Economic impact of eel trade ban – general trends. Study in support to the STECF

The European eel (Anguilla Anguilla L.) was included in Appendix II to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) and Annex B to Council Regulation (EC) No 338/97 in March 2009. This was largely due to the threat posed to the conservation of the species by the export of glass eels from the EU to Asia for farming purposes. The main commodities which were exported before the ban were glass eels. In December 2010, the EU "Scientific Review Group" considered that, due to the critical conservation status of the stock, no export from or import into the EU of eels and derived products should be authorised. This "trade ban" has been in place for nearly four years now and the Commission seeks to get an assessment of the consequences of this measure on the economics and trade in European eels in the EU. Consequently, the Commission requested the Scientific, Technical and Economic Committee for Fisheries (STECF) to provide for an analysis. JRC conducted the present analyses in support to the STECF.JRC.G.3-Maritime affair

Impacts of the 2014 Russian trade ban on seafood

In August 2014 Russia introduced a trade ban on imports of main food commodities from the EU, USA, Canada, Australia and Norway. Russia is a main destination for exports of seafood from Norway and 7th in the list of major export partners of seafood for the EU. This report provides an analysis of the impacts of trade ban on international seafood trade. A special focus of the analysis is on the consequences for the fisheries, aquaculture and seafood processing sectors in the EU. The work is based on monthly data from Russian customs and EUROSTAT Comext databases for 2013-2014. Trade flows affected by the trade ban had a share of 2.8% (6.4 billion euro) to the total annual Russian imports of 2013. Fish and seafood import represented 13% (2.2 billion euro) in relation to the total flow of products affected by the ban, 55% of fish and seafood imports to Russia were originating from the countries listed in the ban. The major trade flows affected internationally are imports of salmon, herring and trout from Norway and cold-water shrimps from Canada. The impact for the EU is limited. The main trade flows, which might be affected in the EU are cold-water shrimp and trout from Denmark, small pelagics from Eastern and Northern Baltic countries, UK and Ireland, oyster from France, seabass and seabream from Greece.JRC.G.3-Maritime affair

The economic performance of the EU aquaculture sector (STECF 14-18). Scientific, Technical and Economic Committee for Fisheries (STECF)

Covers the economic performance of the EU aquaculture sector for 2013, this is the fourth EWG-14-10 report, on the Economic Performance of the European Union (EU) Aquaculture sector

Economic Performance of UK Scalloping Fleet: Did New Effort Restrictions Cause a Downturn in Profits?

Scallop fishing was in effect a regulated open acceess fishery in UK until 2012 when the Western Waters management regime was implemented, limiting the maximum effort for the UK fleet of over 15m vessels  and, via the UK government, limiting effort per vessel over 15m. This analysis identifies the main drivers of the economic performance of the UK scallop sector in ICES Area VII and examines the link between implementation of Western Waters management regime (effort restriction) in the area and deterioration of economic performance of the sector. Prompted by calls from an industry group to show that profits had decline since the effective implementation of the effort liimits, analysis was based on individual vessel data on all trips undertaken by UK over 15m vessels that landed any amount of king scallops in the calendar year during the period 2006 to 2014 and annual fleet economic performance time series containing information on costs (fishing costs and other costs) and revenues for the UK fleet at vessel level. The results show the increase of fishing preasure in 2006-2010 followed by decline in of costs and earnings per unit of effort in 2012-2014. The decline in costs was driven by the reduction in fuel prices and the decline in revenues was driven by decline in technical efficiency of scalloping (LPUE). The changes in spatial effort allocation due to effort restriction were also observed during the analysis.Proceedings of the Eighteenth Biennial Conference of the International Institute of Fisheries Economics and Trade, held July 11-15, 2016 at Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference Center (AECC), Aberdeen, Scotland, UK

