Techno-economic efficiencies of the purse-seiners in the Aegean Sea (Eastern Mediterranean, Turkey)

Abstract

Overcapacity and low economic returns have been long ending problems for the Turkish marine fisheries while various conflicting and inadequate fisheries regulations under inconsistent political decisions were developed over many decades. Purse-seine fishery, as one of the biggest marine fishery sub-sectors, has a pioneering socio-ecological influence within the marine fisheries sector of Turkey. In this study, we examined the technical efficiencies of the Turkish purse-seine vessels along the Aegean coasts of Turkey. To implement this analysis, we first collected a data set of technical and economic dimensions of active Turkish purse-seine vessels in the Aegean Sea. Then, we used two-stage Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) approaches, including input-oriented bootstrapped DEA under constant and various returns-to-scale technologies. In the first stage, we calculated bootstrapped efficiencies across vessels by using technical factors of fisheries production and harvest value as input/output factors. At the second stage, we performed an in-depth analysis of the endogenous determinants of the efficiency scores by using the statistical models under various statistical specifications. We found that most of the purse seine vessels in fleet segment 1 (<24 m) got low-efficiency scores (<0.30) while efficiency scores of fleet segment 2 (≥24 m) emerged to have scores that were homogeneously distributed between 0 and 1. Landing amounts and landing values of fleet segment 1 appeared to have superior efficient frontier levels compared with fleet segment 2 although fleet segment 2 had substantially positive relationships with the predicted efficiency scores. Higher engine power, as well as higher numbers of crew onboard, did not statistically explain neither desired efficiency scores nor expected landings and market values. Overall, various excess production inputs, including gross tonnage, engine power, total generator power, lamp boat generator power, were predicted to be in excess use. To conclude, fisheries managers should account for the operational performance of the fishing vessels to better design optimal fisheries policies in the future.