Part IV. Renewable Resources

1
Part IV. Renewable Resources

• Fish part 2 Policy
• Forests
• Water
• Biodiversity

2
Current Fishery Policy

• This section will focus on 2 approaches to
  policy.
• Those policies that can actually address the
  issue of entry are termed limited-entry
  techniques.
• All other regulations or policies that do not
  explicitly address the problem of entry are
  termed open-access (OA) techniques.
• OA techniques modify fishing behavior of those
  participants in the fishery without directly
  affecting participation in the fishery, and
  typically raise the cost associated with fishing.
  
• Analogous to C C

3
OA regulations how to catch

• OA regulations are designed to maintain the
  stocks at some target level, usually stocks
  consistent with MSY.
• Because modern technology can give a fishing
  fleet tremendous fishing power relative to the
  size of a fish population, OA regulation
  generally forces inefficiency on the fishers.
• In Maryland's share of the Chesapeake, it is
  illegal to dredge for oysters under motorized
  power. This means sails, smaller dredging
  equipment, and slower movement across the oyster
  beds.

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OA regulations who to catch

• Regulation which revolves around restrictions on
  the minimum size of fish that are legal to
  harvest are designed to leave a portion of the
  fish stock in the water to provide a sufficient
  breeding stock to ensure future populations.
• Fishers generally implement this restriction by
  choosing a mesh size for their nets that allows
  smaller, illegal fish, to escape.

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OA regulations when to catch

• Because fishing activity may disrupt the spawning
  process, often the fishing season is closed for a
  certain period on an annual basis, generally
  during spawning season.
• Also, some species become so extremely
  congregated during spawning that fishing effort
  could capture virtually the entire population.

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OA regulations where to catch

• Regulations on where fish may be caught are
  designed to protect fish stocks when they are
  congregated and vulnerable to overharvesting.
• These types of regulations also protect
  vulnerable fishing habitats from destruction by
  the fishing process.

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OA regulations how many to catch

• Often, OA regulations take the form of limits on
  how many fish may be captured in a given time
  period.
• These limits may be in the form of weight caught,
  number of fish, or volume of catch.
• The catch limit on giant bluefin tuna is 1 fish
  per boat. A fish can often weigh as much as 1000
  pounds and the market price has been 18 per
  pound.

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Economic Analysis of Open-Access Regulations

• The effect of OA regulation falls has 2 effects
• increase in cost due to regulations
• possible decrease in cost due to higher catch per
  effort expended.
• Net effect increased costs
• Table 11.3 summarizes the impact of the OA
  regulations on key variables in the fishery.

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Economic Analysis of Open-Access Regulations
10
Limited Entry Techniques

• Limited entry techniques raise the cost for
  fishers without increasing social costs.
• If limited entry techniques are truly analogous
  to economic incentives for pollution control,
  then they should be available either as price
  policies (tax) or quantity policies (MPP).
• Fisheries economics literature tends to focus on
  quantity-based systems.
• The name for these systems is individual
  transferable quotas (ITQs).

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Catch based ITQs

• ITQs would work in a fashion similar to
  marketable pollution permits.
• Limit placed on total catch, each fisher
  allocated portion of total catch
• Limits effort because cost of effort increases,
  because people must now buy ITQs to fish
• Cost increase serves to eliminate disparity
  between social and private cost of fishing
  associated with the OA externality

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Effort based ITQs

• Limited entry techniques structured to direct
  effort rather than catch can also be developed.
• Here only a fixed number of boats would be
  allowed to operate in the fishery, must have
  permit be to allowed in
• The method of permit allocation could be by
  auction or historical presence in the fishery.
• Completely analogous to MPPs

13
Transferable ITQs

• If these ITQs are transferable, it will be
  possible to have only the most efficient
  fisherman in the fishery.
• Enforcement of effort-based limits, that is
  vessel permits, would be much easier than that
  associated with the catch limits.
• No measuring or weighing is necessary a poster
  sized certificate of operation would allow easy
  identification of legal vessels.

