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Effective management of multispecies fisheries in large marine ecosystems is challenging. To deal with these challenges, fisheries managers are moving toward ecosystem-based fishery management (EBFM). Despite this shift, many species remain outside protective legislation or fishery management plans. How do species that fall outside of formal management structures respond to changes in fisheries management strategies? In 2011, the US West Coast Groundfish Fishery (WCGF) shifted management to an Individual Fishing Quota (IFQ) program. We used data collected by fisheries observers to examine the impact of this shift on elasmobranch catch (sharks, skates, rays). Historically, not all elasmobranchs were included in the WCGF Management Plan, making them vulnerable to fishing mortality. We grouped elasmobranchs into 8 groups based on 14 ecomorphotypes to examine relative catch within groundfish fishing sectors during the period 2002-2014. Of the 22 sharks and 18 skates and rays that these fisheries capture, 9 are listed as Near Threatened or greater on the IUCN Red List and 10 species are listed as Data Deficient by IUCN. The bycatch of 4 non-managed elasmobranch species was reduced under the IFQ program; IFQ management had no significant impact on the remaining 27 species caught by the IFQ fleet. Overall, catch of non-managed elasmobranchs was relatively low. We show that groups of ecomorphotypes co-occur within fisheries, suggesting natural management units for use in EBFM. This work helps identify gaps in monitoring and assessing the impact of management and policy on elasmobranch populations.

Aims:The research was carried out with the objective of determining whether the individual anchoveta(Engraulisringens) fishing quota for direct human consumption constitutes a regulatory alternative for the administration and control of fishing activity to the extent that it allows greater efficiency of the industry, the increase in value total fisheries, the improvement in the safety of fishing and the sustainability of the hydrobiological resource. Methodology:The research is applied, non-experimental type and descriptive correlational design. The sample consisted of 50% of National and Comparative Legislation, Doctrine, Jurisprudence and Specialized Records on fishing issues; and by 30 experts in fisheries: lawyers 25% and representatives of fishermen 25%, from the District of Chimbote; Two questionnaires were developed to collect the data of the variables under study. Results:The results are presented in tables and statistical figures. The results showed that the individual quota of anchoveta(E.ringens)fishing for direct human consumption constitutes 43.3% a regulatory alternative to administer and control the fisheries administration, Chimbote, 2018. Conclusion:It was evidenced that the individual quota for fishing for direct human consumption allows a greater efficiency of the industry, the increase in the total value of the fisheries, the improvement in the safety of fishing and the sustainability of the hydrobiological resource. The individual fishing quota is a system that deserves to be seriously evaluated in Peru, with a broad participation not only of fishing entrepreneurs, but also of the various actors of civil society.

Factors potentially affecting fish discarding were evaluated for species managed under the Gulf of Mexico grouper-tilefish individual fishing quota (GT-IFQ) program. Thirteen commercially important species are managed under the GT-IFQ program. Some of the more commonly caught species in the program include red grouper (Epinephelus morio), gag (Mycteroperca microlepis), speckled hind (Epinephelus drummondhayi), golden tilefish (Lopholatilus chamaeleonticeps), and blueline tilefish (Caulolatilus microps). It is necessary to determine why discards are occurring to develop a future discard mitigation strategy. Logistic models were constructed using data from the Southeast Fisheries Science Center’s (SEFSC) Reef Fish Observer Program (RFOP) with covariates of fish length, available allocation, gear type, calendar year quarter, and year to infer reasons for discarding. The results from RFOP models in conjunction with self-reported discard information from the SEFSC Supplemental Discard Logbook program determined that discarding due to fish length selection, not related to minimum a size limit, is occurring for golden tilefish, speckled hind, yellowedge grouper (Epinephelus flavolimbatus), and snowy grouper (Hyporthodus niveatus). Other dynamics such as multi-species quota discarding are likely responsible for discards of blueline tilefish. Based on the results of the study, potential changes to the GT-IFQ program such as additional flexibility measures were identified as potential management strategies for decreasing discards. A similar approach to inferring why discarding is occurring could be used in the other regions for more effective management promoting long-term sustainability of valuable fisheries.

