very restrictive quotas of cod in the Baltic Sea are a strong force for searching alternatives. Since 1996 for instance, the cod quota for the German fishery was reduced from 22 000 t to 13 000 t in the year 2001. And further cuts took place in 2002. However,...
This paper explores New Zealand’s experience with introducing species into the Quota Management System (QMS). The Fisheries Amendment Act 1986 implemented the QMS based on the allocation of individual transferable quota (ITQ) to those who met the allocation criteria. At that time the Ministry of Fisheries (MFish) introduced 32 species...
Technical efficiency (TE) measures the relationship between a vessel’s inputs to the fishing process and its outputs, with full efficiency being achieved when outputs are maximised from a given set of inputs. Inputs can be physical (e.g. the vessel, gear, engine, onboard equipment, etc.), flexible (time spent fishing, size of...
The aim of this paper is to assist teaching undergraduate students how to analyse the issue of fish stock investment. The mathematical prerequisites are a basic knowledge of calculus. Both discrete and continuos time frameworks are used. To fish down or to build up a fish stock takes time, and...
This paper looks at some of the seemingly positive developments in fisheries governance over the last twenty-five years. It asks why fisheries management, if improving, is still failing in its basic objective of managing the people who catch fish so as to ensure that there are enough fish left out...
Multiobjective decision analysis (MDA) is a useful assessment method when fishery managers need a systematic investigation of the trade-offs involved in the selection of alternative policy options. An important class of techniques within MDA is vector optimization, consisting of mathematical programming models with vector valued objective functions. From the management...
Fisheries economists have studied fisheries managed with ITQs and compared them to fisheries that are differently managed. Most of these studies have found ITQs to be economically superior. This paper studies the ITQ-fisheries in Iceland. It focuses on features that are difficult to explain using traditional fisheries economics. It is...
The harvest technology of several multispecies fisheries has been explained in the recent literature using dual-based models. These studies are useful for explaining rent dissipation, estimating input and output elasticities, as well as describing other aspects of fisherman behavior. Most of these analyses have assumed that inputs are fixed at...
Management of the Danish protein fisheries in the North Sea has during recent years become increasingly politicised, as various stakeholder groups are seeking influence on the decision-making process. In relation to management of the sand eel and Norway pout fisheries, two different issues are debated. In the sand eel fishery,...
Until recently the execution of the fisheries management schemes in the Netherlands was to a large extend centralized. In 1993, however, part of the executionary responsibilities was delegated to the fishing industry. In this new system, responsibilities in the management of individual transferable quota (ITQs) has been devolved to groups...
In this paper we define the regulatory structure of the New Zealand Quota Management System (QMS) and document key changes in its operation over time. We document the relevant legislation that affected the quota market from the Fisheries Act 1983 forward. We describe how the QMS operates in New Zealand...
Fisheries management is characterised by multiple objectives. However, seldomly do bioeconomic models incorporate more than one or possibly two key objectives, typically profit and employment, into an analysis. There are both practical and technical reasons for this. This study considers the incorporation of eight key objectives into a bioeconomic analysis...
Annual recruitment of the New Zealand longfin eel (Anguilla dieffenbachii) has decreased by around 75 percent since heavy levels of commercial fishing began in the early 1970s. Given the unsustainability of existing regulatory policy, a deterministic multiple-cohort bioeconomic model is developed and applied to this system to gain insight into...
New Zealand’s fisheries legislation generally sets out a centralised and prescriptive management framework, predominantly based on annual decisions on both management measures and service delivery. A recent amendment provides for the Minister of Fisheries to approve fisheries plans, but does not specify what needs to be included in a plan...
In British Columbia “co-management agreements” are improving the sustainable management of many commercial fisheries. While some fisheries have fairly extensive co-management agreements which outline cost recovery, joint and separate roles and responsibilities for enforcement, science, and management, most do not. There are a number of important factors which have limited...
The French Norway lobster (Nephrops norvegicus) fishery situated in the Biscay Bay is composed by about 250 costal trawlers. These boats are registered in harbours located in South Brittany (Le Guilvinec, Lorient, Concarneau) and in the Vendée (Sables d'Olonnes, La Cotinière). The main particularity of the fishery is that lobsters...
The Enhanced Data Collection Project (EDCP), administered by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, collected data on discard rates for groundfish species and bycatch rates of prohibited species. From late 1995 to early 1999 EDCP observers collected discard data from 235 fishing trips by 25 trawl vessels that voluntarily...
