Fisheries is not the only discipline where models have been used in attempts to fine tune an aspect of the economy. Such fine tuning can prove ineffective because of the uncertainties in the scientific underpinnings of the models and because of the omission of critical elements. In fisheries, the biological...
We describe the first effort at creating a global ex-vessel fish price database. We then demonstrate potential applications of the database by linking it to the Sea Around Us project's spatially defined catch database, which makes it possible to attach catch values to species both in time and space. There...
This paper analyses the state of demersal fisheries in the North and Central Adriatic Sea (FAO Geographical Sub Area (GSA) 17) from an economic and social point of view. The analysis is performed using a set of 25 socio-economic indicators. Indicators represent a valid tool to support the decision making...
The use and management of fish supplies, fish stocks and those who work in fishing and related businesses needs to be governed by good policies and actions, based as far as possible on good research-based advice and other expert information. Fisheries policy makers and managers work in a milieu that...
Fisheries regulations on fishing capacity are usually based on a nominal measurement such as limiting number of vessels of a fleet. However, the nominal measurement of fishing capacity has difficulty in capturing the actual fishing power enhanced by technological changes and potentially leads to biased measures on fishing capacity and...
The economic results of fishing harbours are a key issue for the sustainability of coastal economies. To deal with it, three harbour branches need to be analysed : the suppliers of goods and services, the fishing companies and the trading actors. The compatible state with constraints, various interactions and behaviours...
Indicators of the economic performance of fishing vessels are frequently computed in many countries. Usually, measures of economic performance are based on the return on capital invested. However, several measures of capital value exist, according to the economic information available. In this paper, we use different types of information to...
Traditional productivity measures have been much less prevalent than other measures of economic and biological performance in fisheries economics. It has been increasingly recognized, however, that modeling and measuring fisheries' production relationships is central to understanding and ultimately correcting the repercussions of externalities and poorly designed regulations. We use a...
At the 2001 WTO Ministerial Conference in Doha, World Trade Ministers called for improved disciplines on fisheries subsidies, given the perceived impact of these subsidies in contributing to overfishing, overcapacity and other trade distortions. Subsequent deliberations have sought to determine which fisheries subsidies should be disciplined under the WTO framework....
The concept of an ecosystem approach to fisheries management (EAF) is reaching a point of general acceptance by those involved in fisheries. There is also growing agreement that fisheries management must incorporate the complicated and often not-well-understood links between human activities and the environment. As a primary goal of an...
The increasing move to citizen participation in policy formulation is being witnessed in European fisheries. The emergence of the Regional Advisory Councils (RACs) and other processes via the reformed Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) is sparking hope and interest in more regionally relevant, holistic, and hopefully workable fisheries management measures. In...
Why are fisheries policies so hard to reform? While there are many examples of successful policy reform in the sector, these tend to be restricted to a few countries or individual fisheries. There remains significant scope for further reform to address pressing economic, environmental and social issues in the sector....
Earlier this year a White Paper from the Norwegian Minister of the Environment presented a new, holistic, area-based management plan for the Norwegian part of the Barents Sea, including the Fishery protection zone around Svalbard. The plan will provide guidelines for managing human activities in relation to their use and...
Restrictions on flows of foreign direct investment (FDI) in most sectors of OECD countries have been significantly reduced in recent years. In contrast, FDI in the fish harvesting sectors of OECD countries is still heavily restricted through a range of measures including outright bans on FDI, maximum allowable levels of...
The New Zealand Ministry of Fisheries recently set out a strategic approach to managing the adverse effects of fishing on the aquatic environment. The primary purpose of this Strategy for Managing the Environmental Effects of Fishing (SMEEF) is to set out how the Ministry of Fisheries will meet its environmental...
Commercial property rights in New Zealand are designed to address utilisation and sustainability issues relating to single-stock management. However, commercial property rights may not provide incentives that address environmental impacts of fishing if these impacts do not affect the value of the property right. But is it really that simple?...
The outcome of the current multilateral trade negotiations in the Doha Round will have large implications on international fish trade. The author highlights the most likely scenarios in areas such as market access and fisheries subsidies, and outlines the very diverse interests and negotiation positions of WTO members.
