Resiliency of the Coastal Recreational For-Hire Fishing Industry to Natural Disasters

© 2013, Coastal and Estuarine Research Federation. The financial condition of US Gulf of Mexico recreational-for-hire (RFH) fishing firms post-hurricane damage was examined within the context of the industry’s contribution to the resiliency of coastal socio-ecological systems (SES). Three key financial ratios—return-on-assets, assets turnover ratio, and debt-to-assets ratio—were calculated for 2009 from balance sheets and cash flow statements constructed from surveys of 247 RFH firms operating in the five Gulf states. The ratios were then recalculated using reported damage and operational losses from at least one named storm in the 2004–2008 period and combined with the results of a logistic regression model of profitability loss to assess the resiliency of the RFH industry. Results suggest that RFH firm resiliency was a function of operating class (head, charter, and guide boats), homeport, and the way in which the business was structured. Firms appeared to be the most resilient when they employed smaller vessels in intensively managed operations, perhaps due to their ability to move a vessel out of the path of storms and because their profitability and efficiency advantages allowed for self-insurance against losses. As a result, community contributions to, and benefits from, resiliency in the RFH industry may hinge on the development of more modern port facilities and well-functioning insurance markets

Environmental jolts, family-centered non-economic goals and innovation:Toward a framework of family firm resilience

Building on extant research on family firm resilience, we propose a framework to discuss the impact of family-centered non-economic goals on a firm’s ability to absorb and react to environmental jolts. This chapter aims to advance current knowledge on the goal-related antecedents of innovation strategies in family firms by theorizing on how family firms approach slack resource deployment and choose between investments in closed vs. open innovation as a response to environmental jolts. Building on prospect theory assumptions about risk-taking behavior, we make a contribution to understanding heterogeneity of resilient family firms, which are spurred to innovate in light of the degree of relevance of pursued family-centered non-economic goals

Chronic Sub-lethal Effects Observed in Wild-Caught Fishes Following Two Major Oil Spills in the Gulf of Mexico: \u3cem\u3eDeepwater Horizon\u3c/em\u3e and Ixtoc 1

During and subsequent to major oil spill events, considerable attention focuses on charismatic and economic megafauna – and especially fishes – and visual manifestations of impacts upon them. Beginning with a series of tanker accidents occurring in Europe and the USA in the 1970s–1990s, greater awareness of the potential for both acute and chronic sub-lethal impacts on fish populations has focused on exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). The ambiguity of acute impacts observed during the Deepwater Horizon and Ixtoc 1 incidents has promoted considerable new research on alternative toxic endpoints that portend short- and long-term sub-lethal outcomes that influence the overall fitness of exposed populations. Laboratory-based exposure studies have traditionally focused on acute mortality-based endpoints (e.g., lethal concentrations at which 50% of the population dies = LC50) and observed at test concentrations normally exceeding environmentally relevant concentrations in real-world spills. Consequently, using laboratory-based toxicity experiments can be problematic inferring impacts on wild fish populations. In this chapter we review historical and more recent information documenting changes in abundance, recruitment, habitat use, population dynamics, trophic changes, and various physiologically based sub-lethal effects on oil-exposed fishes and especially consider research undertaken following the Deepwater Horizon and Ixtoc 1 spills in the Gulf of Mexico