European Trade of Fisheries and Aquaculture Products

The report presents the results of an analysis of the characteristics and evolution of EU seafood trade in the period 2001-2012. The focus of the analysis is on a long term seafood trade patterns. The report aims to establish a link between the annual economic reports of the Scientific, Technical and Economic Committee for Fisheries (STECF) and the short term price and trade analyses already regularly provided by the European Market Observatory for fisheries and aquaculture (EUMOFA). The report is structured in the following main sections: International context, EU overview, Examples of trade trends from the national analyses, National chapters. The analyses consist of a description of trade balance, import and export by country, year, main commercial species and preservation and processing groupings. In addition the following three indices were used to describe specific aspects of the trade patterns: Trade Competition Ratio (TCR), used to measure the exposure of domestic production to trade competition the extent of openness to trade of country; Normalised Revealed Comparative Advantage (NRCA), used to measure the competitive advantage of the export of country for a given product; Margin of exports growth, used to measure how a country is increasing its exports either by expanding existing trade relations or by getting access to new markets. The data used for the analyses covers world seafood export and import in value and volume for the period 2001-2012 extracted from COMEXT and COMTRADE.JRC.G.3-Maritime affair

A text-book case study: Economic analysis informing governance and management of scallop fishing in the UK

Situation: UK scallop fishing is input measures, with effort limits applied to >15m vessels only. There are no output limits. Industry members noted a decline in profits, and suggested that the effort regime was to blame. Government asked for evidence to support the claim and asked Seafish for economic analysis and evidence. Analysis: Analysis covered all vessel sizes and sea areas, for 2008 to 2016. Seafish used vessel-level annual data collected from vessel owners, combined with official government fishing statistics at trip level to identify key vessel groups, and analyse technical and business performance over a 10 year period. Findings: Key findings showed declining profits, due to declining technical catching efficiency rather than to the effort restrictions. Other key findings included: 1. Most scallops landed by UK vessels are landed by vessels that are >80% revenue-dependent on scallops. 2. Catch rates are declining all around UK. 3. Effort has been going up and landings volume going down. 4. Effort has been going up in the under 15m vessel group, which is not restricted by the effort regime (a classic boundary effect) 5. Operating profits would have fallen further if not for low fuel prices and high scallop prices. Governance: This paper will present the history, the analysis and the key textbook examples of unrestricted fishing, economic incentives and how the policy discussions accepted economic analysis of their highlighted problems.

Bioeconomic Modelling Applied to Fisheries with R/FLR/FLBEIA

The main objectives of the study presented in this report were to test the FLBEIA API, condition an operating model for the North Sea mixed fisheries and provide feedback on bioeconomic modelling limitations. Additionally, Fishrent and Fcube were also tested. FLR, FLBEIA, Fishrent and Fcube are software packages implemented by the scientific community studying fisheries to run bioeconomic models. A large test was carried out on FLBEIA by both running existing examples and trying to implement a bioeconomic model for the North Sea. In general the group felt FLBEIA is on the correct path to provide a bioeconomic modeling framework, although some work is still required. FLBEIA is not ready yet for production. A list of bugs and improvements was assembled. Conditioning a bioeconomic operating model for the North Sea showed the difficulties of merging economic and biological information. Inconsistencies on the effort definition seem to create additional problems when relating both sources of information. This subject must be further explored. The exercise was successful but data problems prevented the performance of a full economic analysis, although trend analysis on economic indicators for each scenario tested was possible. Nevertheless, these results must be taken carefully.JRC.G.4-Maritime affair

Research for PECH Committee - Discard ban, landing obligation and MSY in the Western Mediterranean Sea - the Spanish case

The demersal fisheries in the Mediterranean Sea are heavily overfished but the landing obligation will not help to reach MSY because it will not decrease fishing mortality. The new proposal of the Commission introduces total allowable effort as a new way to regulate Western Mediterranean demersal fisheries by significantly reducing fishing time. However, this new management measure must be complemented with increased gear selectivity, implementation of closed areas and local co-management plans. Different approaches to reduce fishing mortality may have different socio-economic impact