Bycatch Avoidance Under Amendment 80 in the BSAI Non-Pollock Groundfish Trawl Fishery

Bycatch Avoidance Under Amendment 80 in the BSAI Non-Pollock Groundfish Trawl Fishery. Lowell Wakefield Fisheries Symposium, Anchorage, AK, May 13-16, 2014

From Mobile Closures to individual incentives: Chinook Salmon Bycatch Reduction Efforts in the Bering Sea Pollock Fishery

Bycatch is repeatedly noted as a primary problem of fisheries management and as the foremost negative impact of commercial fishing. In the Bering Sea pollock fishery, salmon bycatch reduction measures have included gear modifications but have principally consisted of area closures. Bycatch levels of chum and Chinook salmon have risen substantially since the beginning of the decade and significant areas of the pollock fishery have been closed at some points between 2002 and the present. These closures have consisted of both large long-term Salmon Savings Area closures and short-term voluntary rolling hotspot (VRHS) closures. More recently, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council has acted to impose a hard cap on the pollock fishery which would close the fishery if it were reached. In this paper, we consider the effectiveness of different management actions taken and under consideration to manage salmon bycatch. We examine the effectiveness of spatial closures designed to reduce salmon bycatch in the Bering Sea pollock fishery. We compare the relative effectiveness of spatial management measures that have been implemented with tradable salmon bycatch programs that will be implemented in 2011

Can Efficient Bycatch Reduction be Achieved Through Information Provision? The Case of the Commercial Flatfish Fishery in the Bering Sea

Fisheries managers around the world have identified bycatch as a key management challenge in fisheries today. However, like the classic common property open-access problem in fisheries, a limit on fleet-wide bycatch may have similar consequences for fishing practices since bycatch is a common property open-access resource. If avoiding bycatch is costly, then it is not in any one fisherman's interest to avoid bycatch when others in the fleet are certain not to do so. Collectively, individual efforts to exploit lucrative bycatch areas lead to shortened season lengths and a loss in fleet-wide profitability. This occurs even before quotas on the target species become binding. Some have argued that information can partly overcome this race to exploit high bycatch areas since avoiding bycatch requires a coordinated fleet effort that in many cases is not possible because of limited information on spatial bycatch rates. The Alaskan flatfish fishery provides an interesting natural experiment in which to examine how information provision on bycatch has impacted every day choices by commercial fishermen. Since bycatch is known to occur in predictable spatial patterns and since gear in the flatfish fishery is not selective, the spatial choice reveals a great deal about fishermen's intentions concerning bycatch avoidance. Because season lengths were being restricted due to bycatch quotas, SEASTATE was initiated in 1995 to coordinate the sharing of bycatch information in order to facilitate the avoidance of bycatch species. Using haul-level data from on-board observers on catch and bycatch rates, we test a number of hypotheses on the role of information in addressing the incentive problems associated with bycatch using spatial site-choice models. These hypotheses include whether fishermen avoid high bycatch areas more following the SEASTATE program, and whether the program eliminates the open access problem completely

Estimation of Heterogeneous Responses to Size Variation in the Bering Sea Pollock Fishery

Bioeconomic modeling of an age-structured population typically assumes the value of a fish increases with size; the fish increase in weight as they age, and harvesters may receive an increase in the price per weight. When size selectivity is possible, traditional policy such as individual quotas may still result in economically inefficient outcomes. In this paper, we examine whether harvesters have incentives to target larger fish in the Eastern Bering Sea walleye pollock catcher-processor fleet. While there exists anecdotal evidence in industry reports and news articles that the price per kilogram for larger pollock increases with size, we empirically describe the relationship between the value the harvester receives for each kilogram they catch, and the size of the fish the harvester targets. While on average harvesters derive a greater return per caught weight for larger sizes, this size effect is heterogeneous depending on the product mix the catcher-processor produces. By identifying vessel group membership, we can show how vessels that produce a larger share of fillet have a greater return from larger fish than vessels that produce a larger share of surimi. This implies that relationships between size and price, and incentives to selectively target, depend on the existing processing capital. Importantly, distributional impacts to fishery participants, and efficacy of management solutions, will vary across fisheries as a function of each fishery's processing capital.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