In marine resource management, spatial policy instruments, including Marine Protected Areas, are becoming increasingly important. The economic motivation for spatially explicit policy is that renewable resources generate, in addition to the conventionally recognized incentives to over-harvest in the face of insecure property rights, spatial externalities that distort the spatial distribution...
For three years, a multidisciplinary group of researchers in social sciences, has analysed the Ethical, Legal and Social Aspects of fisheries management in Europe. In the framework of this ELSA Pêche programme funded under the ELSA line of the FAIR research programme of the European Commission (DG XII, Research), a...
Fishing overcapacity has lead to unsustainable harvesting and rent dissipation in global fisheries. Only government intervention of some kind can lead to a reduction in capacity. If efficiency is the primary objective for the regulator, then the least efficient vessels should be decommissioned. Here we analyze the Swedish fishery using...
Management of individual species in a multi-species fishery poses a number of challenges for fishery management systems, including the problem of managing fish bycatch. Fish bycatch is sometimes identified as a particular problem associated with management systems based on individual transferable quotas (ITQs) but this has not always proven to...
As the British Columbia salmon fishery developed, the Canadian government, with constitutional responsibility for the resource, faced a number of critical turning points in management policy. In early years, partly for expediency, the allocation of fishing privileges often resulted in efficient levels of effort but little attempt was made to...
Since the collapse of the Newfoundland groundfishery in 1992, the snow crab fishery has become Newfoundland’s largest fishery, accounting for approximately half the value of total landings. This study uses trip log data to estimate the production frontier and the technical efficiency of this fishery using a Stochastic Frontier Analysis...
Recently, there has been an increasing interest among researchers on efficiency in fisheries. They have not just been focused on the analysis of the efficiency itself but also for other purposes as measures of capacity utilisation. However, often, efficiency analyses do not offer clear results regarding the sources of the...
Fisheries affect fish stocks through their exploitation rate and exploitation pattern. Both influence the economic yield from the fish stock. In regulated fisheries, the exploitation rate is determined either by the acceptable level of fishing effort or catch, whereas the exploitation pattern is determined by selectivity of gears and/or regulatory...
The Irish Sea, being an area fairly discrete and partially isolated from adjoining fishing grounds, lends itself well to research studies. The area is fished by Ireland and the United Kingdom, with limited effort by France and Belgium, and has been known to be overfished for quite a long time....
Traditional fisheries management schemes provide fishermen with incentives to maximise their individual share of the catch, while individual vessel quota management schemes change incentives to maximise profits from their individual share of the catch. The way that one models the fishermen’s optimisation problem in empirical studies should reflect the changed...
The result of changes in regulation or monitoring and enforcement of commercial fisheries are highly dependent on fishers’ supply response decisions. One central determinant of fishers’ reactions to such changes is their risk preferences. Empirical studies of fishers’ preferences have found that most fishers are risk averse. In this paper,...
The purpose of this study is aimed at developing a simple bioeconomic model of the Namibian rock lobster fishery, with the main objective being to incorporate economics into fisheries management in order to estimate the potential economic benefits that could accrue to the fishery given efficient management. The complex nature...
A method is introduced and applied to analyse changed in productivity of firms harvesting in a multi-species fishery. The index-number technique decomposes firm profits into its contributions and can be used to assess economic performance by both regulators and individual firms across an industry and over time. Using an unbalanced...
Loligo gahi (Patagonian longfin squid) has been the target of a major trawl fishery in the waters around the Falkland Islands since the early 1980s. The catch of this short-lived species can fluctuate markedly due to variation in seasonal recruitment. Ex-vessel prices of loligo are also variable due to international...
The use of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) has been proposed as a possible tool to enable the measurement of fishing capacity worldwide. In fisheries the DEA approach has been limited to measuring physical capacity, where capacity is defined as the maximum amount of output that can be produced per unit...
This paper is a study of the production technology and relative efficiency of vessels harvesting tiger prawns in the northern prawn fishery (NPF), one of Australia’s largest and most lucrative fishing areas. It is based on a unbalanced panel data set of 228 observations among thirty-seven vessels for the years...
In this paper efficiency gains and associated cost reductions from increases in quota leased or traded are estimated for the South East Trawl Fishery (SETF), using Australian Fisheries Management Authority logbook data and Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics survey data on 47 vessels in an unbalanced panel data...
A bioeconomic model of the Oregon ocean shrimp (Pandalus jordani) fishery was developed to evaluate management policy options for maximizing fishery yield, revenue, and/or net present value using existing regulatory policy approaches. The base model accounts for a multiple cohort seasonal fishery, a count per pound catch composition, and an...
