Research of value chains in fish industries indicates that there is great difference in the dynamic of the value chains. Increasing value creation is constantly the main agenda and objective for the value chains in competitive environment and especially under the restrictions given by the limits of fisheries management system and the structure of the industry. This study analyses the performance of value chain of the North Atlantic cod in Norway, Iceland and Newfoundland. Traditionally those countries have exported their cod products to the same markets in Europe and N-America and this study explores the underlying elements that are behind the different dynamics and performance of the value chain of cod in those countries. The findings indicate that differences in processing stage, product mix and flexibility of the value chains explain how well producers are able to respond to market needs. The comparison also reveals that the value chains differ in the ability to return profits and value creation, and that this difference can partly be traced to the structure of the value chains in each country, not least as regards relationships between actors and in trust. Disparities in the flow of information and knowledge within the value-chains is also an important factor in explaining the dissimilarity as well as different strategic positioning, investment opportunities and fishery policies. The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Unions Horizon 2020 Framework Programme for Research and Innovation (H2020/2014 - 2020) under grant agreement no.635761 PrimeFish.

Key factors influencing value chain dynamics is the first gate price industry pays for the raw material and the form of selling. As part of the PrimeFish EU Horizontal 2020 and PrimeFish Canada research project, the role of the price settling mechanism in the value chain of cod was compared for three countries Canada (Newfoundland), Norway and Iceland. All three countries have been competing for decades in the same markets for cod with similar products, but using different price settling mechanism. In Newfoundland, The Fish, Food and Allied Workers Union (FFAW) and the processing companies determine, through pre-season negotiations, the first gate prices paid to harvesters. In Norway, fresh fish is traded through direct agreements between sellers and buyers. The Norwegian Act of the Fish Sales (Fiskesalgslagsloven) ensures minimal price settling as it gives sales organizations, owned by the fishers monopoly, first hand trade of fish. In 2016, two of those sales organizations were responsible for nearly 99 % of all cod landed by Norwegian fishers. In Iceland, the two main types of pricing are wet-fish auctions (which account for around 16% of landed cod); and a price used in transactions within vertically integrated companies. This price is set by a government agency after consultation with sellers and buyers. The research looks at the effectiveness of the price settling mechanism in rewarding attributes of the raw material, particularly the quality of the landed fish and the fishing gear used. A comparison of the three countries show that there is significant variability in the first gate prices paid to fishermen with Newfoundland receiving the lowest landed value per kilogram for its fish. There is also a clear difference in each countrys price settling mechanism to effectively remunerate based on the quality of the landed product and the fishing gear used. In Iceland and Norway, trawl caught fish receive the highest prices, whereas in Newfoundland there is little or no variation in first gate price based on gear type. The study also explores other impacts of the price settling mechanism on the value chain of the cod for these three countries.

The accurate measurement of catch quantity is essential in ITQ systems. The Icelanic ITQ system relies on a network of certified harbor weighing stations for monitoring landed quantity. Estimating catch from landed quantity, however, not as simple as just weighing it since many product forms are landed. Raw weights may require adjustment to account for e.g. gutting, heading, filleting and the use of ice to chill catch. Icelandic authorities have long advocated the use of ice to preserve quality. Adjusting landed quantity for ice is difficult at the harbor weighing stations. A system of producer reweighing was therefore established that allows producers to separate ice and fish and report net weight, maintaining an incentive to use ice. About 45% of all Icelandic catches go through reweighing. There have long been rumors that vertically integrated firms abuse this system by overreporting ice in the catch, effectively underreporting catches. Although the Icelandic directorate of fisheries monitors reweighing their ability to detect fraud is limited. This paper provides a case-control analysis of monitored landings versus unmonitored landings to access the extent of overreporting of ice. The results show that this is a substantial problem but the vast majority of cheating is limited to a small group of firms. The results also shows that cheating is more severe in certain types of companies, i.e. small vertically integrated firms. The results further provide a test of the success of recent projects initiated by the directorate to reduce this problem. The results have clear policy implications about how best to combat this problem while maintaining the reweighing system and the positive effects it has on ice use and catch quality.

