Analyzing the socioeconomic impacts of fisheries management requires a distinctive array of information that has so far been less developed than the biological data used in stock assessment. In the case of the European Common Fisheries Policy the project SOCIOEC studies the socioeconomic effects of the new European fisheries management...
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...
Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands (BSAI) groundfish fisheries are hugely productive with 2008 – 2014 harvests averaging 1.6 million tons and generating $1.95 billion annually. The BSAI also hosts a commercial halibut fishery with 2013 landings of 3,500 tons and revenues of $41.5 million. Downward trends in halibut biomass combined with continued...
Ecologists warn that the rapid evolution occurring as a result of high-intensity commercial fishing could have potentially disastrous economic and ecological effects. The evolution of economically relevant life-history traits in fish, which can occur due to the harvesting pressure from commercial fisheries, can irreversibly diminish fisheries yields and ecological services....
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...
Recreational fishing for popular species like red snapper and grouper in the Gulf of Mexico follows a pattern that is well known in commercial fisheries: fishing under regulated open access promotes short, unpredictable seasons, shrinking bag limits, and large and persistent overharvests. With federal fishing seasons at all-time lows and...
Individual Transferable Quota (ITQ) systems have been used to control harvests and increase fisheries’ economic efficiency; however, they do not eliminate competitive fishing which can result in stock and congestion externalities that are especially apparent when resources are spatially heterogeneous within the controlled region of the ITQ system. These externalities...
The opening and closing of the shellfish harvest area inevitably influences the market, particularly the exvessel prices that harvesters receive. Without a better understanding of shellfish market and its behaviors, it is impractical to determine the impact of management policies on the market as well as the fishery resources. Using...
This paper investigates the impact of fishery subsidies on resource stocks in 23 OECD countries for the period 1996-2011. Country level subsidy data is matched with a resource stock index prepared by the Sea Around Us Project. Since the impact of subsidies is likely to vary by type, subsidies are...
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...
From 2000 onwards, the United States saw an increasing trend for the shellfish aquaculture practices especially along the Northeast coast. Despite the supporting majority of public regarding the shellfish aquaculture operations, these operations are sometimes opposed by local communities claiming the devaluation of housing property due to the construction of...
Overfishing and the destruction of small-scale fisheries in developing countries — particularly through the use of illegal fishing gear — is a pressing issue. Policymakers and local community leaders often suggest fines and enforcement mechanisms to reduce the use of illegal fishing; however, the response of fishery participants to “bans”...
Individual transferable quotas (ITQs) have been used in British Columbian fisheries management for more than 25 years. When they were implemented, few restrictions were placed on who could own or lease quota. As a result, many retiring fishermen retain quotas to lease or sell to processors and corporations rather than...
The Alaska recreational charter boat sector has undergone significant change in recent years due in part to several regulatory changes in the management of the Pacific halibut sport fishery, including a limited entry program, harvest controls specific to the charter sector, and a Catch Sharing Plan (CSP) implemented during 2014....
As fisheries management becomes more collaborative by seeking input and involvement from stakeholders, it is important to understand and address the diversity of those stakeholders. Gulf Coast fisheries communities include diverse racial and ethnic groups, particularly a large number of Vietnamese Americans involved in all aspects of the seafood industry....
Ecosystem services (ES) represent a way to represent and quantify multiple uses, values as well as connectivity between ecosystem processes and human well-being. Ecosystem-based fisheries management approaches may seek to quantify expected trade-offs in ecosystem services due to actions such as restoration and gear restrictions, or due to changes such...
Fishing years 2012 -2013 brought declines in socio-economic performance for the Northeast groundfish fishery. Severe reductions in catch limits for key species such as Atlantic cod have constrained fishing behavior and declining groundfish revenues cannot be offset by non-groundfish revenues earned by the fleet. Little is known about the way...
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...
The for-hire sector plays a significant role in providing recreational fishing opportunities for Atlantic highly migratory species (HMS) such as tuna, billfish, swordfish, and sharks. Because of the high cost of equipment needed to pursue HMS, many saltwater anglers find chartering a for-hire vessel to be the only affordable alternative....
Two species of the Indo-Pacific lionfish (Pterois miles and P. volitans) have rapidly expanded throughout the Gulf of Mexico, mid- and south Atlantic and the Caribbean following their introduction to Florida coastal waters during the mid-1980s through releases from marine aquaria. There is overwhelming scientific agreement on the threats that...
Several factors currently threaten blue crab (Callinectes sapidus) in the Chesapeake Bay. In addition to poor water quality, degraded habitat, and shifting environmental conditions, derelict gear has recently been recognized as a significant source of mortality for this economically and culturally significant species. From 2008 through 2014, commercial watermen in...
Fisheries management is increasingly being conducted at finer scales of spatial resolution. The spatial distribution of fish stocks is recognized as being an important aspect of stock abundance and spatial management tools, such as marine reserves, have become common. Information on the spatial distribution of fishing effort is critical to...
We empirically disentangle the efficiency mechanism of revenue sharing, in which a group of harvesters shares catch and/or revenue among members of a fishery cooperative, by incorporating the influence of social capital. In addition to each of revenue sharing and social capital influencing a fishery independently we hypothesize social capital...
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...
