Introduction
Most marine mammal
bycatch is collected in the Gulf of Maine, where over 500 harbor porpoises are
killed a year.[1] The number
one anthropogenic cause of harbor porpoise mortality in the North Atlantic is a
result of harbor porpoises becoming entangled in “sink” gillnets meant to catch
ground fish and drowning.[2]
These lost harbor porpoises create no value for fishermen, but instead create
lost passive use value for all those who value harbor porpoises, lost use value
for those who might visit an area to see harbor porpoises, and lost ecological
value inherent in removing a species from its natural environment.[3]
This bycatch represents a negative externality[4]
as it’s a cost that’s unaccounted for by fishers in the Gulf of Maine.
This paper will
explore two possible methods of reducing harbor porpoise bycatch: imposing a
TAC of harbor porpoises on relevant fishing firms or requiring that each
fishing vessel in harbor porpoise habitat use “Pingers.” After examining the
costs and benefits of each bycatch reduction method, I conclude that a TAC on
harbor porpoises is a better solution for society than a mandatory “Pingers” requirement.
Benefits of Total Allowable Bycatch
One
method for reducing bycatch is to set a limit on the total amount of bycatch
that may be caught in a certain period of time. Once the total amount of
bycatch has been caught, the fishing industry responsible for the bycatch is
shut down immediately to prevent further bycatch.[5]
This method allows
bycatch to be reduced by a specific quantity scientists and economists can
determine, and if well-enforced, can ensure bycatch remains at the socially
optimal quantity. To see how this works, take a look at Figure 1. Without any
regulation, bycatch is caught at the Open Access quantity where the total cost
of bycatch is equal to the total benefit of bycatch. The total private cost of
bycatch is low because the only private cost of bycatch to the fishers is the
cost fishers must incur to get rid of the bycatch they gather. The total
benefit of the bycatch is also low. Dead harbor porpoises, themselves, are
worthless to fishers but they’re caught in the process of catching fish which
do provide fishers benefit. The social cost of bycatch is much higher as it
includes the lost passive use, direct use, and ecological values of harbor
porpoises mentioned earlier. To find the level of bycatch that is the most
profitable for society, the marginal benefit of bycatch should be set equal to
the marginal social cost of bycatch. The resulting level of bycatch is much
lower than the quantity of bycatch caught under open access. If a fishing
industry can be monitored and forced to never catch a quantity of bycatch above
the socially optimal level, than the bycatch externality
has been effectively internalized. In 1992, for example, this method was
employed to limit dolphin mortality in La Jolla. Every year since then, the
ceiling on dolphin mortality was lowered and this method has successfully shown
a reduction in dolphin mortality over time.[6]
In addition, if
total allowable bycatch is divided into tradable catch shares among fishers,
then the total allowable bycatch system creates financial incentive for fishers
to personally reduce their own bycatch in innovative ways. If fishers can
manage to catch less harbor porpoises, they can make money by selling their
shares to someone else.[7]
This opportunity fosters the creation of innovative new methods of bycatch
reduction including gear alteration and even reduced effort, which are
beneficial to society.
Costs of Total
Allowable Bycatch
It
is expensive for fisheries to reduce their bycatch. A fishery may reduce their
effort in order to reduce their bycatch, but doing so results in catching less
fish and making less revenue. A fishery may also alter their gear and methods
in order to reduce the percentage of bycatch they catch, but that increases the
fishery’s costs. If a fishery is unable to reduce its catch, it must purchase
catch shares for the bycatch it’s catching. If a fishery is unable to both
reduce its bycatch and purchase enough dolphin porpoise catch shares, that
fishery will go out of business and the fishers employed in that fishery will
lose their jobs.
The benefit of
tradable catch shares is that they allow the fishery with the smallest marginal
costs of bycatch reduction to reduce their bycatch the most. This ability should make reducing
bycatch under a total allowable bycatch rule more economically feasible for
fisheries. Figure 2 provides a helpful illustration. It shows two fisheries:
Fishery I and Fishery II. Fishery I has a marginal cost curve that is less
steep than Fishery II’s marginal cost curve, indicating that it is cheaper for
Fishery I to reduce their bycatch. A total allowable bycatch requires that a
total amount, or in this case, percentage, of bycatch is reduced but does not
specify how it has to be done. If both fisheries reduced total bycatch by 20%,
then Fishery I would incur the costs shown by the trapezoid on the bottom left
(from 100% to 80% on the bottom left, up to the “MC^I” curve) and Fishery II
would incur the costs shown by the larger trapezoid on the right (from 100% to
80% on the bottom right up to the “MC^II” curve). If Fishery I does all the
bycatch reduction, the same amount of harbor porpoises are saved but society
wins the triangle highlighted in green (the cost Fishery II didn’t have to pay because Fishery I also reduced Fishery II’s
share of bycatch).