While most bioeconomic models assume that vessel operators use profit maximizing behavior, it is sometimes argued that participants use other operational goals. The purpose of this paper is to compare how vessel behavior, the bioeconomic equilibrium and the path to achieve it are changed if participants use profit goal behavior....
It is rarely possible or desirable to maintain a constant target fishing mortality rate for each individual stock in a multispecies fishery. Preventing overfishing of all stocks at all times will often be in conflict with attainment of optimal yield for the fishery. This paper presents a retrospective analysis and...
In this paper we analyse different econometric procedures of technical efficiency to estimate fishing capacity. These procedures are then applied to the purse seine fishery located in the Gulf of Cádiz. The target species of this fishery has changed quite a lot over the past few years. It used to...
The paper predicts the outcomes of alternative management scenarios for the Southern Bluefin Tuna (SBT) fishery over the next twenty years. Two criteria are used to characterize outcomes: economic efficiency as measured by the present value of fishery rent generated; and conservation as measured by the predicted size of the...
Growth parameters and mortality of the tigertooth croaker (Otolithes ruber) were estimated from length
frequency data collected during trawl surveys in the Persian Gulf (Bushehr waters) from 1997-1998. LFDA and
FiSAT Programs were used for data analyses. Growth parameters were estimated as L∞ = 58 cm and K = 0.8...
Generalised linear estimation and multi-layer perception neural network modelling techniques were applied to the Scottish trawler fleet data in order to estimate which inputs have the greatest impact on boat profits and output. Both produced comparable estimates that revealed inelastic and non-linear response to vessel power and length, negative response...
Milkfish has been farmed in Taiwan for over 300 years. Faced with a limited land resource, the industry is looking at the problem of how to maintain a sustainable and efficient production. This study specified a stochastic production frontier function to estimate potential milkfish farm output and efficiency by using...
Despite several factors favoring the development of haddock (Melanogrammus aeglefinus) aquaculture, there is virtually no economic information on its feasibility. This paper uses bioeconomic simulation techniques to conduct an ex-ante impact assessment of the early life stages in haddock production. Using an economic engineering methodology, early life stages are modeled...
Pla Tubtim (Oreochromis sp.) was a new fish species for aquaculture in Thailand. It was an improved breeding from tilapia and expected to be a common fish dish for the Thais while being an important source of income earning for fish farmers in this country. Logit model was applied to...
In this paper an extended version of the well-known Faustmann model is developed for solving the rotation problem in fish farming. Two particularly important aspects of the problem are emphasized: namely first, the possibilities for cycles in relative price relationships and second, the problem with limitations in release time for...
Despite current advances in aquaculture practices, microbial diseases are still being increasingly incriminated as a significant constraint to regulate sustainable aquaculture production, trade and economic development of this sector. A systematic research to identify various infections which induce morbidity and mortality among trout and carps was undertaken in Himachal Pradesh,...
In many estuarine and ocean areas, aquaculture is seen as an alternative to traditional commercial fish harvesting practices. A significant problem hindering the emergence or the continuing growth of aquaculture in many areas is the conflict that arises among it and other competing ocean uses. Real world examples include the...
This paper investigates the integration between freshwater cage culture and irrigated agricultural activity in order to determine the relative benefits and investment requirements of installing small, medium and large scale fish farm operations into traditional farms. Through providing a growing medium for finfish, water can be used for the purpose...
Atlantic salmon aquaculture is a growing industry in the Bay of Fundy on Canada’s Atlantic coast. The vast majority of aquaculture sites are concentrated in a relatively small coastal region of the province of New Brunswick (NB) where the industry is viewed as a major component of regional economic development....
The incorporation of fisheries commodities into the International Food Policy Research Institute’s (IFPRI) International Model for Policy Analysis of Agricultural Commodities and Trade (IMPACT) model suggests that demand for fisheries products will rise faster than supply over the next two decades, and that fishery commodity prices will rise relative to...
A dynamic game model is used to predict the strategic behavior of harvesters engaged in a non-cooperative fishery on a common property resource. The model predicts that an increase in the current number of harvesters in a common property fishery will reduce both the equilibrium harvest level and the current...
There is increasing awareness of and concern about the actual and potential adverse effects of fishing on the aquatic environment. New Zealand, like many other countries, has developed a range of initiatives to address specific issues related to the effects of fishing, including establishing marine reserves, fishing method restrictions, observer...
