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Selected tag(s): Fishery

Spanish and Portuguese stakeholders meet to create shared vision for a sustainable octopus fishery

By / Bio / Published: February 10, 2015
Photo: Pseudopanax at English Wikipedia

Photo: Pseudopanax at English Wikipedia

By: Raul Garcia Rodriguez, WWF Spain, and Pam Ruiter, EDF EU Oceans

Raul Garcia is WWF Spain’s Fisheries Officer and Pam Ruiter is a Project Manager for EDF’s EU Oceans team based in Spain, where EDF and WWF are collaborating on a project working with coastal fisheries.

Shared by fishermen from Spain and Portugal, the octopus fishery in the waters off the coast of the Iberian Peninsula is economically important and complex. In late January, we attended the International Forum on Octopus Management in the Iberian Peninsula held in Santiago de Compostela, Spain to discuss management challenges in the fishery.

The forum was organised by WWF Spain, WWF UK and the EU GAP2 project, and included a group of 70 stakeholders including members of the fishing sector, management and civil society from across Spain, as well as representatives from Portugal. Read More »

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New Study: Catch Shares Comply with Catch Limits

By / Published: December 21, 2012

Published online November 16, 2012, in Ocean & Coastal Management

By Wesley S. Patrick & Lee R. Benaka

NOAA Fisheries, Office of Sustainable Fisheries

Fisheries operated under catch share management systems were more likely to stay within target catch limits and to stop overfishing than those operating under other management systems, according to a new study by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) entitled “Estimating the Economic Impacts of Bycatch in US Commercial Fisheries” which was published online last month in Ocean & Coastal Management.

The study analyzed the impact of “management uncertainty” upon fishery performance in 17 U.S. fisheries covering 12 different species. It compares fisheries under catch share management systems with those operating under other types of fishery management in which landings are managed “in-season” or “post-season.” This study is one of the first to look at the impact of “management uncertainty” upon a fishery’s performance. “Management uncertainty” refers to the inability of fishery managers to accurately predict how the management techniques they employ will affect their ability to achieve targets such as catch limits.

The study found that a fishery’s ability to stay within targeted catch limits varied considerably, but those under catch shares exceeded catch limits the least. Catch share fisheries exceeded catch limits just 2% of the time, compared to 37% of the time for those managed in-season or post-season. Knowing that catch share-run fisheries are unlikely to exceed catch limits reduces uncertainty and allows managers to set catch limits closer to “true” targets, allowing fishermen to catch more fish while still protecting fish populations for the future.

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Catch Shares Save Fishermen and Fish

By / Published: November 21, 2012
Bubba Cochrane with his Boat the Chelsea Ann

Bubba Cochrane. Photo by Mark Thein of GulfWild.

This is a re-post of a National Geographic Blog posted by Miguel Jorge of National Geographic’s Ocean Initiative on November 20, 2012

Bubba Cochrane always knew he wanted to be a fisherman. So, despite concerns from his family, he began his career as a deck-hand and eventually saved enough to buy a permit and boat of his own. He’s 43 years old now and owns a commercial fishing business out of Galveston, Texas. Business is good – but he can easily remember what fishing used to be like.

“When I got started, fishing was a race: when the season opened we fished every day until we were notified that the quota was caught. That meant lots of fishing all at once, a glut of fish in the market, and bad prices when we got back to the docks,” said Bubba, reminiscing about his early days in the fishery.

Through the mid-2000s, the red snapper fishery was on the brink of collapse. Even with so few fish in the population and a short season, the fishing derbies meant that the price at the dock stayed low, hurting the profits of commercial fishermen. Fishery managers tried to address the price problem by breaking up the season into the first 15, then 10 days of each month. Fishermen would fish for 10 days, and then wait until the next month to go out again.

These sporadic openings were not the solution fishermen like Bubba wanted. “It’s hard to run your business in just the first 15 days of a month; a lot can get in the way. I tell people to imagine a gas station only being able to sell gas for the first ten days of each month or a contractor only being able to build houses in that short window.” Read More »

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NOAA Releases Gulf of Mexico 2010 Red Snapper IFQ Annual Report

By / Published: December 14, 2011
Gulf of Mexico Red Snapper

Gulf of Mexico Red Snapper

NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service recently released the Gulf of Mexico 2010 Red Snapper Individual Fishing Quota (IFQ) Annual Report, and it provides a wealth of data and information collected during the fourth year of the IFQ program.  The report comes as the 5-year review of the IFQ is underway, and offers us a chance to use the latest data to evaluate the success of the program.

By all counts, the IFQ has been a success.  Back in 2006 when the Gulf Council was considering various management options in the red snapper fishery, fishermen had a short season each year, and had to go out even in dangerous conditions. The markets were flooded with fish for a short period of the year (and fishermen got low prices for their fish), and since the fishermen couldn’t decide when, where, or how to fish, they had excessive bycatch of red snapper and everything else.  And to top it all off, they ended up going over quota anyway.

Then in 2007, the IFQ brought in a new way of doing things.  After getting approved overwhelmingly by local fishermen in not one but two referendums, the IFQ brought flexibility and stability to the fishing industry.  Fishing days increased from an average of 77 days before catch shares to 365 days a year.  Catch shares improved the stability of fishing employment; they allowed vessel owners the opportunity to provide full time jobs to qualified captains and deckhands, without the variability that results from short seasons.   In contrast, recreational fishermen only had 53 days to fish for red snapper (not including lost days due to the oil spill) under traditional management in 2010, and only 48 days in 2011. Read More »

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Catch Share Conversations: Catch Shares and Monitoring Ensure Effective Management

By / Bio / Published: May 2, 2011

Monitoring is an essential component of effective and successful fisheries management. Reliable monitoring and reporting can support and improve the management of a fishery by providing verifiable information on fishing activities and assessing the performance and success of fisheries management plans.  Developing an effective monitoring program can be complex and many programs evolve over time. 

Catch share fisheries tend to have robust monitoring programs and the transition to catch share management offers the opportunity to design an effective monitoring system. In the collection of Catch Share Conversations being presented this week on EDFish, we summarize common monitoring approaches, discuss how monitoring systems provide incentives for participants, offer case studies of existing monitoring programs, and present Guiding Principles for the development and implementation of a monitoring system.

Read our full fact sheet on how catch shares and monitoring ensure effective fisheries management.

Monitoring Data Collection Techniques Chart

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