Increasing value through gear flexibility: a case study of US west coast sablefish

Abstract

This paper explores the potential economic gains of allowing additional flexibility in gear choice, within rights-based management programs. A case study of US west coast sablefish (Anoplopoma fimbria) provides an example of a commercially important species where gear-switching is currently occurring within the individual fishing quota (IFQ) program, allowing us to isolate the economic potential of gear flexibility along two important margins: size and quality. We conduct a hedonic price analysis of ex-vessel prices using panel fish ticket data and linear mixed-effect econometric models to examine the influences of gear, size, condition, fishing sector, port group, landing month, and year on the price of sablefish. We generate a counter-factual scenario that represents the IFQ fishery where the use of fixed gear is prohibited by predicting what the size composition of catch would have been if the sablefish had been caught with trawl gear. We find that the flexibility of targeting sablefish with fixed gear between 2011 and 2016 generated an annual mean 10.45% increase in total revenue, or US$1.17 million, compared with the trawl-only scenario. These results show sablefish value increases through implementing gear flexibility, which contributes to a broader conversation of allocative efficiency.