Despite improved fisheries management, overcapacity is still a major issue in fisheries worldwide. This study investigates the economic effect of a mismatch between catch capacity and quota holdings on the economic performance of fishing boats operating in a system of Individual Fishing Quota (IFQ) system. Based on the data of 71 fishing vessels, which constitute the entire fleet of Norwegian seagoing purse seiners, an ordinal least squares model is applied by including the vessel's catch capacity, quota holding, and return on invested capital (ROIC) along with several control variables. The estimated results suggest that the key factor affecting ROIC is overcapacity. Specifically, when the relative ratio of capacity and quota holding increases by 1%, a vessel's ROIC decreases by 0.692%. This finding indicates that the overcapacity problem in the Norwegian seagoing purse seine fleet still exists even more than a decade after an IFQ regime was introduced. The paper concludes by discussing implications of the findings.

The implementation of catch share programs can have socio-economic and ecological benefits, yet may also change the distribution of those benefits within a fishery or across communities. Quota set-...

Voluntary collective agreements among fishermen can improve the environmental and economic performance of a fishery, particularly when local leadership, strong incentives, catch accountability, and operational support are in place. Rights-based fisheries, such as Individual Fishing Quota (IFQ) systems, incentivize fishermen to act collectively to reduce fishing impacts, enhance stock health, and improve economic outcomes. However, developing cooperatives requires durable contracts, operational capacity, funding, and the ability to track, monitor, and enforce agreed-upon catches and fishing practices. This project focuses on the U.S. West Coast groundfish trawl IFQ fishery, and how the formation of a voluntary collective agreement, in the form of a bycatch risk pool (California Groundfish Collective), achieved improved fishery performance and other ancillary benefits. Up-front investment in the risk pool by a conservation non-governmental organization (NGO) provided both capacity and quota to cover transaction costs and incentivize transition to a cooperative model that was implemented across 5 ports and more than 48,000 km2 of fishing grounds off California. The challenges encountered in developing and operating the risk pool offer insights into designing and implementing voluntary collective agreements. By using spatial fishing plans and technology for collecting and sharing catch information, risk pool members reduced bycatch of overfished species relative to the fleet at large. Risk pool members were also able to use their spatial fishing data to inform a seafood sustainability rating and propose areas for Essential Fish Habitat protection, their quota pounds to support collaborative research on overfished species, and their collective membership to advocate for policy.

In 2011, management of the limited-entry groundfish trawl fishery on the Pacific coast switched from a system of vessel entry restrictions, gear restrictions, seasonal closures, and bimonthly catch limits to an individual fishing quota (IFQ) program. In addition to advancing a profitable and efficient groundfish fishery, the Pacific Fishery Management Council’s objectives for the IFQ program included minimizing the adverse effects on fishing communities and promoting measurable economic and employment benefits. We developed counterfactual revenues and costs for the fleet and used an input–output model to estimate the change in income and employment for the West Coast as a whole and for 12 different port areas. Our results indicated that alternative assumptions regarding the distribution of quota payments substantially changed conclusions about the economic impacts of the IFQ program. Under an assumption that payments to lease quota were distributed to homeports of vessels reporting revenue from th...

International audience; Cooperative‐based catch share systems can be implemented such that the members of the same fishery cooperative are jointly and severally liable for not exceeding collectively assigned fishing rights. In practice, this means that a regulator can take away catch privileges from an entire cooperative that overruns its collective quota, effectively creating a penalty much larger than what could be recovered with an individual fine. Fishery cooperatives then typically implement their own internal compliance regime that includes monitoring and penalties. This article first reviews compliance practice in cooperative‐based catch share systems by examining the commonalities and differences in the way compliance regimes are structured (observation and reporting requirements, penalty scheme, internal enforcement authority and indemnification mechanisms) in a number of internal agreements from fishery cooperatives in North America and in Europe. Based on our review of cooperatives and the literature on compliance, we discuss how incentives to comply may be different for an individual fisherman operating in a fishery cooperative where joint and several liability applies as compared to an individual fishing quota baseline situation without fishery cooperative. Our review suggests that, from the regulators’ point of view, joint and several liability can increase the level of compliance for a given enforcement expenditure. However, the regulator cannot rely solely on cooperatives to carry out controls and must ensure that the cooperatives themselves have an interest in setting up an effective monitoring system and will enforce sanctions within the cooperative.

