Fish Wars Research Articles

Great fish war with moratorium

We consider a discrete-time version of the fish war model, where a regulator imposes a moratorium on fishing activities whenever the stock reaches a predetermined critical low value. The moratorium will be in place until the fish stock recovers, that is, attains a desirable value. We obtain conditions on the parameter values such that a moratorium could be avoided, and its optimal duration when its imposition is deemed necessary. When the players cannot avoid a moratorium under both cooperative and noncooperative modes of play, we propose a moratorium-free strategy profile that matches under some conditions the Nash equilibrium in linear-state strategies. We illustrate our results with some numerical examples.

When Inaccuracies in Value Functions Do Not Propagate on Optima and Equilibria

We study general classes of discrete time dynamic optimization problems and dynamic games with feedback controls. In such problems, the solution is usually found by using the Bellman or Hamilton–Jacobi–Bellman equation for the value function in the case of dynamic optimization and a set of such coupled equations for dynamic games, which is not always possible accurately. We derive general rules stating what kind of errors in the calculation or computation of the value function do not result in errors in calculation or computation of an optimal control or a Nash equilibrium along the corresponding trajectory. This general result concerns not only errors resulting from using numerical methods but also errors resulting from some preliminary assumptions related to replacing the actual value functions by some a priori assumed constraints for them on certain subsets. We illustrate the results by a motivating example of the Fish Wars, with singularities in payoffs.

‘Defenders and Dissidents: Cooks Landing and the Fight to Define Tribal Sovereignty in the Red Power Era’

ABSTRACTThe 'Fish Wars' in the Pacific Northwest during the 1960s and 1970s hold an important yet predictable place within the historiography of the Red Power movement. In standard works, the fish-ins and other protests serve as a prelude to the larger pan-Indian struggle that seized public attention after the occupation of Alcatraz. The fight for treaty fishing rights thus serves as a proving ground for individuals like Hank Adams and organizations like the National Indian Youth Council, thereby shifting our attention from long-running issues and local actors to the events and figures that defined Red Power nationally and internationally. Moreover, historians generally have emphasized the Salish Sea (Puget Sound) region and the conflict among state, federal, and tribal governments rather than contemporaneous debates within and between Native nations. This study highlights several significant but slighted points regarding the Northwest fishing rights controversy. Focusing on Treaty Indians of the Columbia and their resistance to tribal regulation, my analysis illustrates that treaty rights could divide as well as unite Indians on multiple levels; that specific tribal struggles preceded the national pan-Indian movement and proceeded alongside; and that the Fish Wars were a crucial period in the history of tribal state-building.

Verification and refinement of a two species Fish Wars model

In this paper, we analyse a modification of the well known two species Fish Wars model of Fischer and Mirman—a dynamic game which models players catching two species of fish—Their model is modified in order to encompass both the possibility of depleting resources and the Allee effect. In addition, we verify the results of Fischer and Mirman regarding equilibria in such games, which, to the best of our knowledge, have not yet been proven.

The river mouth speaks: water quality as storyteller in decolonization of the Port of Tacoma

In this paper, I describe historical geographies of settler colonization and decolonization in the Port of Tacoma, Washington tideflats using the lens of biological, habitat, flow, and physico-chemical indicators of water quality. The Puyallup River empties into what is now known as the Port of Tacoma. Before the Port’s industrialization, the tideflats and bay were rich with shellfish and anadromous fish, important traditional sources of food for the Puyallup Tribe of Indians. Colonization and allotment led to severe environmental degradation and removal of the tribe from their land. Because of waste dumped by settler colonial industry, the nearshore tideflats at the Puyallup River’s mouth are now an EPA Superfund site, containing phthalates, heavy metals, pesticides, PCBs, and more. Over the years of its industrialization, the river has been channelized and the shoreline armored. In addition, for many years the City of Tacoma dumped sewage directly into the Port waterways. In the 1950 and 1960s, the Puyallup Tribe participated in the Puget Sound “Fish Wars,” forcing attention to treaty rights through off-reservation fish-ins, and leading to the 1974 Boldt Decision upholding tribal treaty rights. With the legal recourse enabled by the Boldt Decision, the Puyallup Tribe successfully sued the Port, interstate, railroad companies, polluting industry, and several cities for occupied land denoted as theirs by the Treaty of Medicine Creek. In addition, the tribe has participated in several lawsuits forcing aquatic habitat restoration and remediation efforts along the river and tideflats. I describe colonial and decolonizing processes of shaping and re-shaping the river mouth, beginning in the late 1800s, and assess changes in water quality from the mid-1800s through present day using recent data on contaminants, as well as proxies of indicator species for unavailable data from earlier eras. I use these data to understand the ways the tribe’s legal challenges to colonization have impacted the area’s environmental health. I conclude that legal affirmations of tribal sovereignty are positively associated with estuarine ecosystem health.

