Increasing Pressure on Unregulated Species Due to Changes in Individual Vessel Quotas: An Empirical Application to Trawler Fishing in the Baltic Sea

Abstract

A B S T R A C TIndividual vessel quotas (IVQs) established on an important target species are a common tool to regulate fisheries. This article investigates fishermen's behavior in a situation in which a primary output quota is decreasing due to policy restrictions. The findings suggest that vessels respond to such situations by increasing pressure on unregulated species, using their spare capacity. This article models fishermen's behavior using a restricted profit function, treating the harvest of regulated species as fixed, while unregulated species are variable outputs. An empirical application is provided for the Polish trawler fleet with permits to harvest IVQregulated Atlantic Cod in the Baltic Sea. The results indicate a strong substitute relationship between the cod quota and pelagic species. Derived elasticities of intensity, providing a measure of the impact of a fixedfactor on variable factors, offer strong evidence of increasing pressure on pelagic species caused by decreasing quotas.

Quota Enforcement and Capital Investment in Natural Resource Industries

“…For example, in a recent study, Hutniczak (2014) focuses on multi-species fisheries, in which some stocks are regulated with individual quotas, while other targeted stocks are unregulated. Her empirical results show that an individual quota program significantly increases pressure on unregulated species when there is excess capacity in the fleet.…”

“…Since fisheries management objectives are typically expressed in terms of biomass and extraction levels (Anderson, 2015), it is crucial to ensure that actual catch levels meet extraction targets. Second, given that the level of capacity affects both quota violations and increases pressure on unregulated species (Hutniczak, 2014), fisheries managers should carefully consider how the TAC -both its level and the variation over time -will affect the incentives to invest in fishing capital. Third, as our analysis illustrates, the quota price does not only reflect the industry's marginal cost of harvesting, but also contains information about the marginal expected penalty, and thus, the level of quota violations.…”

Ecosystem-based management and the wealth of ecosystems

“…The shares are set as the fraction of the assessed fish stock in each year. Joint production (29) best describes the fishery, because the three species are jointly harvested (38). The allocation system, ex-vessel prices, fishing costs, and the market economy that drive fishers to attempt to maximize net revenue together constitute the economic program, which is almost certainly inefficient.…”

Spatial issues in Arctic marine resource governance workshop summary and comment

“…The rapid changes in the Arctic have affected both access costs and the relative values of goods and services, including ecosystem services [17][18][19][20]. To avoid the most significant costs of climate change impacts and to manage the many, potentially conflicting, evolving economic opportunities in an ecologically comprehensive sustainable manner requires application of integrated scientific and economic theory and practice [21][22][23][24][25][26].…”