Katell Hamon

Bio-economic impact assessment of changes in the regulation of access to fisheries: The case of Individual Transferable Quotas in Australian coastal fisheries

Supervisors: Dr Stewart Frusher (UTAS), Prof Craig Johnson (UTAS), Dr Richard Little (CSIRO), Prof Jean-Pierre Boude (Agrocampus Rennes), Dr Olivier Thebaud (Ifremer Brest), Dr Jean-Christophe Soulie (CIRAD)

Project Overview:

Driven by the development of catch techniques and fishing capacity, the geographic expansion of fishing areas, and the growth of the international trade of sea products, the global production of sea fisheries increased substantially since the 1950's to reach its maximum in the early 1990's. Since then, this production has remained relatively stable, but reports of the over-exploitation of marine fish stocks are multiplying, raising the issue of the sustainability of marine fisheries, both in terms of the human society that depends on them, and of the capacity of marine ecosystems to sustain current levels of catch in the long term (Garcia and Granger, 2005).

The causes of the overexploitation of marine fish stocks are well established internationally, and have been for several decades (Gordon, 1954; Scott, 1955; Hardin, 1968; Ostrom, 1990). They relate to the common-pool status of these resources, which lead to a divergence between individually rational harvest decisions based on private pay-offs, and the collective interest, leading to the development of the "fishing race" phenomenon. In practice, this phenomenon entails the mobilization of a larger catching capacity than required for a given level of fishing production. In addition to constituting a loss for society, such overcapacity also leads to conflicts between stakeholders, and to the development of levels of fishing effort exceeding the renewal and growth potential of the target species, thus increasing the intensity of interactions between harvesters of the resource. Despite crises and conflicts caused by these dynamics, and the ensuing efforts to regulate fisheries, production capacities still remain widely excessive.

The current goals for management and recovery of resource and marine ecosystems call for an evolution of the governance and exploitation systems, as well as fisheries research. One of the main fisheries management techniques, that attempt to conserve the production and reproduction capacity of the stocks, involves output controls in the form of TACs (Total Allowed Catch). In many cases, however, such measures have failed. While this can be due to the ability to accurately assess the state of stocks, it has also largely resulted from the failure of governance regimes to effectively regulate individual access to catch possibilities. Indeed, conservation measures such as TACs cannot, by themselves, prevent the dynamics of overcapacity development. In addition, overcapacities induce a social pressure favouring the adoption of inadequate conservation norms and a lack of implementation or control of management measures.

Those issues have led to a progressive reinforcement of regulations of individual access to aquatic resources (Troadec & Boncoeur, 2003). A growing number of countries have implemented regulation systems based on the definition of individual allocations of catch allowances (Individual Quotas) and on the possibility for these fishing rights to be traded between operators (Individual Transferable Quotas, Shotton, 1999). In Europe , the transition towards regulated access privileges in fisheries is taking place, at a speed which differs from one country to another. In the French context, the question about the expected effects induced by a change of the system of fishing right allocation is a major topic, in relation to the recently adopted "Plan d'Avenir pour la Peche" (plan for the future of fisheries). The 'implementation of such regulation schemes has become the focus of a growing number of research programmes, aiming at assessing the ecological, technical and economic impacts of modifications of access rights in fisheries. In these research programmes, the response of economic operators to the modification of the access regulations has been identified as a major issue, which justifies the development of specific research. In addition, the joint analysis of the fleets responses and biological responses of the exploited resources, by dynamic models, is an expanding research field due to its possible contribution to management procedure evaluations.

Project Objectives:

The objective will be to conduct a bio-economic evaluation of the impacts induced by the modification of access rights to fish stocks in a coastal area, using the Tasmanian coastal fisheries as a case study. The Tasmanian coastal fisheries have undergone major changes in the fishing rights allocation over the last two decades. The exploitation of certain species of high commercial value, such as the rock lobster fishery, has resulted in the introduction of an individual transferable quota management system (ITQMS). This was introduced into the Rock Lobster fishery in 1998. The implementation of this system seems to have led to modifications of fishing strategies, oriented toward the search for lobsters that sell for premium prices, and by newly seasonal and spatial patterns of fishing effort allocation. These changes have also been influenced by the market, mainly determined by international trade. The fishery is monitored by the Tasmanian Aquaculture and Fisheries Institute, which has collected data on the resource, its exploitation and its regulation before and after the implementation of the ITQMS.

The project will aim to:

1. Analyze the behavior of fishermen in the rock lobster fishery based on the analysis of the available data on intensity and allocation of their fishing activity, and on the collection of data concerning parameters potentially influencing the observed choices, especially regulation- and economic-related factors. This analysis will be based on the implementation of econometric models such as "Random Utility Models", with the objective to quantify the relative weights of the different factors in explaining observed fishing strategies. The analysis will be centred on the Rock Lobster fishery.
2. Develop a bio-economic model simulating the dynamics of the fishery. This will be done by using the existing biological model and by developing a multi-agent model of harvesting dynamics, the parameters of which will have been empirically estimated in 1.
3. Develop a fishing quota trade model based on catch per unit effort data (CPUE) per vessel, structural costs per vessel and landings prices.
4. Use the model to test alternative hypothesis regarding the main drivers of changes observed in the fishery, and discuss the potential effects of various management or economic perturbation scenarios.