Climate Change and Fisher Behavior in the Bering Sea Pollock Fishery

One component of the Bering Sea Integrated Ecosystem Research Project (BSIERP) is a spatial economic model that predicts changes in fishing activity in the Bering Sea pollock fishery that may result from climate change. Models such as the one employed here have been used in the Bering Sea and elsewhere to model how fishers make decisions about where to fish. Commercial fishers choose different areas to fish based on observable and unobservable characteristics of the area and the fisher. We commonly model location choice as a function of the expected revenue in an area, fuel and fish prices, distance to an area, vessel characteristics, and to a more limited degree, institutional and environmental conditions. In the Bering Sea pollock fishery, climate variables affect many aspects of the fishing decision. Key among these aspects is the role that climate has on fish location and abundance and the impact that weather plays in daily participation and location choices for smaller vessels. In this paper, we develop a model of the AFA pollock catcher processor fleet. The spatial economic model can incorporate climate data (e.g., ice cover, SST, wind) into the model, permitting us to determine the relative impact of observable contemporaneous environmental conditions on location choices. We also develop a framework to include predictions of changing pollock abundance in the model, which will allow us to estimate fisher responses to scenarios developed by oceanographic and ecosystem modelers involved in Bering Sea project. We also discuss similar modeling of the other sectors of the pollock fishery and the Pacific cod fishery

Fisher Responses to Variability in the Bering Sea Pollock Fishery

Pollock recruitment and biomass in the Bering Sea has fluctuated in concert with environmental changes since the early 2000s. As pollock spatial distributions, densities, and abundances varied, fishers have adjusted their fishing behavior. Utilizing ~30,000 trips made by Bering Sea pollock catcher vessels from 2003 – 2014, we found strong correlations between the distances that vessels traveled and both pollock survey abundance and bottom temperatures. During colder years when waters drove pollock populations north (during the summer B season) and closer to the edge of the Bering Sea shelf, many vessels traveled farther, following fish and maintaining high catch per unit effort (CPUE), despite low pollock abundance. The temperature and abundance relationships remain difficult to disentangle, however, as recent warm years have all occurred in concert with abundant pollock. Without low abundance warm years for comparison, it is difficult to project the impacts of warming. However, if warm waters yield predicted poor recruitment, then pollock may require more effort, even when closer to port. This increased effort (decreased CPUE) represents an additional cost to fishers because vessels use significantly more fuel while fishing than while transiting. Longer trips offer complicated trade-offs for fishers. The far-ranging trips overall had statistically similar net earnings as the shorter trips, suggesting that the higher CPUEs offset the costs, but many vessels are unable to profitably make these longer trips. As climate changes further and variability of pollock populations is predicted to increase, understanding the ability of different vessels to adapt is critical for efficient management.

Estimating the Benefits of Dynamic Hotspot Closures: Salmon Savings Areas in the Bering Sea Pollock Fishery

In the 1990s the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council and the National Marine Fisheries Service established regulations to limit the amount of Chinook and chum salmon taken as bycatch in Bering Sea trawl fisheries. The Bering Sea pollock fishery has in recent years (2002-2005) caught a significant number of sockeye and chum salmon as bycatch which has led to the seasonal imposition of the closure of the salmon savings areas (SSA), which has closed an important part of the pollock fishery. During these closures a limited number of special permit holders are allowed to continue to fish in the SSA and salmon bycatch rates have actually been lower inside of the SSA. For this reason, the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council has agreed to implement a program with voluntary rolling hotspot (VRHS) closures, in which closures will be adjusted dynamically to reduce bycatch. From the pollock industry's perspective, the VRHS will also allow the pollock fleet to be active on its preferred fishing grounds. This paper builds upon previous work (Haynie and Layton 2004, Haynie 2005) that develops the Expected Profit Model (EPM). We estimate coefficients on bycatch avoidance as well as the impact of changing sea temperature. We develop welfare estimates of the SSA closures for 2002-2005 and then estimate the benefits from implementing the VRHS system

Size Selectivity under Noncooperative Harvest: When Does Management Improve the Value of the Fishery?

