Fisheries economics

Managing fisheries is about managing the people. And people react to economic incentives. Therefore, fisheries management needs inputs from fisheries economics.

Main content

Past and present, we have addressed a number of problems:

When can effort regulation achieve conservation of rare species in mixed fisheries by encouraging fishers to target the abundant ones?
Related to above, what is the ability of fishers to target specific species?
It is common that big fish are more valuable per unit weight that small ones, tuna being one of the most extreme examples. Yet most of fisheries bioeconomics ignores this fact. We are trying to understand how considering size-dependent pricing influences optimal harvesting policies.
Fisheries-induced evolution changes characteristics of fish stocks, in terms of parameters such as yield, mean individual size and extinction risk. What are the economic consequences?

Fishing blue whiting

Mixed bottom trawl catch with a box crab on the top

Fishers fine-tune their catch profiles following price fluctuations

Bottom trawl is usually considered a relative unselective fishing gear, but Taiwanese coastal trawl fishers show a good ability to change their catch profiles to match market demands

Baron Munchausen pulls himself out of a mire by his own hair

Does effort regulation of mixed fisheries really "work"?

Effort regulation could simplify managing mixed fisheries by directing effort towards common species and away from rare ones, thus "automatically" protecting the latter. But how likely is this protection actually to happen?

Portrait of Fedor Baranov and his catch equation

Long live the Baranov catch equation!

Shaken, not stirred. A new paper is shaking the position of the Baranov catch equation as one of the cornerstones of fisheries science. Fortunately, this shaking turns out not be too serious.

A big mackerel is worth more per kg than a small one. Adapted from Zimmermann...

How prevalent is size-dependent pricing in fisheries?

A new article in the ICES Journal of Marine Science finds a widespread positive relationship between fish weight and price per kg in Norwegian fisheries.

Proactive or reactive management?

When climate change alters distributions of fish stocks, it is not only the biology of fish stocks that is affected: also the ownership of fish stocks is changing. This has implications for the countries that are sharing a resource.

News

Our research in bioeconomics has been covered in various media.

10.12.2021