Abstract
The fishery of the Bay of Bengal (BOB) is assumed to be suffering from the overexploitation. This paper aims to assess the sustainability of current level of fishing effort as well as possible changes driven by anthropogenic and climate driven factors. Therefore, the commercial marine fishery of BOB for the period of 1985/86 to 2007/08 is analyzed by applying Gordon-Schaefer Surplus Production Model on time series of total catch and standardized effort. Static reference points such as open-access equilibrium, maximum economic yield, and maximum sustainable yield are established. Assumptions about potential climatic and anthropogenic effects onr(intrinsic growth rate) andK(carrying capacity) of BOB fishery have been made under three different reference equilibriums. The results showed that the fishery is not biologically overexploited; however, it is predicted to be passing a critical situation, in terms of achieving reference points in the near future. But, on the other hand, economic overfishing started several years before. Higher fishing effort, and inadequate institutional and legal framework have been the major bottlenecks for the proper management of BOB fisheries and these may leads fishery more vulnerable against changing marine realm. Thus, the present study calls for policy intervention to rescue the stock from the existing high fishing pressure that would lead to depletion.
Highlights
Marine wild capture fisheries are crucial to the food and livelihood security for millions of people, supplying approximately 53% of fish food among the 110 million tonnes of wild capture fisheries and aquaculture [1]
Calculation of reference points is the key step towards approaching the bioeconomic analysis; maximum sustainable yield (MSY), Maximum economic yield (MEY), open access (OA), corresponding effort levels, and economic rent were calculated in response to changes in the biological parameters
When these estimated values were compared with the recorded catch and effort values (Table 1), it has been found that the current catch level nearly approaches to MSY value that is obtained from this empirical model
Summary
Marine wild capture fisheries are crucial to the food and livelihood security for millions of people, supplying approximately 53% of fish food among the 110 million tonnes of wild capture fisheries and aquaculture [1]. Nearly 170 million people are employed in the primary fish production, secondary processing, and marketing sectors [1] and the importance of fish to human food security and the burgeoning human population had placed marine fish populations under considerable stress [2]. There is an increasing call to conserve and manage commercial fishery resources by developing proper management measures, using time series data, to ensure sustainability and economic efficiency for certain fishery. Climate change will likely affect the economics of fishing through changes in the price and value of catches, fishing costs, fishers’ incomes, earnings of fishing companies, discount rates, and economic rent, as well as throughout the global economy [5, 8]
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