Behavior Of Fishermen Research Articles

Confounding the Goals of Management: Response of the Maine Lobster Industry to a Trap Limit

Abstract The behavior of fishermen is often far more complicated than assumed by fisheries managers. Those concerned with the Maine lobster (i.e., American lobster Homarus americanus hereafter “lobster”) fishery have long favored a cap on the number of traps each license holder can use. Fishermen favor trap limits primarily to cut costs and limit congestion, and managers believe such limits will help reduce fishing effort. Yet when trap limits were imposed by the legislature and the lobster zone councils between 1995 and 1998, the number of traps fished in Maine waters increased greatly. A survey of half the lobster license holders carried out in the summer and fall of 1998 revealed that the response of fishermen to trap limits was highly differential. Some fishermen reduced, but more increased, the number of traps they fished. A complicated set of variables influenced those decisions concerning trap numbers, including the regulatory environment, age and characteristics of the fishermen, relative economic...

Fishermen's Response to Revenue Changes: The Norwegian Coastal Mackerel Fishery

It is well known from economic theory that rent seeking is an important factor in explaining fishermen's behaviour in open-access situations. However, in the fisheries economics literature (and particularly in empirical work) the focus has been on stock and cost effects, and the effect of changes in revenue has received little attention.1 Some exceptions do exist though. Wilen and Homans (1994) showed that fishermen will respond to changes in the regulatory system by changing their products in order to obtain higher revenues. Several authors have also shown that the timing of the harvest can be important, since the quality of the fish, and, therefore, the price one receives, may change throughout the year (Conrad 1982; Anderson 1989; Kellogg, Easley, and Johnson 1988; Onal et al ., 1991). Larkin and Sylvia (1999) showed that the regulatory system can be essential for exploiting the opportunities that seasonal fluctuations in quality give. Here, we will describe a somewhat different case that we think is of interest, since it illustrates how responsive fishermen can be to revenue changes in an openaccess fishery, and how increased revenues, thereby, intensify the race to fish. It also demonstrates the importance of the political game played by fishermen and regulators, and gives an example of how quota allocation is endogenous in the management system. The case we look at is the Norwegian coastal fishery for mackerel, where the fishermen experienced almost a doubling of the price of their catch from 1995 to 1996, while their total quota remained the same.

Contextualizing marine resource use: a case from The Netherlands

The exploitation of renewable marine resources is fraught with problems. Several academics claim that the behaviour of fishermen is causing a tragedy of the commons. However, it is becoming increasingly clear that focusing exclusively on fishermen's actions is insufficient to understand the fisheries as an evolving system. Therefore, we should devote ample attention to the wider context in which fishermen operate, the unintended and unforeseen consequences of their behaviour, and that of fisheries policy and management, and the feedback dynamics which give rise to new coping responses. This paper uses developments in oyster fishing and farming in the Dutch province of Zeeland to illustrate these points. It also deals with the implications of the contextualist position for theory, policy and management. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Contextualizing marine resource use: a case from The Netherlands

The exploitation of renewable marine resources is fraught with problems. Several academics claim that the behaviour of fishermen is causing a tragedy of the commons. However, it is becoming increasingly clear that focusing exclusively on fishermen's actions is insufficient to understand the fisheries as an evolving system. Therefore, we should devote ample attention to the wider context in which fishermen operate, the unintended and unforeseen consequences of their behaviour, and that of fisheries policy and management, and the feedback dynamics which give rise to new coping responses. This paper uses developments in oyster fishing and farming in the Dutch province of Zeeland to illustrate these points. It also deals with the implications of the contextualist position for theory, policy and management. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The impact of ownership of fishing rights on professional fishing in Finnish lakes

In Finland, most of inland water areas are either private or state-owned. Most private waters are owned by a shareholders' association for areas held in common by a registered village, represented by a fishing co-operative. This kind of joint possession of private waters is a feature in Finnish legislation that distinguishes fisheries management from elsewhere in Europe, except Sweden. State-owned waters are managed by fisheries region management units as regards public waters, or their management is handed over to a state-owned enterprise. Due to mosaic ownership many fishermen utilise simultaneously private and state-owned waters, termed here combined waters. The aim of this study, which involved 53 out of a total of 225 fishermen active in 1990, was to examine how the type of water ownership affected professional fishing practices. The data were collected through personal interviews. On the basis of the fishermen's behaviour in response to diminishing fish stocks they have been classified into four groups. Efforts were made to determine whether the pattern of ownership influenced the process of adaptation. Vendace ( Coregonus albula L.) is the most important commercial species in Finnish inland waters. State-ownership facilitates the starting up of professional fishing enterprises, providing for equality in obtaining fishing licences, use of the most effective fishing technology, trawling, and highest turnover. The joint possession of private waters in fishing co-operatives results in conservative decision-making and encourages the use of less efficient gear, winter seine. In waters of fishing co-operatives, fishing rights are allocated between shareholders not as dependent on fishery income as fishermen using state-owned waters. The average annual catch per enterprise in winter seining was half of that of trawling. Restrictive policy in fishing co-operative waters results in biological under-utilization of vendace resources, because effective fishing is considered as being the best way of managing vendace stocks. The most prominent distinctive feature of these types of ownership was the attitude to entrepreneurship, which was hampered in privately owned waters. All fishermen expressing a passive form of `adaptation' to diminishing fish stocks fished in waters belonging entirely or partly to fishing co-operatives.