The inability to find a solution – acceptable to sufficient stakeholders to achieve political agreement - to effectively adjust fisheries resources management systems and sector policies lies at the heart of most overexploitation tragedies. For developing countries the application of a technological approach - focusing on rights, maximizing single, economic...
New Zealand manages commercial access and allocation through the market-based Quota Management System (QMS). However, the QMS alone is currently insufficient to address several fisheries issues. New Zealand is now developing Objectives-Based Fisheries Management (OBFM) to complement the QMS along two dimensions. First, to improve fisheries outcomes, such as reduced...
This paper begins by outlining the history of the Rules of Origin negotiations in the World Trade Organization (WTO), unfinished business from the Uruguay Round that is separate from the current Doha Round. The treatment of products of the sea is one of a large number of unresolved issues; progress...
On the morning of 29 August 2005, Southeast Louisiana was decimated by the winds and flood surge associated with Hurricane Katrina. Shortly thereafter, Hurricane Rita played havoc on the Southwestern part of the state. Louisiana's commercial seafood industry, already on the decline for a number of reasons, including declining output...
The financial performance of the UK fishing fleet has been directly affected by high prices for diesel fuel. As a result, the fishing industry has been faced with an urgent need to reduce their dependency on fuel oil. The UK Sea Fish Industry Authority (Seafish) is leading a project part-funded...
Because of wild salmon's importance as a commercial fishery in North America, many questions and concerns have been raised around the issue of farmed versus wild salmon in recent years. Concerns have been related to the impact of the tremendous growth in farmed salmon production on the markets for wild...
Climate change and climate-induced changes are expected to increase in the future and are likely to cause adverse impacts, especially on aquatic resources and coastal communities, by affecting the productivity and distribution of fish stocks. This will have serious implications on future demand and supply of fish at the global...
Maximizing profit and value added are central objectives when fishing rights are distributed. Financial profitability on a company level traditionally measures the return on total assets. Value added on the national level is the net (or gross) national product, and is the total profit of investments and wages and salaries...
To the surprise of government as well as NGOs, village-level caste organizations - or panchayats - played a significant role in the post-tsunami relief effort to fishermen in Tamil Nadu, India. This paper discusses the pro-active role of caste panchayats in relief from the perspective of social resilience, that is...
This paper, that follows from the ongoing Ecost project, departs from the reality of marine biodiversity degradation in the Caribbean. It first enquires how local fishing communities appreciate and measure the degradation of marine biodiversity. In this connection, it asks whether communities have social and cultural attachments to particular species....
The wide expanse of the sea, the inter-linkages among, and the productivity of its resources have until recently led most researchers to consider it unrealistic that humans could have more than local impact on marine ecosystems and their biodiversity. This perception is changing, however, as more evidence of the scale...
A rapid increase in the Thai trawl and push net fisheries had led to over fishing and thus fishery resource degradation. Catch per unit effort decreased from over 300 kg/hr in the past 30 years to less than 20 kg/hr recently. The impact has placed a greater burden on coastal...
Overcapacity situations appear regularly in the activity of marine natural resource exploitation. The measure of capacity utilisation and allocative efficiency for fishing vessels is an approach that can determine the details of that overcapacity. On the one hand, DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) methodology can be used in the case of...
World fisheries are characterized by ecological, economic and social costs which are not taken into account by current market mechanisms. However the sustainability of ecosystems and fishing activities depends on their taking into account in order to take the most suitable management decisions. Based on the consilience concept, the European...
The 2005 Gulf of Mexico hurricanes devastated not only fishing boats but also many businesses interdependent with fishermen: processing plants, ice plants, boat builders, net makers and other suppliers. Fuel prices and other expenses have increased. Wholesale catch prices are down due to damaged markets, lack of storage facilities and,...
Under the provisions of the United Nations Convention for the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), coastal states must provide for access to harvest the living resources within their EEZs. Where the state does not have the capacity to harvest the entire sustainable catch, it must grant other states access to...