We describe the dynamics by which competing harvesters selectively target prime market-sized fish, without internalizing the externality of increasing targeting costs, as the abundance of prime fish decreases. Due to the increasing targeting costs for prime size, harvesters continually target the next-most-desirable size fish, gradually fishing down the size structure of the population until the change in targeted value balances a decrease their harvesting costs. Furthermore, we show that when harvesters are heterogeneous in their ability to transform larger fish into more valuable products, the decreasing size structure disadvantages harvesters with more responsive production technologies and decreases the economic efficiency of the fishery. Importantly, it is not always optimal for a fishery manager to segregate heterogeneous harvesters, and leave prime fish for harvesters that value them the most. The fishery manager faces a tradeoff between decreasing the rate of growth of the biomass, increasing the costs of less responsive harvesters, and facilitating the harvest of large prime fish by more responsive harvesters. We illustrate the conditions when a benevolent fishery manager can increase net present value by segregating harvesting, and conversely, conditions when the competitive harvesters engage in near-optimum strategies. The implication is that the importance of heterogeneous values, and size selectivity, varies depending on the biological and economic conditions of particular fisheries.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

Economic, Social, and Institutional (ESI) Objectives – the other side of the coin in a multiuse marine environment

In the European Union (EU), marine resource management policies and legislation include not only environmental objectives but also a broad range of explicitly stated economic, social and institutional (ESI) goals, objectives and priorities. Although the environmental objectives often guide scientific assessments, the ESI objectives are often the primary drivers of political decisions. During a workshop we analysed primary EU documents related to North Sea management to start defining the spectrum of ESI objectives and indicators for this region and to develop a more general framework. The implications of ESI objectives in legislative texts and policies are not always clear, and interpretations are likely to change depending on personal or institutional viewpoints. For example, there may be trade-offs expressed between avoiding risk to fish populations and maximizing employment, but there are no clear guidelines for weighing these objectives. The objectives can be categorized, although there is a lot of flexibility in how this may be done and many approaches to this categorization. Therefore, ESI objectives need to be refined in collaboration with policy makers and stakeholders to operationalize them. In addition, spatial scales and time frames matter, information about the time in setting the objective as well as a stated end date of achieving this objective need to be taken into account when evaluating trade-offs. We will present the developed framework of ESI objectives derived from policy documents with a first refinement by government representatives. We will also discuss challenges and possible tools for visualizing the landscape of objectives with stakeholders

Is the Fisheries Production Function Institution-dependent? Implications for Targeting Ability in Multispecies Fisheries

Multispecies fisheries add additional complexity for rights-based management implementation. Imperfectly selective fishing gear may make it difficult for fishermen to match their catch composition with the portfolio of total allowable catches chosen by management. If fishermen can perfectly target their catch, the problem of matching catches with quota allocations declines in importance. Previous ex ante examinations of targeting ability suggest that rights-based systems may face serious challenges due to weak substitution potential between species. In contrast, ex post evidence from multispecies ITQ fisheries suggests that far greater flexibility in outputs is possible than previously thought. These disparate findings suggest that the production technology revealed through empirical work may be heavily dependent on current management policies. We examine this possibility through an analysis of a fishery undergoing the transition to rights-based management: the Bering Sea/Aleutian Island groundfish fishery. We possess an unusually detailed panel dataset of vessels from before and after rationalization, obtained by onboard observers who record the deployment and retrieval location and times for each trawl, as well as the total catch, tow depth, and catch composition. Using primal multi-input, multi-output frontier methods, we estimate the elasticities of transformation between the catch of different species and compare our estimates before and after the policy change. We then control for a number of changes in the nature of fishing behavior to uncover the degree to which observed changes in substitutability are the product of incentive driven changes in these observable behaviors.Keywords: Governance: Property Rights and Quota Systems I, Fisheries Management, Fisheries EconomicsKeywords: Governance: Property Rights and Quota Systems I, Fisheries Management, Fisheries Economic