Fisheries Management Models: Assumptions and Realities or, Why Shrimpers in Mississippi Are Not Firms

The Schaefer-Gordon model of fisheries management does not adequately predict the state of stocks or the behavior of fishermen. In any scientific discourse, this should call the basic assumptions into question. I review the challenges to the model's biological assumptions and argue that its economic assumptions are also flawed. I review the approach developed by A.V. Chayanov for studying peasant economies in conjunction with comparative data on other fisheries and data from Mississippi Shrimpers to show that Chayanov's model characterizes the shrimpers of Mississippi. From the comparative and ethnographic data, I conclude that fishermen do not operate as firms. This further calls into question the adequacy of the current fisheries management model and raises the question of how and why such an inadequate model is perpetuated.

Leisure/Labor Tradeoffs: The Backward-Bending Labor Supply in Fisheries

Economists have understood that the open-access nature of fishing grounds can cause the long-run fishery supply to bend backward. There is also increasing speculation that fishermen respond to falling output price either by increasing or decreasing effort, depending on the circumstances. This suggests a short-run backward-bending supply of fishing labor. A dynamic, utility-theoretic model of fishermen's behavior is developed to address this possibility. The model highlights both contemporaneous and intertemporal trade-offs between labor and leisure. The model is tested and the results indicate that the short-run labor supply in fisheries may exhibit backward-bending properties. In addition, changes in current prices may trigger changes in expectations of future prices, causing potentially greater counterintuitive behavior. These results challenge many traditional regulatory strategies (e.g., output taxes) that address problems of open access.

Investment Decision Making by Fishermen

Individual fishermen make investment decisions in an environment which is competitive and highly variable from season to season. Extensive variability means that economic survival must be a primary consideration in the investment decision process. In this paper, fishermen's investment decisions are modelled as a probabilistic dynamic programming problem in discrete time. Fishermen are assumed to make rational decisions based on income expectations and subject to survivability conditions to maximize the net worth of the fishing enterprise at the end of a finite planning horizon. The formal analysis of the investment model is presented and the model is applied to trailer fishermen of the British Columbia commercial fishing fleet. The results present an accurate picture of actual investment decisions and provide valuable insights into the behavioral basis of investment decision making by fishermen. Understanding the investment decisions of fishermen has implications for planning and regulation in fisheries: insights gained into the key factors provide the basis for the development of strategic long-term policies that anticipate fishermen's behavior. The consequences will be a movement away from reactive, short-term policies which have characterized fisheries regulation to date.

Analysis of Motive and Participation Differences between Saltwater Sport and Tournament Fishermen

Abstract Numerous descriptive studies of fishermen have been conducted. Motives, attitudes, and behavior of fishermen have been examined. These studies have confirmed the nonexistence of the average fisherman. They disclosed, instead, considerable diversity between and among fishermen and their activities. Few studies, however, have focused on this diversity, despite an emerging literature indicating fisherman diversity to be an important concern for fishery managers in allocating resources among competing interests. We empirically tested for and examined differences in motivation between Texas saltwater sport anglers and saltwater tournament fishermen, particularly those differences in measures of catch-related and noncatch motivation. Tournament fishermen rated the importance of catch-related motives significantly higher than did sport fishermen. Both groups rated equally high the importance attached to noncatch motives as reasons for fishing. Tournament fishermen considered themselves more skilled, bel...

Density-Dependent Catchability and Its Potential Causes and Consequences on Connecticut River American Shad, Alosa sapidissima

Using commercial catch per unit effort data (C/f) and relative shad population size, we assessed the hypothesis that commercial catchability coefficients for Connecticut River American shad, Alosa sapidissima, are inversely related to female shad population size. Daily female catch per gillnet drift and commercial effort data from 1978 through 1980 were also used to evaluate the nonrandom search behavior of fishermen, as well as the extent of temporal heterogeneity of the female shad population. Commercial catchability coefficients were inversely related to female shad population size, the relationship being well described by a power function with an exponent (B) of −0.743. Commercial C/f data were asymptotically and not linearly related to changes in the female population size, indicating that commercial C/f data underestimate percent changes in the female shad population. The inverse relationship between catchability and female population size was not due to serial improvements in gear technology, but rather to the ability of commercial fishermen to differentially exploit patches of female American shad during their upriver migration.

Insights from the Markets for Limited Entry Permits in Alaska

Under Alaska's entry limitation program, transferable permits convey fishing rights. Information from permit markets is used to study several key issues regarding the behavior of fishermen and the effects of fishery management policy. I conclude that (1) expectations of future fishing incomes are the primary determinants of permit prices, (2) Alaska Department of Fish and Game forecasts of fish recruitment are capitalized in permit values, (3) a state program that provides low-interest loan money to some purchasers of permits has coincided with a significant increase in permit prices, (4) the "average memory" of fishermen in projecting future incomes is about 2.5 yr, and (5) it is possible to infer the rate at which the markets discount future fishing income flows.

Political Efficacy and Political Activity Among Fishermen in Southwest Nova Scotia: A Research Note

This paper reports briefly on the political attitudes and behaviour of fishermen in southwest Nova Scotia. On the basis of some recently gathered survey data, we show that these fishermen are considerably more alienated than a comparable sample of workers in the Maritimes, and that they are also somewhat more likely to be politically active. In this context, we discuss some recent conflicts between the fishermen and the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans, and speculate about comparative differences in involvement in policy processes between Canada and the United States.