Numerical Versus Analytic Calculation of Optima and Equilibria in Fish Wars Model with Finite Time Horizon

In the research presented in this paper, we analyse a model of Fish Wars, first introduced by Levhari and Mirman, restricted to finite time horizon. We study it both by analytic and numerical methods and compare results. Our study suggests possibility of using numerical methods for dynamic games with singularities in payoffs.

Book Review: Mathematical Game Theory and Applications Vladimir Mazalov, Wiley 2014

The book, written by Vladimir Mazalov, gives a fascinating view on the state-ofthe-art of a classical and modern Game Theory. It addresses a wide variety of game types (from matrix games to differential games with all conceivable stopovers), providing a great collection of examples (from economics to sport). The examples are not only illustrative but in many cases reflect the research results of the author (optimal stopping games, arbitration games, bioresource sharing models, fish wars, location problem, poker model, etc.) All the examples, presented in the book, are thoroughly elaborated, beginning with a rather simple, understandable, model, and gradually becoming more complicated. This also features a pedagogical value of the book: a reader, not so familiar with the mathematical game theory, an undergraduate student, for example, can use it as a helpful textbook, guiding her/him from the basics of the theory to its various complex applications. Numerous examples produce for a reader a “stable bridge” between mathematics and a real life of individuals and groups. The author emphasizes this close connection by animating the mathematical objects: sets in this book “enjoy” convexity, functions “suffer” from being discontinuous, and so on. The book consists of 10 chapters. First seven chapters are devoted to the noncooperative games: Chapters 1–3 deal with the normal-form games, while Chapters 4–7 address the extensive-form (positional) games. The essentials of the cooperative games are given in Chapter 8. In Chapter 9, the author discusses the network games. The last but not the least, Chapter 10 contains the theory of dynamic (discrete-time and differential) games. Each chapter is equipped by the set of the exercises. Chapter 1 deals with a normal-form two-players game, where the players choose their strategies from prescribed sets in the beginning of the game and their payoffs functions are given. Fundamental theorems on the existence of Nash equilibrium in

The Rise and Fall of the Great Fish Pact Under Endogenous Risk of Stock Collapse

Risk of stock collapse is a genuine motivation for cooperative fisheries management. We analyse the effect of an endogenously determined risk of stock collapse on the incentives to cooperate in a Great Fish War model. We establish that equilibrium harvest strategies are non-linear in stock and find that Grand Coalitions can be stable for any number of players if free-riding results in a total depletion of the fish stock. The results thus show conditions under which a Great Fish War becomes a Great Fish Pact. However, this conclusion no longer holds upon dropping the standard assumption that payoffs are evaluated in steady states. If payoffs in the transition between steady states are included, the increased incentives to deviate offset the increased benefits from cooperation due to the presence of endogenous risk and the Great Fish Pact returns to being a Great Fish War.

Resource extraction under heterogeneous growth in demand

We study the effect of heterogeneous growth in demand on resource extraction. Using the Great Fish War framework of Levhari and Mirman (1980), we show that heterogeneity in demand growth has a profound effect on both non-cooperative (Cournot-Nash and Stackelberg) and cooperative solutions.

