Abstract
AbstractThe Atlantic Bluefin Tuna Thunnus thynnus is the target of a recreational fishery along the U.S. East Coast that is thought to be of considerable economic value. In some years, recreational landings have exceeded the sector's annual subquota due to changes in fish availability, limited predictability of angler effort, and difficulties in real‐time monitoring of catch. Understanding the drivers of angler behavior is critical for predicting how effort and harvest may vary as a function of changing fish availability, regulations, or costs. To investigate angler decision making, preferences, and values, we surveyed private recreational anglers from Maine to North Carolina and employed discrete choice experiments to determine how regulatory and nonregulatory trip‐specific variables influence trip‐taking behavior. A latent class‐ranked logit model identified two distinct classes of anglers who exhibited differing preferences in regard to the importance of nonconsumptive aspects of Bluefin Tuna fishing (e.g., catch and release). Income and recent Bluefin Tuna targeting were the primary determinants of class membership, and higher‐income anglers who had targeted Bluefin Tuna in the past 5 years were significantly more likely to be in the class that derives substantive benefits from nonconsumptive angling activities. An annual consumer surplus exceeding US$14 million was estimated for the 2015 fishery. We considered potential angler welfare impacts of possible management changes (compensating surplus) and identified a large amount of latent effort currently present in the fishery in the form of consumptive‐oriented anglers. As a result, liberalization of harvest regulations could potentially lead to a large influx of effort into the fishery, which could impede the ability of managers to maintain harvest levels within prescribed limits.
Highlights
Of the Bluefin Tuna quota allocated to the United States by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), 19.7% (195.2 metric tons for 2017) is domestically apportioned to the recreational Angling category by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), Highly Migratory Species (HMS) Management Division (NMFS 2006; NOAA 2017)
Bluefin Tuna harvest is regulated on a trip level using size and bag limits, which the HMS Management Division reserves the right to adjust over the course of a season in order to maximize utilization of the Angling subquota and prevent overages (NOAA 2006)
Drivers of Class Membership Our results clearly demonstrate a segmentation in preferences among Bluefin Tuna anglers along the U.S East Coast, indicating substantial heterogeneity in derived welfare among anglers while providing key insights into how changes to regulations and fishery conditions could impact effort and harvest
Summary
Of the Bluefin Tuna quota allocated to the United States by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), 19.7% (195.2 metric tons for 2017) is domestically apportioned to the recreational Angling category by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), Highly Migratory Species (HMS) Management Division (NMFS 2006; NOAA 2017). In 2009, for example, recreational anglers landed an estimated 566 metric tons of Bluefin Tuna—nearly three times the subquota—due to the increased availability of small medium-size Bluefin Tuna resulting from strong recruitment in 2003 (NMFS 2013; ICCAT 2017) This overage occurred even though the daily retention limit for this size-class in 2009 never exceeded one fish per vessel per day (NOAA 2009). While the economic impacts of fisheries for Bluefin Tuna and other highly migratory species have been examined (e.g., Bohnsack et al 2002; Hutt et al 2014), the lack of understanding of individual angler preferences and values limits the ability of the HMS Management Division to maximize the fishery’s socioeconomic benefits and achieve optimum yield, as is required by the first National Standard of the Magnuson–Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (U.S Office of the Federal Register 2003)
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