Commercial fisheries globally experienced numerous and significant perturbations during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, affecting the livelihoods of millions of fishers worldwide. In the Northeast United States, fishers grappled with low prices and disruptions to export and domestic markets, leaving many tied to the dock, while others found ways to adapt to the changing circumstances brought about by the pandemic. This paper investigates the short-term impacts of the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic (March-June 2020) on commercial fishers in the Northeast U.S. to understand the effects of the pandemic on participation in the fishery and fishers’ economic outcomes, using data collected from an online survey of 258 Northeast U.S. commercial fishers. This research also assesses characteristics of those fishers who continued fishing and their adaptive strategies to the changing circumstances. Analysis of survey responses found the majority of fishers continued fishing during the early months of the pandemic, while a significant number had stopped fishing. Nearly all reported a loss of income, largely driven by disruptions of export markets, the loss of restaurant sales, and a resulting decline in seafood prices. Landings data demonstrate that while fishing pressure in 2020 was reduced for some species, it remained on track with previous years for others. Fishers reported engaging in a number of adaptation strategies, including direct sales of seafood, switching species, and supplementing their income with government payments or other sources of income. Many fishers who had stopped fishing indicated plans to return, suggesting refraining from fishing as a short-term adaptation strategy, rather than a plan to permanently stop fishing. Despite economic losses, fishers in the Northeast U.S. demonstrated resilience in the face of the pandemic by continuing to fish and implementing other adaptation strategies rather than switching to other livelihoods.

Illegal fishing is a serious problem that threatens the sustainability of fisheries around the world. Policy makers and fishery managers often rely on the imposition of strict sanctions and relatively intensive monitoring and enforcement programs to increase the costs of illegal behavior and thus deter it. However, while this can be successful in fisheries with sufficient resources to support high levels of surveillance and effective systems for imposing penalties, many fisheries lack the resources and requisite governance to successfully deter illegal fishing. Other types of governance systems, such as customary marine tenure and co-management, rely more on mechanisms such as norms, trust, and the perceived legitimacy of regulations for compliance. More generally, the absence of such social and psychological factors that encourage compliance in any fishery can undermine the efficacy of an otherwise effective and well-designed fishery management system. Here we describe insights from behavioral science that may be helpful in augmenting and securing the effectiveness of conventional deterrence strategies as well as in developing alternative means of deterring illegal fishing in fisheries in which high levels of surveillance and enforcement are not feasible. We draw on the behavioral science literature to describe a process for designing interventions for changing specific illegal fishing behaviors. The process begins with stakeholder characterization to capture existing norms, beliefs, and modes of thinking about illegal fishing as well as descriptions of specific illegal fishing behaviors. Potential interventions that may disrupt the beliefs, norms, and thought modes that give rise to these behaviors, along with those that encourage desirable behaviors, can be developed by applying principles gleaned from the behavioral science literature. These potential interventions can then be tested in artefactual experiments, piloted with small groups of actual stakeholders and, finally, implemented at scale.

Climate change is altering marine ecosystem and fish stock dynamics worldwide. These effects add to scientific uncertainties that compromise fisheries management. Among the strategies that can respond to climate change and scientific uncertainty, modifications to harvest control rules (HCRs) might be among the most direct and impactful. We used a bioeconomic model to compare alternative HCRs in terms of biomass, yield, and profits in response to potential effects of climate change and scientific uncertainty, specifically simulated retrospective patterns, for 14 stocks on the Northeast Shelf of the United States. Our results suggest that a responsive HCR in which fishing mortality changes with measured changes in biomass builds inherent resilience to adverse effects of both climate change and scientific uncertainty relative to an HCR in which fishing mortality is precautionary but fixed. This was despite that fact that the HCR algorithm did not account for the climate effects modelled. A fixed fishing mortality HCR was effective when climate effects were negligible or beneficial. Scientific uncertainty further reduced biomass, yield, and profits by about the same magnitude as climate change. Our results suggest that simple changes to HCRs can be a readily implementable strategy for responding to climate change and scientific uncertainty.

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