The U.S. West Coast limited entry groundfish trawl fishery is managed under an individual fishing quota program. For many fishermen targeting flatfishes in this fishery, catches of rockfishes ( Sebastes spp.), sablefish ( Anoplopoma fimbria ), and Pacific halibut ( Hippoglossus stenolepis ) can be a concern because quota is limited relative to flatfish quotas. Thus, approaches to minimize bycatch of limiting species are important to the economic viability of the fishery. In this study, we examined the size-selection characteristics of a flexible sorting grid bycatch reduction device (designed to retain flatfishes while reducing catches of rockfishes, sablefish, and Pacific halibut) using a recapture net. The mean codend retention of target flatfishes (five species evaluated) ranged from 68.1% to 92.3%. Combined, the mean flatfish retention was 85.6%. Codend catches of shelf rockfishes, slope rockfishes, sablefish, and Pacific halibut were reduced by 80.3%, 64.0%, 97.0%, and 90.3% by weight, respectively. Significant differences in selectivity parameters between flatfishes, rockfishes, sablefish, and Pacific halibut were observed. Over fishing grounds where fishermen need a more selective trawl to harvest flatfishes, the experimental gear tested could provide fishermen a technique to reduce catches of non-target species.

We investigate and measure how a shift from a regime of common property to one of private ownership of fishing rights affected the safety of commercial fishing activity. To deal with overfishing and stock depletion of red snapper and grouper-tilefish in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM), various regulatory controls, most notably common quotas and seasonal closures, were introduced in the early 1990s. The resulting “fishing derbies” led to an increased number of accidents and fatalities. We show that the subsequently implemented individual fishing quota programs led to a sharp reduction in the number of fatalities, in large part because of lower pressure to make risky trip decisions, in particular under adverse weather conditions.

In-season transferability of quota plays an important role in multispecies individual fishing quota (IFQ) systems since fishermen often need to acquire quota to balance incidental catch. The optimal utilization of quotas is thus dependent on development of an efficient quota market, but markets in multispecies IFQ fisheries develop slowly and may fail to perform efficiently even after several years. In 2011 an IFQ system was implemented for the Pacific groundfish trawl fishery in the US. After four years, the quota market does not appear to be yielding efficient prices for many species or distributing quota efficiently. I explore the structure and performance of the QP market and discuss the impediments to market efficiency. Drawing from theory and experience in other multispecies IFQ systems, I discuss other quota distribution and catch-balancing mechanisms that can supplement and perhaps improve inefficient markets and enable higher quota utilization rates.

There is a growing body of literature evidencing the distributional impacts of leasing in catch-share fisheries but little research on the determinants of the leasing decision itself. This study addresses this gap by using a discrete-choice model to examine the determinants of the decision of quota shareholders to use hired skippers in the individual fishing quota (IFQ) fishery for Pacific Halibut Hippoglossus stenolepis in Alaska. Since the implementation of that Alaska IFQ program, there has been an increasing reliance on hired skippers by initial quota-share recipients in relationships that are often functionally equivalent to leasing. This has hampered the North Pacific Fishery Management Council’s efforts to ultimately transition the IFQ catcher-vessel fleet to a group of owner-operators. This study shows that the probability of hiring a skipper is statistically significantly related to the residency and shareholdings of shareholders and identifies potential attributes of shareholdings, inclu...