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ITQ problems

• Catch-based ITQs are subject to several problems.
  
• People might cheat on their quota by selling to
  foreign vessels or in an underground market.
• Another problem is associated with the differing
  market values of different size fish.
• Once quota is reached, throw less valuable (but
  now dead) fish overboard to make room for better
  catch

15
Private oyster beds

• Although most fishery regulation relies on OA
  techniques, an important example of a limited
  entry technique is the Virginia oyster fishery,
  where oyster beds are treated as private
  property.
• Eliminates OA exploitation
• It gives oyster bed operators incentive to invest
  in their property such as seeding with larval
  oysters and creating more structures to which the
  oysters can attach.

16
EEZ

• An additional example of the limited entry
  regulation is the economic exclusion zone,
  established under the authority of the United
  Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea.
• This regulation established a 200 mile limit
  along the coast of a country where each country
  has the right to limit access to their waters.
  This is a partial limited access regulation.

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Why We Do Not See More Limits to Entry

• First, many limits to access are informal.
• Fishing communities tend to be close knit and
  generally resistant to outsiders.
• It is difficult to enter into these fisheries
  without facing barriers and possible sabotage of
  equipment.
• Second, fisherman opposition to the idea of
  limited entry is high.

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Why We Do Not See More Limits to Entry

• A possible explanation for the opposition to
  limited entry among current fishers is that these
  fishers may be utility maximizers rather than
  profit maximizers.
• Pure profit maximizers would see the potential
  economic rents associated with limited entry, and
  most would probably support limits to entry in
  order to obtain these potential rents.
• Fishers from communities that have fished for
  generations fit this category.

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Why We Do Not See More Limits to Entry

• Need to reduce catch today in order to expand
  fish stock, catch and income in the future.
• The desire to support fishing families in the
  present may result in opposition of limited entry
  policies.
• The greater the uncertainty about the success of
  limited entry policies to enhance future value in
  the fishery, the greater the chance fishers will
  not support the policies.

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Aquaculture

• Aquaculture, the cultivation of fish in
  artificial environments or in contained natural
  environments, is often suggested as a means of
  dealing with the OA problem.
• Not all species can be cultivated.
• Shellfish are ideal because of their inherent
  immobility.
• Wildfish will only benefit indirectly from
  aquaculture if the farmed species takes part of
  the market demand for the wildfish and therefore
  reduces the fishing pressure on the species.

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Aquacultures problems

• Aquaculture creates its own set of problems.
• Communities and industries that are based on wild
  fisheries could suffer economic setbacks from the
  decline in demand for wild fish (as consumers
  choose aquaculture).

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Aquacultures problems

• Aquaculture can severely damage the environment.
  
• Shrimp aquaculture in Central and South America
  has resulted in a loss of mangrove forests,
  excess nutrient loading into estuaries and
  severely reduced dissolved oxygen in areas
  bordering estuaries.
• There are also potential problems associated with
  hybridized fish escaping and damaging the gene
  pool of existing species.

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Other Issues in Fishery Management

• Other problems associated with fishery management
  include
• incidental catch
• destruction of habitat through fishing
  activities
• destruction of wetlands and related habitat
  through non-fishing activities
• pollution of fishery habitat
• conflicts between user groups and
• international cooperation concerning the
  harvesting of migratory species.

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Incidental catch

• Often the fisher will catch not only the species
  that they seek but also other species, referred
  to as incidental catch.
• Many types of fishing gear do not discriminate
  among fish species, and both the desired species
  and a spectrum of untargeted species are caught
  by this gear.
• Among the most notorious of these are the gill
  nets, whose lengths often measured in miles.
• These nets are vertically suspended in the water,
  like underwater fences, ensnaring the gill covers
  of fish as they attempt to back out.

