Recent reports of fishery collapse paint a gloomy picture of the ocean's future; perhaps 100% of fisheries from the world's large marine ecosystems (LMEs) will be collapsed in just 40 years. While poor fisheries governance is now widely regarded as the cause, bioeconomic theory and anecdotal evidence suggest that rights-based...
We develop a methodological approach using splines to analyze the deterministic population dynamics of fish stocks at low stock levels. Considering the aggregate Northern cod stock by way of illustration, we reject the hypothesis of strong compensation estimated by the conventional regression methods used by classic bioeconomic models.
Setting aside the traditional simplistic “tragedy of the commons” notion, fisheries crises observed in the Northern Atlantic may be seen as the result of “mismatches” in the decision making process. The collapse of two fisheries, Atlantic Cod (Gadus morhua) in Canada and European Hake (Merluccius merluccius) in Europe, illustrate the...