Alaska is the world’s principal supplier of Sablefish Anoplopoma fimbria, a buttery-flavored whitefish greatly prized in Japan. Sablefish are distributed from Baja California to western Japan, but the majority of commercial catches are from the Gulf of Alaska and the Aleutian Islands off Alaska. The volume and value of landings of this long-lived demersal fish are comparable to those of the well-known Pacific Halibut Hippoglossus stenolepis. As with Pacific Halibut, Alaska region catches of Sablefish are managed under an individual fishing quota (IFQ) program implemented in 1995. We present a simultaneous-equation market model for Sablefish and use it to examine the linkages between landings volume and exvessel prices and revenues, including the sensitivity of Alaska exvessel prices and revenues to changes in landings, the implementation of IFQs, and changes in the Japanese economy. The model simulations indicate that markets could absorb substantially more Sablefish than can be sustainably harves...

This study investigates changes in the total factor productivity (TFP) and identifies the main sources of TFP growth following the adoption of an individual fishing quota (IFQ) program in the Gulf of Mexico red snapper commercial fishery. Utilizing an unbalanced panel of 722 vertical line vessels Malmquist indices were derived from an output-oriented stochastic distance frontier. The analysis shows that the IFQ program had a positive impact on the productivity of the fleet and that most of the productivity gains were due to improvements in technical efficiency. The study also finds that changes in technical efficiency were time variant suggesting that the exit of the less efficient vessels and easing of command and control regulations such as trip limits and short fishing seasons were responsible for most of these gains. Changes in the exploitable biomass of red snapper were found to have a moderate impact on productivity growth whereas the impact of technological progress was minimal.

A growing number of US fisheries are managed with catch share programs, which allocate exclusive shares of the total allowable catch from a fish stock to individuals, cooperatives, communities, or other entities. All of these catch share programs allow transferability of catch privileges in some form. Information on these transfers, particularly prices, could be valuable to fishery managers and to fishery participants to support management and business decisions and to increase efficiency of the catch share market itself. This article documents the availability and quality of data on transfers of catch privileges in fourteen US catch share programs. These catch share programs include several individual fishing quota (IFQ) programs and a number of programs that allocate catch privileges to self-organized cooperatives. Price information on catch share transfers is found to be limited or unavailable in most US catch share programs. Recommendations are made on how to improve the design of catch share programs and associated data collection systems to facilitate effective catch share markets, collection of catch share market data, and better use of information from catch share markets.

To address long-standing allocation conflicts between the Pacific halibut commercial fishing sector and recreational charter (for-hire) sector in Alaska, an Alaska halibut catch sharing plan (CSP) is being implemented in 2014 that has a provision allowing the leasing of commercial individual fishing quota to recreational charter businesses. This one-way inter-sectoral trading allows for the charter sector to increase its share of the total allowable catch while compensating commercial fishermen. This type of catch shares program is novel in fisheries. In this paper, the literature on non-fisheries tradable permit programs (TPPs) that have similarities to the Alaska halibut CSP program is examined. Several successful TPPs are discussed, including ones from emissions trading programs, water quality trading programs, water markets, and transferable development rights programs. They are then evaluated in terms of their similarities and differences to the Alaska CSP program. Characteristics not part of the current CSP that other TPPs have used and that may increase the likelihood for the CSP to be effective in achieving its primary goals (if they are implemented) are identified, such as allowing more flexible transfers (e.g., internal transfers), intertemporal banking, cooperative structures, and multi-year leasing.

In numerous fisheries management programs, managers have implemented measures to ensure that the benefits of the fishery accrue to those who are actively fishing. Although active participation measures are common in fisheries management, there has been limited research on these measures. This study highlights the variety of objectives that motivate the development of active participation measures and how they have been implemented. We examine the application of these measures in four case study fisheries management programs—the Alaska Halibut and Sablefish Individual Fishing Quota, the Pacific Coast Sablefish Permit Stacking, the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands Crab Rationalization, and the Alaska State Limited Entry programs—and, based on the experiences in these programs, provide recommendations for instituting active participation measures in other management programs.

