Measuring the economic abatement cost of sea turtle bycatch in the Northwest Atlantic commercial pelagic longline fishery

Abstract

This study estimates the economic cost of reducing the take of sea turtles in the U.S. Northwest Atlantic Commercial Pelagic Longline Fishery. Sea turtles are protected under the Endangered Species Act. The analysis uses an output-oriented stochastic distance frontier method and draws from a highly unbalanced trip-level panel dataset that had 60 unique vessels that fished between 2006 and 2016. Our results show that mitigating the take of sea turtles is costly. On average, the cost of reducing the take of one sea turtle (or shadow price) equals $36,957. Shadow prices show significant temporal variability and vary by the targeting behavior of the fleets (i.e., tuna vs. swordfish trips). We also find that the technical efficiency of the fishing fleets varies by its targeting behavior. We conclude discussing bycatch management insights from our research.