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Productivity Impacts of Veil Nets on UK Crangon Vessels
Author(s) -
Innes James,
Pascoe Sean
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
journal of agricultural economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.157
H-Index - 61
eISSN - 1477-9552
pISSN - 0021-857X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1477-9552.2008.00165.x
Subject(s) - crangon crangon , shrimp , fishery , fishing , productivity , discards , commercial fishing , environmental science , economics , biology , crustacean , decapoda , macroeconomics
As with many shrimp fisheries, the North Sea brown shrimp (Crangon crangon) fishery has been characterised by by‐catch and discarding of juvenile fish species that are of value to other fleet segments. To offset this externality, the mandatory use of veil nets or separator panels was introduced in 2003 for all vessels using an aggregate beam length of more than 8 m. Sea trials prior to this date suggested that retained catch might be reduced by between 8% and 35%, depending on the area and season. These studies, however, do not consider the behavioural response by fishers to reduce this impact. In this study, the actual impact of the restrictions on the productivity of UK Crangon vessels was estimated using a production frontier approach. The ex post analysis suggests that a productivity decline of around 14% has been experienced by UK vessels adopting this gear.