Strong and Weak Rarity Value: Resource Games with Complex Price–Scarcity Relationships

We analyze effects of rarity value on the sustainability of a natural resource. Rarity value means that under extreme scarcity of the resource unit profits increase ‘explosively.’ We focus on equilibrium behavior of very patient agents in a Small Fish War. Agents interacting on a body of water have two options: they can fish with restraint or without. Fishing with restraint allows the fish stock to recover; fishing without yields higher immediate but lower future catches. We distinguish weak and strong rarity value; for the strong (weak) variant, total symmetric Pareto-efficient rewards are higher (lower) than those obtained by keeping the price fixed at highest-resource-stock level. Only for strong rarity value, the price effect more than compensates for smaller sustainable catches. Pareto-efficient equilibrium behavior dictates that lowest sustainable stocks are targeted

Resource Extraction Under Heterogeneous Growth in Demand

We study the effect of heterogeneous growth in demand on resource extraction. Using the Great Fish War framework of Levhari and Mirman (1980), we show that heterogeneity in demand growth has a profound effect on both cooperative (Cournot-Nash and Stackelberg) and cooperative solutions.

Transnational Political Cosmology: A Central Mediterranean Example

AbstractThis paper examines the workings of kinship and marriage idioms in transnational political imaginary in the central Mediterranean to challenge current academic reliance on the notion of fraternity as the symbolic building block of both national and global political relations. Since the 1960s, the Sicilian town of Mazara del Vallo and its fishing fleet have become entwined in intensifying interactions with Tunisia and the wider Maghreb. These interactions—specifically the Tunisian-Italian “Fish War” and construction of a trans-Mediterranean natural gas pipeline between North Africa and Europe—rejuvenated the old geopolitical imagination of the Mediterranean and helped produce the central Mediterranean as a spatio-temporal field of political action. Italians and Tunisians perceived each other as related, and staged the trans-Mediterranean infrastructural project as a sort of European-African (cross-cousin) marriage. I begin by examining the tensions between two central kinship idioms—fraternity and cousinage—in current understandings of transnational relations. I then discuss the growing prevalence of a transnational political cosmology of affinity across difference over that of shared descent and sameness that characterize national alignments. I conclude by examining how Tunisians and Sicilians in Mazara today cast each other in roles deriving from segmentary schemes they share, but on the content of which they disagree. By applying concepts associated with kinship and marriage studies to recent Mediterranean history, I show how segmentation, a concept anthropologists abandoned when they crossed the Mediterranean on their way into Europe, can help us understand transnational politics.

Fisheries in the South China Sea: A Centrifugal or Centripetal Force?

The present paper intends to have a look at fisheries in the South China Sea in order to find out whether this particular issue is a problem solver or rather a problem creator in this region characterized by tense inter-State relationships at present. In this part of the world's ocean, dominated by maritime features such as the Paracels and the Spratleys, i.e. shallow areas, sometimes drying only at low tide, and sometimes at high tide as well, fish is a plentiful resource relied upon by many fishermen of the surrounding countries as a source of income. If we take Europe as an example, fisheries seem to have the dual capability to either trigger disputes between States, resulting sometimes in outright fish wars, or to provide a means of furthering integration between States, such as has been accomplished by the European Common Fisheries Policy. In the South China Sea a similar duality can be witnessed. At times, fishermen have dramatically influenced the relations between certain States to the point of suddenly straining diplomatic relations totally disproportionately to the event which had triggered a particular incident. But fisheries are also used as a vehicle for trying to further co-operation on both bilateral and regional levels. Indeed, very often fisheries are seen as a more “neutral” area able to stimulate co-operation more easily than, for instance, co-operation in the military field or on sovereignty-related issues. This paper will conclude by determining whether Article 123 of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea adds any legal obligation to the riparian States of a semi-enclosed sea in this respect.

Revisiting Fish Wars: Conflict and Collaboration over Fisheries in Indonesia

The result of overfishing in Indonesia, as in other Southeast Asian nations, is lower productivity of fisheries, high levels of conflict among different users, increasing impoverishment of fishers, and erosion of food security in coastal communities that are highly dependent on fish supplies for protein and income. It is becoming clear that the challenge for resource managers and national decision makers is to choose more appropriate governance and management approaches for the fishery resources in Indonesia in order to address overfishing and increasing conflict. This article examines the performance of co-management in managing fisheries conflicts in Indonesia over time. Utilizing survey data from 2004 and 2009, this study confirms the hypothesis that co-management can serve to deter fisheries resources conflicts.