In 2007, an Individual Fishing Quota (IFQ) program was introduced to the valuable red snapper (Lutjanus campechanus) fishery in the US Gulf of Mexico. This study assessed the current perceived scale and causes of red snapper discarding in the Gulf in recent years within the commercial reef fish fishery, according to commercial fishermen. Data were collected through interviews, which took place with fishermen in April and May 2010, and which were unexpectedly halted due to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill that occurred in late April 2010. Results suggest that for those fishermen fully participating in the IFQ program, snapper discarding has decreased since program implementation. For those not fully involved in the program (e.g., due to participation costs), discarding has likely since increased.

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science, Department of Environmental Science and Policy, College of Arts and Sciences, University of South Florida St. Petersburg

Kruse, G. H., Zheng, J., and Stram, D. L. 2010. Recovery of the Bristol Bay stock of red king crabs under a rebuilding plan. – ICES Journal of Marine Science, 67: 1866–1874. After peak landings in 1980, the red king crab fishery in Bristol Bay (Alaska) was closed in 1983 because of stock collapse. In the following decade, small commercial harvests and additional fishery closures (1994 and 1995) associated with depressed stock status prompted a reappraisal of the management strategy. A length-based population model was developed, which provided an improved stock assessment for setting annual catch quota. A management strategy evaluation revealed that a harvest strategy, which included a stair-stepped harvest rate of 10–15% of mature males and a threshold for effective spawning biomass below which no fishing is permitted, provides for relatively high long-term yield, greater stability in yield, fewer fishery closures, and higher effective spawning biomass. This strategy was adopted in 1996, in addition to crab bycatch caps and closed areas, to protect sensitive crab habitats implemented in the management of the groundfish trawl fishery. Since then, abundance of legal-sized males increased by 58%, that of mature males doubled, and mature female abundance and effective spawning biomass tripled through 2008. The stock has been considered rebuilt since 2003. Subsequently, a sharp reduction in fishing capacity improved profitability of the fishery, after implementation of an individual fishing quota programme in 2005.

In the Alaska halibut individual fishing quota (IFQ) fishery, small remote fishing communities (SRFCs) have disproportionately lost fishing rights. Our analysis of quota market participation from 1995 to 1999 confirms that SRFC residents are more likely to sell than buy quota. Alaska Native heritage is another important predictor of quota market behavior. Residents of Alaska Native villages have an increased likelihood of selling quota. Loss of fisheries participation in small indigenous communities can be an unintended consequence of quota systems. Mitigation measures should take into account the social factors that can lead to such a redistribution of fishing rights in privatized access fisheries.

