NAAFE Forum 2017, the ninth biennial conference of the North American Association of Fisheries Economics & Trade (NAAFE), was held at the Costa Baja hotel in La Paz, Baja California Sur, Mexico March 22-24, 2017; pre-conference events were held March 21. Following plenary sessions, 3-4 concurrent sessions were held throughout the 2½ day conference.

A diverse team of Mexican institutions worked together to organize and host this conference, with Universidad Autonoma de Baja California Sur (UABCS) in the lead, and collaboration from CIBNOR, CICIMAR, Universidad Marista de Merida (UMM), Conacyt, and the NAAFE Business Office. Leading members of the Organizing Committee were Victor Hernandez Trejo (UABCS), German Ponce Diaz (CICIMAR), Juan Antonio de Anda (CIBNOR) and Juan Carlos Seijo (UMM). The Scientific Committee was co-chaired by Dr. Juan Carlos Seijo of UMM, and Dr. Gil Sylvia of Oregon State University, President of NAAFE, with assistance from Smit Vasquez Caballero (PhD Candidate, Oregon State University.).

150 participants from 15 countries (US, Mexico, Canada, Japan, Norway, Spain, India, Solomon Islands, China, Iceland, Denmark, UK, Ecuador, Colombia, and Chile) attended, representing academia, government, industry, and domestic and international agencies.

Conference Program

136 individual presentations were made in 15 general sessions, 11 special sessions, 1 poster session, and 3 plenary sessions.

Plenary session presentations:

Keynote 1: Escaping the Fisheries Subsidies Trap: the Role of Cooperative Fisheries Management (Gordon Munro)

Keynote 2: Catch Shares: Potential for Optimal Use of Marine Resources (Ragnar Arnason)

Special sessions:

Ecosystem Services Valuation for Ecosystem Based Management in the U.S.: Current Practices, Opportunities, and Challenges

Coastal and marine spatial planning in North America: case studies and data needs

Evaluation and Analysis of Catch Share Performance and Cost–Earnings Data Collection Effort

The Fishery Performance Indicators – Value for Fisheries Management, Impact Investing and Recreational Fisheries

Distribution and ITQs

Economics of Protected Marine Species

Designing rights-based management systems to achieve social objectives in fisheries

How climate change is shaping fisheries and fishing communities in the Polar region

Investing in fisheries recoveries

The Three M’s of Recreational Fishing Demand: Measurement, Modeling, and Management

Saving the World’s most Endangered Marine Mammal: the role of economic incentives for affected communities

General sessions:

Seafood Trade & Markets (parts 1, 2, and 3)

Ecosystem-Based Management

Economic Indicators

Subsidies and Their (un)Intended Consequences

Rights-Based Management (parts 1 and 2)

Bioeconomic Models and Applications (parts 1 and 2)

Aquaculture Models and Applications

Governance and Compliance

Small-Scale Fisheries (parts 1 and 2)

Recreational Fisheries

Materials uploaded to this Proceedings site will include titles, authors, abstracts, presentations, posters, and full papers, as available, related to Forum presentations of all types.

Photographs of the conference can be viewed on the NAAFE Facebook page.