Planning fish scouting activity in industrial fishing

Abstract

Vertically integrated fish processing firms with a fishing fleet are forever faced with the difficult problem of dispatching fishing effort in such a way so as to minimize the cost of landing plant requirements. This landed cost of fish is a direct function of the catch rates observed on the fishing grounds. Unfortunately, these catch rates are not known a priori. Fish scouting involves routing a trawler over a set of fishing grounds to sample catch rates. The data obtained are used to develop a profile of the expected performance of the fleet. These data are also used to dispatch the rest of the fishing fleet. In dispatching the scouting mission, the dispatcher must select a set of grounds to visit so as the maximize the value of the information obtained while respecting a budget or trip limit constraint. The value of the potential information depends on the species required at the plants, and the age of the current information on the state of catch rates on the various fishing grounds. We present a mathematical programming model to assist the dispatcher in coming up with the optimal mission for the scouting fleet. We demonstrate the model on a problem involving 15 fish stocks.