All animals that interact with fishing gear are not necessarily captured, and all animals that are captured are not necessarily retained. Fishing practices and gear configuration, management regulations, and markets dictate which animals ultimately are retained or discarded. The impact of a fishery and the efficacy of management regulations can...
Concern over the incidental catch of non-targeted species in commercial and
recreational fisheries has greatly increased. Public attention, negative publicity,
controversies between differing fisheries and gear groups and the reauthorization of the
Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act have led to an increased
awareness of the issue. The Pacific halibut...
The US Magnuson-Stevens Act authorizes the use of onboard observers to
monitor commercial fisheries catch and bycatch (PFMC 2003). A question
of concern in implementing an observer program is that of the appropriate
level of observer coverage. Current practice varies by fishery; for example,
the California-Oregon drift gillnet fishery for...
The red king crab (Paralithodes camtschaticus) is an alien invasive species in the Barents Sea representing a value as well as a potential pest. A bio-economic model is applied analysing the costs that traditional fisheries incur as a result of the king crab invasion, as well as the income from...
The Pacific coast groundfish fishery is a diverse, important and lucrative commercial and recreational fishery. Part of this fishery’s monitoring process includes regular fishery-independent surveys for stock assessment. Although these fishery-independent surveys are cost-effective, they are susceptible to scientific uncertainty, and they do not currently sample in nearshore (water depth...
The case for assigning private property rights in fisheries has been
thoroughly studied but has lead to a new debate over whether rights should
be allocated to groups or individuals. The New England groundfish fishery
provides a rich context in which to study this question. Beginning in 2004,
several dozen...
An industry group has proposed a novel mechanism for management of the multispecies groundfish fishery off the northeastern United States. Under this mechanism, individual harvesters would be allocated a budget of points, to be expended landing fish. A regulatory body will set different prices, denominated in points, for landing each...
Outputs and inputs during 1994-2006 in the USA Northeast Multispecies (groundfish) fishery—including days fished for a group of 47 otter trawl vessels fishing out of New Bedford, Massachusetts, USA—were analyzed to test the hypothesis that restricting the annual days-at-sea (DAS) of individual fishing vessels increased Technical Efficiency (TE). The results...
The lack of selectivity in many fisheries may lead to discards and bycatch. Discards of under-sized or non-commercial species/individuals represent damage to the eco-system, an additional source of overfishing and a waste of resources. Bycatch may increase fishing pressure on species targeted by other fishermen. The purpose of the paper...
This paper examines the effects of a share-based management program in the Central Gulf of Alaska rockfish fishery. The program provides exclusive allocations to cooperatives of nine species, including one species for which retention is prohibited. Under the program, allocations of all species are required to fish and all catch,...