Bioeconomic assessment of a change in fishing gear selectivitythe case of a single-species fleet affected by the landing obligation

  1. Raúl Prellezo 1
  2. Itsaso Carmona 1
  3. Dorleta García 1
  4. Luis Arregi 1
  5. Jon Ruiz 1
  6. Iñigo Onandia 1
  1. 1 AZTI, Txatxarramendi ugartea z/g, 48395 Sukarrieta, Bizkaia, Spain
Journal:
Scientia Marina

ISSN: 0214-8358

Year of publication: 2017

Volume: 81

Issue: 3

Pages: 371-380

Type: Article

DOI: 10.3989/SCIMAR.04597.18A DIALNET GOOGLE SCHOLAR lock_openOpen access editor

More publications in: Scientia Marina

Sustainable development goals

Abstract

The European Union Common Fisheries Policy has established a discard ban, which states that fish below a reference size cannot be sold directly for human consumption. In a fishing effort-regulated fishery, the discard ban can result in extra handling, storing and landing costs. In an output-regulated fishery, this policy might also limit the effort levels as all the catches count against the quota. In both cases, this regulation can reduce the economic performance of the companies, even in single-species fisheries. A possible solution is to increase the mesh size, thus retaining fewer small individuals. To study this option, a bioeconomic simulation of a change in the gear selectivity from 100- to 120-mm minimum mesh size (MMS) was performed. The results show that the private perspective (profits) does not change. Furthermore, due to the lower retention of 120 mm MMS, the efficiency of a fishing day was reduced by 5% and 2.5%, from the point of view of capital and labour productivity, respectively. In contrast, gross revenues increased by 1.5% and crew compensation by 2%. Given a societal benefit of this change in the mesh size, this gain could be re-distributed to provide an incentive for selectivity improvements

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Funding information

This work was partially financed by the EU H2020 project Discardless (Grant Agreement No 633680), the REdDisc project and the Basque Government–funded project MULTIPLAN. I.C. has also benefited from a grant from the Training of Technologists Programme of the Department of Economic Development and Competitiveness of the Basque Government. This publication reflects the views of the authors only and none of the funding parties can be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein. This is contribution 815 from the Marine Research Division (AZTI-Tecnalia).

Funders

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