Aleut identities: tradition and modernity in an indigenous fishery

Figures and Tables Preface Acknowledgments Introduction 1 Nautical Nation: Indigenous Commercial Fishing in an Eastern Aleut Community 2 Identity, Status, and the Structure of Traditional Aleutian Society 3 Anthropology in the Pelagic Zone 4 Limited Entry Systems in an Eastern Aleut Community 5 Fish Wars, Identity, and Dehumanization 6 Disenfranchised Aleuts 7 Identity in Context Appendix: Subsistence Tables Abbreviations Notes References Index

Dynamic Games in the Economics of Natural Resources: A Survey

This article provides a comprehensive survey of models of dynamic games in the exploitation of renewable and exhaustible resources. It includes dynamic games at the industry level (oligopoly, cartel versus fringe, tragedy of the commons) and at the international level (tariffs on exhaustible resources, fish wars, entry deterrence). Among more recent topics are international strategic issues involving the link between resource uses and transboundary pollution, the design of taxation to ensure efficient outcomes under symmetric and asymmetric information, the rivalry among factions in countries where property rights on natural resources are not well established. Various extensions are considered, such as (i) modeling the effects of the concern for relative performance (relative income, relative consumption, and social status) on the over-exploitation of resources, (ii) applying the tragedy of the commons paradigm to the declining effectiveness of antibiotics and pesticides. Outcomes under Nash equilibria and Stackelberg equilibria are compared. The paper ends with some suggestions for future research.

Are We Missing the Boat? Collaborative Solutions for North American Fish Wars

Are We Missing the Boat? Collaborative Solutions for North American Fish Wars

The Compleat Fish Wars with Changing Area for Fishery

In this article a discrete-time game model related with the bioresource management problem (fish catching) is considered. The center (referee) shares a reservoir between the competitors. The players (countries) which harvest the fish stock are the participants of this game. We assume that there is a migratory exchange between the regions of reservoir. We derive the Nash and cooperative equilibrium for infinite planning horizon. We investigate the cooperative incentive equilibrium in the case when the center punishes players for a deviation from cooperative equilibrium. The numerical modelling and the results comparison are given.

Partial International Coordination in the Great Fish War

This study extends the great fish war model of Levhari and Mirman [Levhari, D. and Mirman, L. (1980) Bell Journal of Economics 11: 322–344] by incorporating a multiple country context into the model and investigates the existence of a partial coordination Nash equilibrium. First, findings of this paper suggest that a partial coordination scheme is sustainable only in limited cases. Any coalition that has more than two member countries cannot be sustained. Second, the existence and the number of coordinating countries depend critically on the magnitude of the biological and preference parameters. Finally, if the coalition is assumed to be a dominant player, there always exist one or two welfare-improving sustainable coalitions and the size of the sustainable coalitions depends on the parameters of the problem.

Cooperative and non-cooperative harvesting in a stochastic sequential fishery

We examine cooperative harvesting in a sequential fishery with stochastic shocks in recruitment. Two fleets harvest in a stochastic interception fishery. We analyze cooperative management as a non-cooperative game, where deviations from cooperative harvesting are deterred by the threat of harvesting at non-cooperative levels for a fixed number of periods whenever the initial stock falls below a trigger level. We illustrate the sequential harvesting game with an application to the Northern Baltic salmon fishery. Cooperative harvesting yields participants substantial gains in terms of expected payoffs. The greatest gains accrue to the fleet harvesting the spawning stock, the actions of which are not observed by the competitor. An explanation for the prevalence of fish wars is provided: even if a cooperative agreement is reached, shocks in recruitment trigger phases of non-cooperative harvesting. Further, the cooperative solution can only be maintained when stock uncertainty is not too prevalent.