Climate change and continued fishing pressure threaten to increase recruitment variability for many stocks globally. Shifts in the inter-annual stability of an exploitable renewable resource may have dramatic consequences for the industries and communities which depend upon them. In this talk, the link between resource volatility and industry structure is...
Data scarcity and weak institutional governance make the implementation of top-down, quota-based fisheries management in much of the developing world’s fisheries difficult. An alternative to quota-based management is the use of space-based rights such as territorial use rights fisheries (TURFs). In spite of wide spread use of TURFs as a...
National Standard 1 states that a primary function of fisheries management in the single stock case is the determination of the annual allowable harvest, and it is based on the selection of a target stock size and a control rule that will specify a harvest path that that will cause...
Cooperatives in the Rights-based Fisheries Management have the potential to overcome some of the limitations of Individual Transferrable Quotas. The New England groundfish sector management, a new regime under which fishermen can voluntarily form sectors with each sector constrained by a total allowable catch or Annual Catch Entitlement (ACE), is...
The Pacific sardine fishery is shared but independently managed by three nations: Canada, USA and Mexico. As a result, potential conflict scenarios may arise. A stochastic optimal control methodology is presented to analyze potential conflict scenarios by first considering a deterministic logistic stock growth function and adding a stochastic term,...
As fisheries management becomes more collaborative by seeking input and involvement from stakeholders, it is important to understand and address the diversity of those stakeholders. Gulf Coast fisheries communities include diverse racial and ethnic groups, particularly a large number of Vietnamese Americans involved in all aspects of the seafood industry....
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...
Ecosystem externalities arise when one use of an ecosystem affects its other uses through the production functions of the ecosystem. We use simulations from a size-spectrum ecosystem model to investigate the ecosystem externality created by fishing of multiple species. The model is based upon general ecological principles and is calibrated...
Almost one half of the EEZs of the world are subject to so-called foreign fishing arrangements (FFAs), in which foreign fishing states (distant water fishing states in particular) gain access to EEZs under access arrangements with the relevant coastal states. The FFAs may take the form of “fee fishing” arrangements,...
Recreational fishing for popular species like red snapper and grouper 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 fishery...
In this paper we measure the value of sanitary restrictions in terms of forgone profits. For this we model the trade-off between biosecurity and profits in the salmon aquaculture industry. We introduce the concept of “sanitary desirable volume” of the salmon industry, as a goal in a bi-objective model. We...
Over the last decade direct exports to China and Hong Kong of Pacific Geoduck have grown to encompass more than 80 percent of U.S. geoduck production. In December 2013 China shut its doors to U.S. geoduck over possible arsenic contamination and imports from the U.S. fell from over 250 MT...
"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...
Electronic monitoring (EM) systems hold promise for the future collection of fishery-dependent data, either to supplement human at-sea observers or replace them. Several pilot studies have been conducted on EM in the New England groundfish fleet, though there are still on the water operational and shore-side protocols to further test...
Fishing impacts biodiversity on multiple levels, potentially resulting in unintended feedbacks to economic performance of the fishery over time. For example, targeting observable traits within a population can impact genetic diversity, targeting populations within a species can impact population diversity, and targeting valuable species can impact biodiversity at the ecosystem...
Fisheries sustainability is a much sought-after goal. Yet, “sustainability” is often too ambiguously defined to be of much practical guidance to policymakers. Furthermore, fisheries managers are increasingly expected to assess and manage fisheries in an “ecosystem-based” manner – accounting for the ecological interdependencies of species and their coupling with the...
In 2011 an individual fishing quota (IFQ) system was implemented for the limited entry trawl component of the Pacific groundfish fishery in the US. The IFQ system allocates quota shares (QS) for 29 IFQ stocks and individual bycatch quota (IBQ) shares for Pacific halibut. Each year quota shareholders are issued...
In an environment of limited resources and expanded management expectations, fisheries regulators face hard decisions about how intensively to regulate different stocks. The Fishery Management Councils are required to regulate harvest of all stocks in a sustainable manner, but have discretion on how much regulatory effort to invest in individual...
A brief overview of changes in the distribution of permanent entry permits in Alaska’s limited fisheries is provided in this presentation. From 1975 to 2014, 79 permit types have been issued in 65 fisheries. This presentation provides an overview of Alaska’ limited entry program, gives statewide data and some fishery-specific...
The paper analyzes a situation in which the fishing fleet is subject to restrictive regulation regarding the harvest of its primal target species due to biological overfishing that in turn reveals a high level of overcapacity. The goal is to model fishermen’s expectations and likely responses to the government initiated...
Multispecies fisheries pose a considerable management difficulty with respect to quota allocation between species. Externalities of direct control over the harvest may include, among others, creation of unbalanced predator‐prey relationships in the environment. That, in turn, may affect the individual economic incentives of fishing vessels. Combining economic and ecological factors...
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...
Purchases made by marine recreational anglers are an important source of economic activity in coastal areas around the United States. In recognition of the economic contributions anglers make to coastal state economies, NOAA Fisheries conducts surveys every three to five years in order to gather data on expenditures made by...
The Baltic fishery is managed under the European Union Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) which defines procedures for setting annual total allowable catches (TAC) for major commercially harvested species. TACs are given as fixed shares to each member state by applying the principal of relative stability. Poland uses non-tradable individual vessel...