Managed fisheries are frequently structured on a sector by sector basis with each sector defined by the type of user or use, for example commercial, recreational and indigenous sectors. Management arrangements for a sector, however, may not be formally integrated with those for other sectors. Consequent competition between sectors for...
The International Plan of Action for the Management of Fishing Capacity (IPOA-Capacity) was introduced in 1999 in response to growing concerns about excessive levels of fishing capacity and its impact on global fisheries resources. While debate in academic circles has focused on appropriate ways in which to measure capacity, the...
In this paper, we illustrate characteristics of food system of tuna by making a bird’s-eye view of tuna
trade and global distribution. Tuna resources are primarily consumed as canned tuna or Sashimi (=raw
fish). The fishing methods and species predetermine the food system of the caught fish. Among seven
tuna...
This paper considers the modelling of aggregate price and quantity of aquaculture production in
the European countries since mid-80s. In general, the evolution of aquaculture production only
considers the evolution of total value and total weight. The heterogeneity of aquaculture
production is neglected. As a consequence, the unit value ('price')...
Resource rentals can be viewed as taxes on scarcity rents or as fees for access to use or utilize the
resource. The Icelandic Fishery Management Act requires that vessel owners pay a Catch fee
(Veiðigjald). This paper discusses how the Catch fee is defined by the Fishery Management Act.
Secondly...
The animal protein intake in Nigeria is grossly insufficient yet the retail price of fish is rising. Market intermediaries, alleged to charge excessive and unjustifiable marketing margins (MM), are often blamed for this. This study examines this allegation using data from 225 sun-dried fish traders classified into three groups. Data...
Maximum sustainable yield (MSY) has been recommended as a reference point for fisheries sustainability. However, like other reference points it is generally applied on a single-species basis. This has potentially significant biological implications in a complex multispecies fishery. MSY-based reference points also have economic implications for fisheries prosecuting the resource....
Fisheries managers around the world have identified bycatch as a key management challenge in fisheries today. However, like the classic common property open-access problem in fisheries, a limit on fleet-wide bycatch may have similar consequences for fishing practices since bycatch is a common property open-access resource. If avoiding bycatch is...
This is a study on economic implications of the 3 year harvest control rule (HCR) for the Northeast Arctic
cod stock, decided in November 2002 by the Joint Norwegian-Russian Fisheries Commission. Outcomes
of this rule are compared to those of five other rules, including the previous one based on a...
Accounting for endangered and protected sea turtle interactions with the pelagic longline fishery by the fishery management has become an important policy goal recently. A multi-objective programming model for Hawaii's longline fishery that incorporated sea turtle interactions (Pradhan and Leung, in press, Ecological Economics) has been extended with spatial and...
European eel (Anguilla anguilla) is one of the most important commercial species in France (eel larvae (glass eel) exports to Asia valuing more than 60 million euros in 2005) but also an endangered species with regard to the dropping recruitment. This species is particularly sensitive to oceanographic and climatic factors...
With the increase of population and depletion of fisheries resources due to loss of fish growing land to agriculture, siltation, etc it became necessary to develop an institutional set-up for fisheries education and research. A number of educational institutes have been established in Bangladesh and every year a number of...
In many salt-water recreational settings an imprecise measure of site choice is often collected based upon the individual's launch-point. For anglers who continue on from the launch-point in a boat, this imprecise measure of site choice is likely missing important on-water trade-offs thereby affecting the accuracy of recreational benefit measures...
Great efforts have been made in order to manage the fisheries more sustainably, but so far, most of these efforts have failed. This is putting the welfare of current and future generations at risk. The fishing fleets have catching capacity that well exceeds the rate at which ecosystems can produce...
Seafood is a staple for most Sri Lankans and the country is a net importer of seafood, because of the
heavy consumption. Tsunami has had crippled the Sri Lanka’s main protein supply system and
thousands of others in marketing chain lost their jobs. The main focus of the study was...
Global warming is expected to affect the ecosystem in the Northeast Atlantic, and sufficient changes will also affect
the aquaculture industry. Farming of salmon and trout is the biggest aquaculture industry in Norway. The export
value was about 2 billion US dollars in 2005. The objective of the paper is...