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 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 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 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.
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...
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...
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...
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...
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.
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...
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....
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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.
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)....
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.
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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.
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...
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.
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,...
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 2013 a stock of sea cucumber (Isostichopus badionotus) was discovered in northern shelf of Yucatan. A survey calculated a biomass of 17,600 tons. The species has an attractive price for local fishers, therefore, in order to avoid the “race for sea cucumbers” and the collapse of the stock, authorities...
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...
Over recent years, fisheries managers have been going through a paradigm shift to prioritize ecosystem-based management. With this comes an increasing need to better understand the impacts of fisheries management decisions on the social well-being and sustainability of fishing communities. This paper summarizes research aimed at using secondary data to...
Choosing a policy instrument is a strategic choice. In the case of fisheries interactions with marine mammals and sea turtles, the preferred policy instrument has been a command-and-control approach such as effort reductions (e.g. area closures) and/or technology standards (e.g. gear modifications), even though market based approaches are available. Since...
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...
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...
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 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...
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...
"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...
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...
As part of an effort to describe the recent history and socioeconomics of a small commercial fishery, we were provided access to a large, multi-faceted data set. In using those data, we faced a number of challenges related to data management, data protection and confidentiality, and needed to develop effective...