Developing and parameterising fisheries bioeconomic models is seen as playing an important role in the
evaluation of proposed fisheries management strategies. One of the key challenges in doing this has been the
different aggregation levels of the biological and economic data. For example, economic data (costs, prices
etc) is aggregated at the supra-region level as a function of fleet components, whereas biological data is
collected at the smaller regional level. Management plan evaluations are required at the regional level which
means methods must be developed to scale and merge the economic and biological data at this level.
Here we present a method based on the use of transversal variables (such as effort). By calculating a ‘unit
cost per effort’ at the supraregion level, we are able to estimate costs at the regional level. This is made more
difficult by the aggregation of fishing metiers and gears in the economic data, which have their own cost
structure. Linear modelling techniques are used to help overcome to this issue.
This report presents these methods using the North Sea fisheries as a case study.
Note that this report was not prepared using MS Word. It was prepared using Latex / KnitR and R. This allows
the computer code that was used to generate the results to be embedded in the report and executed during
the report compilation, including the plotting of figures. This is preferable for scientific report writing as it
ensures that the results presented here are ‘live’. Consequently, the following report may not strictly adhere
to the JRC template.JRC.G.3-Maritime affair