I. INTRODUCTION Many economists and ecologists alike have supported rights-based management systems as a form of fishery management that addresses the causes of inefficient resource use (e.g., Costello et al. [2008]). Despite these convincing studies, most fisheries have yet to impose any form of rights-based management. In fact, in the United States, from 1996 through 2002, a moratorium was in effect on the creation of management systems that assigned fishing quota to individual vessels, often referred to as individual fishing quota (IFQ) management. (1) There has been some political resistance to the move from regulated open-access management, which imposes total catch limits for the fishery but no individual limits, to rights-based management, which generally imposes some form of individual fishing rights. At the core of this resistance is not the question of efficiency, but the possibility of potentially severe changes or distortions in rent distribution. In the market between fishers and processors (the ex-vessel market), processors and some researchers have been concerned that fishers will achieve near-total rent extraction when IFQs are given only to fishers, as is typically the case (e.g., Matulich et al. [1996]). Models that assume complete rent extraction by fishers also assume that the ex-vessel market is perfectly competitive. For many fisheries, this assumption of perfect competition is not appropriate. The geographic remoteness of many fishing areas often creates markets in which multiple fishing vessels must deliver their catch to a small number of processing facilities, When one considers this remoteness together with the possibility of limited entry restrictions on the harvesting and processing sectors, processing firm consolidation, fishers' bargaining associations, and instances of fisher-processor vertical integration, it is evident that there are a host of reasons why ex-vessel markets are normally not completely competitive. Thus, the creation of property rights through IFQs occurs not in an idealized purely competitive environment, but in an imperfectly competitive market with a myriad of factors that affect both processors' and fishers' abilities to extract rents. A bilateral bargaining framework has been suggested by several researchers as an alternative to the competitive market specification for some ex-vessel markets [e.g., Halvorsen et al. (2000); Matulich et al. (1995); Munro (1982)]. In this framework, fishers act as upstream monopolist (oligopolists), selling whole fish to downstream monopsonistic (oligopsonistic) fish processors. We follow this specification to analyze the rent distribution effect that switching to IFQ management has had on a specific fishery, the Alaskan sablefish fishery. In doing so, we develop an unobserved-components (UCs)-inspired econometric technique to estimate a fixed-quantity (i.e., the quantity transacted is exogenously determined) bilateral bargaining model in the presence of unobserved reservation prices and potentially time-varying bargaining power. This technique is general in its formulation and could thus have applicability in other contexts given the wide range of industries for which the bilateral bargaining framework is appropriate. The organization of the paper is as follows. In the next section, we explain how imposing property rights in a fishery through an IFQ system may affect the bargaining position of fishers and processors in the ex-vessel market. In Section III, we introduce the general purpose model of bilateral bargaining used in this study and the econometric technique we use to estimate this model. We provide some brief background information for the Alaskan sablefish fishery in Section IV. In Section V, we present and discuss our estimation results and we conclude in the final section. II. IMPACTS OF IFQ MANAGEMENT Matulich et al. (1996) present a theoretical model (which is restated in Matulich and Sever [1999]) with both competitive fishing and processing sectors to analyze the effect of IFQ management implementation on rent distribution between the two sectors. …

Ongoing changes in world fisheries, including those in the United States, are having dramatic impacts on fishers, their families, and their communities. The key drivers of these changes have been identified as open access and overcapitalization. The prevailing models being considered for addressing these issues are firmly rooted in the tenets of neoclassical economic theory and focus on establishing property rights or privileges in fisheries. The National Research Council has recently recommended that Congress lift the moratorium on the development of individual fishing quota (IFQ) programs established by the Sustainable Fisheries Act of 1996. In particular, among mainstream managers, a particular form of IFQ, the individual transferable quota (ITQ) has come to be viewed as the management tool of choice. ITQs, quasiprivatized property rights allocated to individual fishers, are expected to "rationalize" the fishery through market forces. Externalities (costs that fall outside the market process) associate...

This study examines the impact of individual fishing quotas (IFQs) on the technical efficiency (TE) and composition of the Gulf of Mexico red snapper commercial fishing fleet. Employing a parametric stochastic distance frontier framework we find that IFQs improved the TE of the vertical line and bottom longline fleets. Our results suggest that the observed TE gains were mainly driven by the retirement of less efficient vessels and, to a lesser extent, by efficiency gains of the remaining vessels. We also document changes in output and input distance elasticities and in returns to scale following the introduction of IFQs. The paper also investigates the impact of regulations and weather on productivity and the effect of crowding on TE. Policy implications stemming from these results are also discussed.

The Gulf of Mexico red snapper individual fishing quota program was implemented in 2007 to reduce overcapacity and eliminate derby fishing conditions in the commercial fishery. The five-year review of the program reveals that the number of vessels and fishing trips declined by 17% and 29%, respectively. The review also found the fishery was open year round for the first time in 20 years. Between 2007 and 2011, inflation-adjusted dockside, allocation (leased quota), and quota share prices rose by 7%, 37%, and 145%, respectively, suggesting the profitability of the fleet improved. Gini and Herfindahl-Hirschman indices indicate the distribution of shares is highly unequal, but shareholders do not have market power. The absence of quota overages and lower aggregate discard levels suggest resource stewardship improved. However, discards in the eastern Gulf remain high due to stock range expansion and insufficient allocation. This article also describes lessons learned from the five-year review.