If
a local fishing industry exceeds its total allowable bycatch and is forced to
shut down, even temporarily, however, it will create large economic burdens on
the fisheries in that industry. This is exactly what happened last year when
NOAA closed an area in the Gulf of Maine to gillnet fishing from October
through November, the months that have historically had the highest harbor
porpoise by-catch rates. In 2011, gillnet vessels made 721 fishing trips during
October and November in this area. The revenue gained from those fishing trips
last year either had to be made up or was taken as a loss. The economic burden
created by this temporary closure ended up being dependent on the ability of
fisheries to find and move to other areas.[8]
In
addition to the costs to fishers of reducing bycatch, a total allowable bycatch
system also has the cost of monitoring and enforcement. If fishers are not held
accountable to the total allowable bycatch quantity, then the entire system is
ineffective. Fortunately, fishers have an incentive to keep each other
accountable in a catch share system[9]
as sellers of bycatch permits want to profit and buyers don’t want their
competition to have an unfair advantage.
Benefits of Pingers
The
NOAA Fisheries Service implemented the Harbor Porpoise Take Reduction Plan to
reduce the amount of harbor porpoises accidently dying as a result of gillnets.
Part of their plan required the use of Pingers;[10]
a device that produces a high frequency sound every four seconds to warn
porpoises that something is in the area. NOAA reports that pingers are 90%
effective in preventing porpoises from ending up as bycatch.[11]
Fourteen studies in North America and Europe show that pingers significantly
reduce the bycatch of harbor porpoises by causing the porpoises to avoid areas ensonified
by pingers. Two of these studies show a 50-60% reduction in dolphin and porpoise
bycatch in two gillnet fisheries over time. Their results show no indication
that habituation to pingers will cause bycatch to rise again in the future.[12]
Pingers have been proven to work without lowering the catch rate of target
fish.[13]
Costs of Pingers
Having
to use pingers raises the cost of fishing for fishers. U.S. National Marine
Fisheries Service regulations state that pingers are required every 150 feet of
gillnet along both the top and bottom lines to work effectively. For one
swordfish gillnet, this regulation would require the fishery to use 40 pingers.
Commercially produced pingers cost between $50 and $80.[14]
This results in an estimated cost of about $2600 in pingers for the individual
swordfish gillnet.
Pingers, however,
are not one-time purchase objects. They need to be maintained in good condition
and their batteries need to be replaced. Pingers, themselves, need to be
replaced if they get lost; and fishers say pingers fall off gillnets very
easily during fishing.[15]
It is reasonable to believe that a fisher will have to buy new pingers and
batteries every year. For some subsistence fisheries, the cost of pingers may end
up being too much.[16]
Monitoring the
usage of Pingers represents a very important cost. Unlike the situation with
the total allowable bycatch rule, fishers have no monetary incentive to monitor
each other. In fact, they each have incentive to not use pingers when possible
and not draw attention to anyone doing the same thing, to reduce costs. That
leaves the government responsible for monitoring, and in fact, NOAA has been in
charge of monitoring pinger usage in the past. Effective monitoring is
expensive and the money to cover the costs, if monitoring is a government
endeavor, rests on taxpayers.
Discussion
on Net Benefits of Each Method & Conclusion
Creating a total
allowable bycatch amount forces fisheries to either change their methods and
behaviors in order to reduce their bycatch or invest lots of purchase power in
buying bycatch permits. Tradable bycatch permits or catch shares allow the majority
of the economic burden a total allowable bycatch law creates to be taken on by
the fisheries who are most able to handle it.
Mandating that all
fishers use pingers does not require substantial changes to fishing behavior or
gear.[17]
However, pingers are not free and as the economic burden of using pingers isn’t
placed on fishers proportionate to their ability to deal with this cost, society
misses out on the gain a more efficient bycatch reduction method could produce.
While enforcement of total allowable bycatch is left to the fishers, taxpayers
must pay for the monitoring of pinger usage.