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Long Lines

• Another indiscriminate fishing method is
  long-lining.
• A long-line consists of line that may be 10 km in
  length or longer, with baited hooks every several
  meters.
• These lines are employed off the Atlantic coast
  in pursuit of highly profitable swordfish.
• Because sharks are often caught, these long-lines
  have been an important factor in the decline of
  the shark populations.

26
Policy

• Due to the difficulties of monitoring,
  restrictions on fishing methods may be
  preferential to policies based on economic
  incentives.
• An example of this type of policy is the
  requirement that shrimpers install a Turtle
  Excluder Device (TED) in their nets to allow
  endangered sea turtles to escape.
• In addition to the turtles which are kicked out
  of the shrimp net, non-targeted fish are also
  allowed to escape.

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Policy

• Whether policy makers should implement the
  restrictions on gill nets and long-line
  operations needs to be determined on a
  case-by-case basis for each potential
  restriction.
• The benefits of protecting untargeted species are
  spread out over a large number of people, but the
  costs are concentrated upon a very few.

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Destruction of Habitat

• Damage can occur when contact of fishing gear
  with the floor of the estuary or ocean uproots
  aquatic plants, breaks coral, dislodges shell
  fish, and so on.
• One particularly sensitive ecosystem is that
  associated with a coral reef, where anchors and
  boat bottoms dragging across the coral can kill
  it.
• Even more destructive is the practice of fishing
  using explosions or the use of cyanide in the
  coral to stun and collect fish for consumption
  and aquariums.

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Destruction of Habitat

• Other habitats such as upland and coastal
  wetlands, temperate forests and free flowing
  rivers are critically important to fisheries.
• The temperate rainforests of the Pacific
  Northwest are critically important to maintaining
  the riverine habitat, which is essential to
  anadromous fish, such as salmon and steelhead.
• Any activity which impacts the quality of these
  ecosystems can impact the quality of the riverine
  system and the salmon and steelhead.

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Pollution of Fishery Habitat

• This pollution and loss of habitat has affected
  virtually every freshwater species, and many
  saltwater species, where saltwater species are
  affected by estuarine pollution.
• Anadromous species such as salmon, steelhead,
  shad, and striped bass are particularly
  vulnerable to riverine pollution.
• In developing countries, soil erosion from
  deforestation and intensive cultivation of
  hillside lands has severely impacted water
  quality not only in the rivers, but in
  reservoirs, estuaries, lagoons, and coral reefs.

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Management of Recreational Fishery Resources

• Limits on the number of fish that may be kept,
  restricted seasons, and size limits.
• By stocking fish, where a very large number of
  fish are hatched, grown to size, and released
  into the wild, the problem of OA is addressed by
  increasing resource base.
• Often have closed seasons timed to coincide with
  spawning periods in the fishery.
• Access improvements such as launching ramps,
  fishing piers, parking areas, and artificial
  reefs can be designed to reduce congestion in the
  fishery, but may also lead to increased use.

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Management of Recreational Fishery Resources

• Catch release programs are based on the idea
  that a recreational angler does not have to kill
  his or her catch to produce utility from fishing.
  
• Size limits place restrictions on the minimum
  (and sometimes maximum) size of fish that are
  legal to keep.
• Creel limits place restrictions on the maximum
  number of fish per day that may be kept.
• Both restrictions are designed to protect the
  reproductive viability of the fish stocks.

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Management of Recreational Fishery Resources

• In order to find the benefits associated with a
  particular recreational fishing activity, a
  valuation study must be done. Usually CV or
  travel cost studies.
• Freeman (1979) and many others note that the
  major benefit of improving water quality can be
  attributed to recreational uses of water
  resources, including boating, swimming, and
  recreational fishing.

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Summary

• Fishery resources are renewable but destructible.
• The destructibility problem is amplified by the
  open-access nature of many of the worlds fishery
  resources.
• For commercial fishing, optimal management
  strategy requires the limitation of effort to a
  level that maximizes the sum of CS, PS, and
  fishery rent.
• Actual fishery management seldom achieves this
  goal and is based on developing restrictions on
  how, when, where, and how much fish can be
  caught.