Establishing company level fishing revenue and profit losses from fisheries: A bottom-up approach.

Tim Cashion,U Rashid Sumaila,Santiago De La Puente,Dirk Zeller,Dyhia Belhabib,Daniel Pauly,Athanassios C Tsikliras

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0207768

Abstract

A third of global fish stocks are overexploited and many are economically underperforming, resulting in potential unrealized net economic benefits of USD 51 to 83 billion annually. However, this aggregate view, while useful for global policy discussion, may obscure the view for those actors who engage at a regional level. Therefore, we develop a method to associate large companies with their fishing operations and evaluate the biological sustainability of these operations. We link current fish biomass levels and landings to the revenue streams of the companies under study to compute potentially unrealized fisheries revenues and profits at the level of individual firms. We illustrate our method using two case studies: anchoveta (Engraulis ringens; Engraulidae) in Peru and menhaden in the USA (Brevoortia patronus and B. tyrannus; Clupeidae). We demonstrate that both these fisheries could potentially increase their revenues compared to the current levels of exploitation. We estimate the net but unrealized fishery benefits for the companies under question. This information could be useful to investors and business owners who might want to be aware of the actual fisheries performance options of the companies they invest in.

Highlights

The marine fishing industry is currently failing to realize economic benefits estimated to be between USD 51 and 83 billion annually [1,2,3]
These unrealized benefits are largely due to stocks whose biomass has been reduced below levels that generate maximum sustainable yields (MSY), which leads to their continued exploitation generating higher costs
We estimated that the current biomass levels of Peruvian anchoveta -of both stocks- were below that which would potentially yield MSY (Fig 2), suggesting that the stocks are in a depleted state (B < BMSY)

Summary

Introduction

The marine fishing industry is currently failing to realize economic benefits estimated to be between USD 51 and 83 billion annually [1,2,3]. These unrealized benefits are largely due to stocks whose biomass has been reduced below levels that generate maximum sustainable yields (MSY), which leads to their continued exploitation generating higher costs. While some regions are experiencing a growth in fish catches due to rebuilding fish stocks [4], global catches are declining at a rate of 1.2 million tonnes annually [5] These current trends illustrate the global picture of the state of the oceans, and point to the lost economic potential of capture. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript

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Discussion

Conclusion