This paper explores the issue of using marine reserves in combination with quotas as fisheries management tools. The underlying biological dynamics are described by a patchy environment model, in which a metapopulation is built up by linked sub-populations that are distributed across a set of spatially discrete habitats or patches....
In 1998, the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary initiated the “Tortugas 2000” planning process that would lead to the eventual designation (2001) of the largest marine reserve in the US: The Dry Tortugas Ecological Reserve (DTER). This resulting research, targeted commercial fishermen operating in the DTER region, determining the total...
A balanced development between economic activities and environmental concern are profound in public and emphasized by the government policy. It is especially so with the change in working policy, thus the increase in leisure time for Eco-tourism. All along, fishing industry and marine based tourism have been major industries in...
New Zealand marine recreational fisher’s attitudes to their fisheries and fisheries management are discussed in the light of the findings from two studies. The first study, a national telephone survey of more than 600 fishers, investigated why fishers seek to go recreational fishing and their attitudes towards the fisheries management....
Seven economic instruments including property right regime, tradable permit, bond and deposit refund, liability, fiscal instrument, financial instrument, and charge system were considered for rehabilitations of coastal resources including mangrove, coastal water, coral, sea grass and seaweed, tourism, and fishery resources. Criteria on selective economic instruments were previous practice, management...
Management of New Zealand marine fisheries is widely regarded as innovative and effective. However a nationwide survey in 2000 revealed that New Zealanders judge the state of New Zealand’s marine fisheries to be adequate to good, and management of the marine fisheries is only adequate. On those two criteria marine...
Traditional approaches to fisheries management, which have been singular, species-based and non-sectoral, have failed to protect the world’s fisheries resources. This has resulted in the overexploitation of fish stocks, displacement of fishing fleets and dislocation of fishing communities. The first attempts at international regulation of fisheries were simple, but premised...
The state of the world at the beginning of 21 century is terribly bad from all points of views such as environment, food supply, resources, economy and security essential for human survival. Our civilization based on technological development and mass consumption has been using up all resources on land and...
In 1998, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) launched a series of marine recreational angler expenditure survey in the Northeast (NE) management region (Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia). This series was extended to the Southeast (SE) management region (North Carolina,...
The high ecological, social and economic value placed on Western Australia’s aquatic environment creates a significant obligation on the WA Department of Fisheries to develop and implement appropriate and sustainable resource management strategies for the State's fisheries and fish habitats. Historically, fisheries management in Western Australia has been based on...
Fisheries management has been carried out on the assumption that a fish population is in equilibrium with the fishing effort under the average environmental conditions and hence there must be a maximum sustainable yield (MSY). However, since the simultaneous rise and fall of the interdecadal and global scale of sardine...
At a hearing about the Green Paper (an analysis of the EU fisheries policy over the last 10 years and an outlook for the next decade) the following statement was given by an economist: „The Ecosystem Approach is the fata morgana of the fisheries biologists.“ Indeed, a lot of biologists...
The inclusion of ecosystem considerations in fisheries management implies two changes with extensive institutional repercussions: the uncertainties about states and outcomes rise dramatically and a multiplicity of new stakeholders, interests and objectives must be accommodated in the management institutions. The first change may potentially add immense costs to the management...
The main objectives of this paper are, in the first place, to review the international efforts carried out during the last ten years for fighting against illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing. In this field, the keystone is the 1982 United Nations Law of the Sea Convention. But since the adoption...
Tuna fisheries provides an important source of income, foreign exchange and employment for many Pacific Island States. It is also seen as a major avenue for industrial development by most Pacific Island States. The Law of the Sea Convention, while recognising the rights of coastal States to manage and develop...
Coastal nations can impose conditions of use on foreign fishing firms that operate in their Exclusive Economic Zone. We develop a game-theoretical model in which a fishery owner maximizes the revenue that it collects from firms that operate in its EEZ by charging them a fishing fee. We find that...
Managing fisheries resources according to an ecosystem approach is an idea that emerged from science and ecology and has now found its way into the international regulation of regional and high seas fisheries. Several fisheries agreements now impose an obligation on states to consider the protection of marine ecosystems. The...
Although the 1982 UNCLOS endeavoured to establish EEZs and assist coastal states in being able to manage the resources throughout their range to some extent, it became obvious that further agreements were necessary to expand upon states’ international obligations in relation to conservation and management of living resources on the...