A total allowable
bycatch rule fosters innovation of new bycatch reduction techniques in a way
that mandating pingers does not. The first method offers fishers monetary gains
for finding ways to reduce their bycatch while fishers can be compliant with
the second rule by simply installing and maintaining their pingers and never
giving the purpose of the pingers (bycatch reduction) a second thought.
Innovative ways to reduce bycatch are valuable to society and the future of the
planet.
As far as actually
reducing bycatch, a total allowable bycatch rule allows the rule maker to
decide exactly how much bycatch will be reduced at any given time. Pingers can
reduce bycatch from the status quo, but they provide no guarantee that they
will help reduce bycatch to a socially or ecologically optimal level and the
amount bycatch is reduced can vary in different situations.
While it seems
that the cost to fishermen of the total allowable bycatch rule may be more
expensive than a requirement to use pingers, it also seems that the benefits to
society of a total allowable bycatch rule are much greater than the benefits of
its alternative. If the goal is to build more sustainable fisheries, and a
future that is more environmentally minded, then it seems that a total
allowable bycatch rule should be the preferred method of bycatch reduction. Some
may not view the distributional effects of this decision as ethically
justifiable. Society as a whole benefits, as do future generations, but current
fishermen bear the brunt of the cost. Since, however, I have a rather low
discount rate for the future and I perceive the future benefits of this
decision to be so widespread, I find that the decision makes economic sense as
well as ethical sense from a utilitarian point of view. Of course, fishers can
theoretically be compensated for their costs by members of society who benefit
from a total allowable bycatch rule but do not assume any private costs. And
fisheries that can reach the socially optimal level of bycatch solely by using
pingers will be free to do so, and incentivized to do so with a total allowable
catch program.
While a total
allowable bycatch limit may not be politically pleasing, it appears that it is preferred
over a pingers requirement when taking into consideration the utility of
society as a whole.
[1] Lynham,
John. "Bycatch." Stanford, CA. 2 May 2013. Lecture.
[2] "Harbor Porpoise." Project Global. N.p.,
n.d. Web. 31 May 2013. <http://bycatch.nicholas.duke.edu/species/harbor-porpoise>.
[3] Lynham,
John. “Indirect Valuation.” Stanford, CA. 23 May 2013. Lecture.
[4] Lynham,
John. “Bycatch.” Stanford, CA. 2 May 2013. Lecture.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid.
[8] "Annual Fall Fishing Closure Announced to Protect
Harbor Porpoises in Gulf of Maine." Saving Seafood. N.p., 19 Apr.
2012. Web. 31 May 2013.
<http://www.savingseafood.org/regulations/annual-fall-fishing-closure-announced-to-protect-harbor-porpoises-in-gulf-of-4.html>.
[9] Lynham,
John. “Bycatch.” Stanford, CA. 2 May 2013. Lecture.
[11] Hanselman, Sarah, and John Cooke.
"Gulf of Maine Harbor Porpoise Closure: Fishermen Raise Questions about
Communication, Data, Goals and Policies." Saving SeaFood. N.p., 24
May 2012. Web. 31 May 2013.
[12] Dawson, Stephen M.,
Simon Northridge, Danielle Waples, and Andrew J. Read. "To Ping or Not to
Ping: The Use of Active Acoustic Devices in Mitigating Interactions between
Small Cetaceans and Gillnet Fisheries." Endangered Species Research
19 (2013): 201-21. Print.
[13] "NOAA's New Northeast Chief's First Official Act-
Undermining the Marine Mammal Protection Act?" WindCheck. Whale and
Dolphin Conservation, n.d. Web. 31 May 2013.
<http://windcheckmagazine.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1569:noaas-new-northeast-chiefs-first-official-act-undermining-the-marine-mammal-protection-act&catid=87:environment&Itemid=418>.
[14]
"Mechanism: How Do Pingers Work?" Cetacean
Bycatch Resource Center. N.p., n.d. Web. 31 May 2013.
[15] Hanselman,
Sarah, and John Cooke. “Gulf of Maine Harbor Porpoise Closure…
[16] "Mechanism: How Do Pingers
Work?" Cetacean Bycatch Resource Center.
[17] Dawson, Stephen M., Simon
Northridge, Danielle Waples, and Andrew J. Read…
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This paper was written for 'Marine Resource Economics and Conservation,' a course I completed at Stanford University.
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This paper was written for 'Marine Resource Economics and Conservation,' a course I completed at Stanford University.
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