annotated bibliography of fisheries economics literature - Office of ...

Ward, John M. (1994). "The Bioeconomic Implications of A Bycatch
Reduction Device as a Stock Conservation Management Measure."
Marine Resource Economics, 9(3):227-240.
The proposed regulation to reduce bycatch and discarding of finfish in
the southeastern region is a gear modification that excludes finfish from
shrimp trawls. This regulation is analyzed using a simple theoretical model
of a multispecies fishery whose bycatch is harvested in a directed fishery
consisting of commercial and recreational fishermen. The costless reduction
in bycatch fishing mortality imposed on the multispecies fishery does not
result in an increased stock size for the bycatch fish species or a
substantial increase in its level of harvest. Instead, the fish stock is
reallocated from the multispecies fishery to the fishery directed at the
bycatch species causing fishing effort to expand in the bycatch species
fishery that drives the stock size down to the previously existing equilibrium
level. Recreational harvest and effort levels remain unchanged since the
model is linear in effort and the commercial fishery is given access to the
fishery first.
Ward, John M. (1994). "Conservation and Economic Benefits of Limiting
Access in Marine Fisheries." In Karyn L. Gimbel (ed.) Limiting
Access to Marine Fisheries: Keeping the Focus on Conservation,
Center for Marine Conservation and the World Wildlife Fund,
Washington, D.C.
Often when economics is discussed, it is in terms of gross national
product, personal disposable income, number of jobs, and unemployment rates.
While these are important outcomes of an economic analysis, they are not in
and of themselves economics. Economics is the study of how scarce resources
are allocated amongst unlimited wants. The scarce resources are the capital
stocks, the stocks of fish, and labor. The unlimited wants include those of
commercial and recreational fishermen as well as final consumers of fish
products. Allocation concerns the best use of all resources (capital, labor,
and fish) in the production of fishery products so that the return to society
is maximized. Economics provides the methodology by which the optimal levels
of the various inputs in the production process, such as labor, can be
determined. For example, increasing the level of employment in a fishery
eventually leads to a decline in the productivity of labor and in the size of
the fish stock. More importantly, the excessive use of labor in the fishery
deprives the marketplace of not only fish but the productive use of that labor
in another industry; leading to a reduced total level of production.
Therefore, more jobs in a fishery are not necessarily better for the nation
since diverting labor to other industries could result in more products being
produced at lower cost. Markets are considered to be economically efficient
when they produce the highest level of output at the lowest possible cost.
Efficient markets are defined by clearly defined, transferable, and
enforceable property rights. Markets tend to be inefficient where these
property rights are not clearly defined such as in open access fisheries. By
applying the economic modeling framework to the fishery problem in cases where
property rights are nonexistent, management regulations can be evaluated to
determine if they improve or exacerbate market efficiency.
Ward, John M. (1994). "The South Atlantic Shrimp Stock Assessment and
Fisheries Evaluation Report; 1994 Update." National Marine
Fisheries Service, Southeast Regional Office, 9450 Koger
Boulevard, St. Petersburg, FL, February.
An update of the south Atlantic shrimp SAFE report that includes an exvessel
price analysis to determine if seasonal closures would enhance the
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