Recent increases in the volume of canning grade tuna caught in the Western and Central Pacific Ocean (WCPO) has led to concern about the increasing catching capacity of the fleet of purse seine vessels operating in the fishery. In this paper Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is used to examine the...
In September 2000, the Convention for the Conservation and Management of the Highly Migratory Fish Stocks in the Central and Western Pacific (WCPFC) was concluded by the seventh session of the Multilateral High Level Conference (MHLC). The WCPFC, amongst other things, establishes a tuna Commission, which will have powers to...
Over the past 50 years, most efforts to regulate fishing and conserve our oceans and seas only have had limited success in preventing the on-going problems of over-fishing, degradation of the marine environment, and irreversible loss of marine biodiversity. Ecosystem-Based Management (EBM) of the oceans is an approach that is...
Custom, and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea of 1982 (UNCLOS), provide the right of all states to exploit stocks of tuna on the high seas, where roughly half of world tuna catches are taken. The UNCLOS also provides that states have the obligation to cooperate...
M_ori rights over fishing resources in Aotearoa/New Zealand are being dramatically affected by ongoing changes in legislation and socio-economic factors. Although rights over natural resources were guaranteed to M_ori, the country’s indigenous people, by Article 2 of the Treaty of Waitangi 1840, those rights have subsequently been eroded. Historically, fishing...
The 1992 fisheries settlement between the New Zealand government and Maori is the largest Treaty settlement to date in New Zealand and is significant internationally for the extent of the transfer of rights to a resource from the state to an indigenous people. In this paper, the challenges presented by...
Fisheries management involves considering several biological, economic and political objectives. They are often contradictory. For this reason, it is almost impossible to reach them simultaneously. Andalusian regional government collaborates with the national government to establish fishing plans for local fisheries. The objectives of these plans verify the aforementioned statement. For...
Factors influencing the emergence of collective action are studied using survey data from individual boat owners from Barka, Masn’a and Suwaiq. Fishermen who adopt a cooperative strategy tend to be more risk averse and have high economic dependence on the common property resources. Social identity as a fisherman also appears...
Combating illegal fishing is one of the major difficulties the International Law of the Sea faces. The European Community is aware of this problem and has taken some measures to fight against illegal fishing, amongst which there are those related to the effective exercise of jurisdiction and control of the...
The failure of the European Union’s Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) to develop a sustainable fishing environment for all member states is often blamed on the incompatibility of the territorial logic of national interests and the market forces of a de-territorialized European Union. Ironically, it is precisely this incompatibility that a...
The saltwater aquarium hobby has increased dramatically in the last decade due to improvements in the technologies and knowledge needed to sustain mini-reef ecosystems. With this increased demand comes increased pressure on natural reef ecosystems that supply the vast majority of the live organisms for the commercial market. To combat...
The objective of this paper is to present a parsimonious forecasting model for the fishmeal price. The focus is on the soybean meal market’s impact on the fish meal price through the soybean meal futures price together with the stocks-to-use as an indicator of demand and supply conditions. A salient...
This paper presents a critical analysis of the provisions of the WTO agreements and jurisprudence as they relate to the use of trade-related measures in support of cooperative fisheries management arrangements. The interpretation given to WTO agreements by successive Panels and Appellate Bodies has provided guidance regarding how such measures...
Globalization may affect companies in the fish-processing industry in many ways. For some, globalization poses new threats, for others it represents new opportunities. Some companies see their benefit of being located close to the resources vanish, as resources are brought out of the region, processed in low-wage countries, and distributed...
Increased livestock and aquaculture production can put pressure on the fishmeal market, and thus industrial fisheries stocks, since both of these sectors use fishmeal in their feeds. Data indicate that fishmeal supply has reached a production limit due to limited marine resources. Meanwhile there has been an explosive growth in...
The rapid growth of aquaculture and concomitant growth in the use of compound aquafeeds have resulted in aquaculture using 35% of global fishmeal and 54% of global fish oil in 2000, up from just 10% and 16% respectively in 1988. Meanwhile, landings of reduction fish have hovered near 30 mmt,...
Compared to other EU-countries, the consumption of fish is relatively high in Finland at 15 kg per capita. On the contrary, the consumption of meat is low. The total consumption of meat is 66 kg per capita, of which 20 per cent is poultry. During the last decade there have...
The fish markets in Finland were formerly protected from international competition. The markets were gradually
opened to free competition in the 1990s due to the EEA agreement and EU membership. As a consequence, the importation of fresh salmon from Norway rapidly increased, and imported salmon captured the markets from domestic...