A Profile of the Oyster Industry Northeastern United States

This is a critical period for the future of the east coast oyster industry. This report documents the dramatic decline in industry output which has been the impetus for a publicly funded program to revtalize the industry. Oyster biologists argue over the severityy of the decline and the cause, and also the potential remedies. Should non-native oysters, specifically Crassostrea gigas, be introduced into the region to replace the native oyster production? Are there ways to manage around the devastating oyster diseases MSX and Dermo? Will large populations of oysters significantly improve the water quality in currentiy degraded areas? While these are important issues to address, some more fundamental question needs to be answered first: What is the nature of this industry we are trying to revitalize? What constitutes the oyster industry, and what are the economic, social and legal factors that shape this industry? This report attempts to address these most basic issues. The first thing that becomes apparent is that the oyster so familiar to biologists is only one part of the industry. Having more oysters does not constitute a revitalization of the industry. The oyster industry includes the oyster resource, the harvesters, the processors, the shuckers, wholesalers, distributors, retail markets and consumers. Typically, there is less and less information and data available about the industry as one moves from the water to the dinner table. The emphasis of this study, therefore, has been to try and obtain and analyze information on those groups we know the least about, the processors, the retailers and the consumers

Capacity And Capacity Utilization In Fishing Industries

The definition and measurement of capacity in fishing and other natural resource industries possess unique problems because of the stock-flow production technology, in which inputs are applied to the natural resource stock to produce a flow of output. In addition, there are often multiple resource stocks, corresponding to different species, with a mobile stock of capital that can exploit one or more of these stocks. In turn, this leads to three unique issues: (1) multiple stocks of capital and the resource; (2) that of aggregation or how to define the industry and resource stocks to consider; and (3), that of latent capacity or how to include stocks of capital that are currently inactive or exploit the resource stock only at low levels of variable input utilization. This paper presents appropriate definitions of capacity and methods for measuring capacity in fishing industries taking into consideration these issues.https://scholarworks.wm.edu/vimsbooks/1060/thumbnail.jp