School of Sustainability, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287;
Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK S7N 5A8, Canada.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2018 Sep 4;115(36):8948-8953. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1809549115. Epub 2018 Aug 20.
Recreational fisheries can have a significant impact on fish populations and can suffer from the same symptoms of open access as commercial fisheries. However, recreational fisheries receive little attention compared with their commercial counterparts. Regulations designed to allocate scarce fish, such as seasonal closures and bag limits, can result in significant losses of value to anglers. We provide an estimate of these foregone benefits by estimating the potential gains to implementing management reforms of the headboat portion of the recreational red snapper fishery in the US Gulf of Mexico. This fishery has suffered from a regulatory spiral of shortened seasons and lowered bag limits in spite of rebuilding stocks. We gather primary survey data of headboat anglers that elicit trip behavior and their planned number and seasonal distribution of trips under status-quo and alternative management approaches. We use these data to estimate a model of anglers' seasonal trip demand as a function of the ability to retain red snapper, bag limits, and fees. We find that a hypothetical rights-based policy, whereby vessels with secure rights to a portion of annual catch could offer their customers year-round fishing in exchange for lower per-angler retention and increased fees, could raise the average angler's welfare by $139/y. When placed in the global context of recreational fishing, these estimates suggest that status-quo management may deprive anglers of billions of dollars of lost economic value per year.
娱乐渔业可能对鱼类种群产生重大影响，并可能遭受与商业渔业相同的开放获取问题。然而，与商业渔业相比，娱乐渔业得到的关注较少。旨在分配稀缺鱼类资源的法规，如季节性关闭和渔获量限制，可能会导致钓鱼者的巨大价值损失。我们通过估计美国墨西哥湾娱乐红鲷鱼渔船部分管理改革的潜在收益来估计这些被忽视的收益。尽管鱼类资源有所恢复，但该渔业仍受到季节缩短和渔获量限制法规的困扰。我们收集了渔船钓手的主要调查数据，这些数据揭示了他们的旅行行为以及在现状和替代管理方法下的旅行计划数量和季节性分布。我们使用这些数据来估计钓手季节性旅行需求的模型，该模型是红鲷鱼的保留能力、渔获量限制和费用的函数。我们发现，一种假设的基于权利的政策，即拥有部分年度捕捞量的船只可以为其客户提供全年捕鱼服务，以换取较低的每位钓手保留量和增加的费用，可能会使普通钓手的福利提高 139 美元/年。将这些估计值置于全球娱乐性渔业的背景下，表明现状管理可能使钓鱼者每年损失数十亿美元的经济价值。