With Chinas central government now embracing marine ecosystem protection as a national priority under the 13th 5-Year Plan, there is potential for fishery management actions within China to have significant impacts on global seafood supply chains. China is the worlds largest marine fisheries producer and exporter, accounting for nearly one fifth of global catch volume. Recent actions to reduce domestic fishing effort in China are offset by expanded distant-water fleet effort, increased imports from trading partners, and increased aquaculture production. The scale of activity to produce these seafood sources has been rapidly changing, presenting potential impacts on the responsiveness of Chinas high-capacity processing industry to these rapid changes in product flows.

This talk introduces our research on Chinas seafood processing industry and presents early findings based on original firm-level surveys across the Chinese post-harvest seafood sector. Key areas of focus include characterizing the overall seafood processing industry structure within China, identifying priority fish species, products, geographies, and trading partners, and analyzing impacts of industry trends such as trade policy, loss in market share, and growing aquaculture and stock enhancement. We also explore the prevalence of serial depletion in species and geographies interacting with Chinese seafood supply chains. In the initial stages, the project will assess these issues and identify important topics for future research. With improved understanding of the economic context for Chinas interest in global fisheries, future work will build upon this foundation to address novel research questions such as differential welfare impacts on harvest vs. post-harvest sectors from potential management reforms, how Chinas seafood consumers preferences are changing with increasing incomes, and whether there are strong linkages between food safety and sustainability.

New Englands groundfish fishery has been managed under harvest cooperatives, or sectors, since 2010. While the program requires participants to land all legal-sized fish and to cover all landings and discards of managed stocks with quota, only roughly 15 to 30 percent of all trips in any given year have been monitored, tending toward lower coverage in recent years. We posit that this results in differing incentives across observed and unobserved trips: on unobserved trips, illegal discarding of legal sized fish on unobserved trips may occur with a very low probability of detection, thereby the individual costs imposed by discarding illegally are far lower than on an observed trip. In order to better understand the magnitude of this behavior, we model discard incentives and estimate the magnitude of illegal discards on unobserved trips 2011-2017. Based on these results, we discuss implications for performance of the program, such as impacts to the quota market and stock status, as well as selecting optimal levels of monitoring coverage in multispecies catch share programs.

Biodiversity conservation is often limited by inadequate investments in monitoring andenforcement. However, monitoring and enforcement problems may be overcome byencouraging resource users to develop, endorse, and subsequently enforce conservationregulations.In this paper, we draw upon the literature on common-pool resources and socialnetworks to assess the impacts of participation and network ties on the decisions of fishers tovoluntarily report rule violations in two Jamaican marine reserves.Data was collected usingquestionnaires administered through personal interviews with fishers (n=277). The resultssuggest that local fishers are more likely to report illegal fishing if they had participated inconservation planning and if they are directly linked to community-based wardens ininformation sharing networks. This research extends well-established findings regarding therole and impacts of participation on biodiversity conservation by highlighting the importanceof synergies between participation and social networks for voluntary monitoring ofconservation regulations.

Trade is an integral component of the seafood industry for many wild caught species. While the U.S. is the third largest producer of wild capture fish in 2016 it also ran a seafood trade deficit of $15.7 billion in 2017, with imports of approximately $21 billion and exports of approximately $5.8 billion. In response to interest in the seafood trade deficit the National Marine Fisheries Service Office of Science and Technology convened a working group comprised of economists from regional science centers to characterize and quantify aspects of the domestic market and international trade flows as they relate to the trade balance. The working group focused on the key domestically harvested and traded species:shrimp, lobster, scallops, crab, pollock, cod, salmon, and tuna. For each of these species a number of metrics were calculated relating to domestic production, consumption, and international trade in order tocharacterize theunderlying dynamics that influence the seafood trade balance. Together the individual analyses and synopsis, provide insight on two of the known causes of the deficit: (1) U.S.consumers demand more than what is or can be produced domestically for some species and (2) the U.S. exports low value, minimally processed products from domestic wild capture fisheries and imports higher value, processed products. This presentation will present the results of the working groups efforts.