Stability of International Fisheries Agreements: Implications of Non-Market Benefits and the Country of Origin

Abstract

Salmon is an anadromous species that during its feeding and spawning migrations is sought after catch for commercial and recreational fisheries. The management of salmon fisheries is complicated by the combination of mixed and single stock fisheries. Thus, the country of origin has sovereign control over harvest of a salmon stock only at the last steps of the gauntlet. This paper addresses the stability of an international fisheries agreement on the Baltic salmon. This setting is modeled through a coalition game in the partition function form with four asymmetric players. Countries payoffs depend both on commercial fishery’s profits and net benefits from recreational harvest. Moreover, the country of origin must ensure that each of the salmon stocks achieve or maintain a sustainable size. The economic sub-model is calibrated using commercial fisheries statistics and existing non-market valuation studies. The underlying population dynamics model accounts for 15 salmon stocks and it is used in the actual stock assessment. The results indicate that by considering economic aspects of recreational fisheries it is possible to stabilize the grand coalition. However, the cooperative strategies of the grand coalition do not ensure biologically sound harvesting of all salmon stocks