We explore the different behavioral adaptions and economic outcomes of two similar fisheries managed under different management regimes. The US Gulf of Mexico reef fish fishery and the snapper-grouper fishery on the Atlantic coast of the southern USA consist of similar fish species, similar fishing vessels and methods, and supply similar markets, but they are managed by different fishery management councils (FMC). Between 2007 and 2010, the Gulf of Mexico FMC transitioned all the major species in the reef fish fishery into catch share management, effectively creating tradable permits. In contrast, the (US) South Atlantic FMC continued to manage the snapper-grouper fishery primarily with input control measures. Using logbook data and detailed revenue and cost data, we explore the resulting differences in these two fisheries brought about by the management regimes. Further, we quantify the aggregate economic costs, benefits, and rents generated by each fishery. We highlight the behavioral adaptions that lead to the increased profitability brought about by of catch share management.

China is the worlds largest seafood exporter, with rapidly increasing exports primarily based on increasing aquaculture production. Hence, analyzing patterns in Chinas seafood trade is of great importance. In this study, gravity models were estimated for various product forms to investigate the impact of economic factors such as GDP, income, distances, per capita seafood consumption, regional trade agreements (RTA), and continental locations on seafood trade. The results of the model indicate that there is substantial variation in trade patterns across product categories. Furthermore, the forms of live and fresh seafood are a separate group for which trade is significantly affected by distance, income, and status of developed country, while GDP and continental dummies play an essential role in the trade of products in the other forms.

Management changes impact the specific groups of participants that enter or exit the fishery and the ownership and structure of fishing operations. Subsequently, the nature of fishing jobs as well as the distribution of economic benefits may also be affected. For instance, the transition to catch shares management is associated with fleet consolidation, smaller crew sizes, and a reduction in total employment, while the crew that remain are typically found to earn higher wages. These results may vary based on vessel-level characteristics such as vessel length, revenue, days at sea, ownership structure, and number of crew employed. We use economic and social science survey data from the West Coast Groundfish Trawl Fishery to explore how vessel-level characteristics relate to crew economic performance and the quality of fishing jobs. We group vessels by size, revenue, and effort and compare differences in crew wages and attitudes toward their jobs to better understand and anticipate how structural changes in the fishing fleet may affect job conditions for fishing crew.

In the U.S., market structures and the distribution of economic benefits in fisheries have rarely been examined using measures such as the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index and the Gini coefficient prior to implementing catch share programs, even though they are commonly used in other areas of economics. As a result, issues of potential concern to fisheries managers and participants (e.g., market power and a highly unequal distribution of economic benefits) were not properly analyzed before these programs were implemented, leaving them to be discovered years after the fact when it is far more difficult to implement management changes to address them because of institutional inertia and the embeddedness of the status quo. The inattention to these issues can be partly attributed to the lack of necessary data collection programs prior to the implementation of catch shares, though fisheries management economists have also sometimes not done their due diligence by raising these issues when these programs were being developed. Lack of funding and staff have probably also played a role.

The Gulf of Mexico red snapper and grouper-tilefish IFQ programs are a case in point. Using significantly more refined data collected since the programs were implemented, recent analyses indicate the distributions of economic benefits in these programs are highly unequal relative to other U.S. catch share programs, even though they have generally not become significantly more unequal since implementation, because they were highly unequal at the time of implementation. Further, although a recent market concentration analysis does not indicate market power is currently being exercised in any of the product, quota share, or quota pounds markets, its conclusions must be tempered by the fact that dealer ownership data and dealer selling prices (i.e., markups) are still not being collected, which prevented a more thorough analysis. The analysis also suggests that the distributions of economic benefits are likely even more unequal than the estimated Gini coefficients indicate. These findings largely explain the high level of dissatisfaction with these programs.

Random utility models have been widely used to model spatial choice within fisheries, but less attention has been paid to modeling movement between fisheries. Fishermen may switch fisheries in response to closures or changes in profitability causing a cascading set of dynamic effects. We use vessel-level landings data from the West Coast salmon troll fishery in a random utility maximization framework to determine how closures in the fishery impact the probability of switching areas, switching fisheries, or exiting all fishing. Our results suggest that fishermen respond to area closures in the salmon fishery by reallocating across space and across alternative fisheries. The responses depend on fishermens portfolio of fisheries. Our work also suggests that ignoring the ability of fishermen to move between fisheries may lead to poor characterization of fishing behavior and poor prediction of the effect of spatial management policies.