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Thesis Research:

Economics of Fraser River sockeye salmon fisheries management

Papers

• Marsden A.D., Martell, S.J.D. and Sumaila, U.R. in press. Retrospective economic analysis of Fraser River sockeye salmon fishery management. Proceedings of the 2006 International Institute of Fisheries Economics and Trade (IIFET) Conference, Portsmouth, UK, 11-14 July 2006. pdf.
  • Technical Appendix for IIFET paper. pdf.

Thesis Summary

Below is some information from the current (as of April 9th 2006) draft of my thesis proposal. If you're interested in this work, it's probably best to contact me.

Like almost all fisheries systems, sockeye salmon (Oncorhynchus nerka) in the Fraser River are characterized by uncertainty and variability. A few of the largest stocks cycle regularly and fairly predictably, but it is not clear what causes these cycles. Recent years have also seen high mortality of spawners as they make their way up the river to their spawning grounds, arguably because of high water temperatures. These characteristics of the system make management difficult, no matter whether the objectives of managers focus on aboriginal fisheries, commercial fisheries, or conservation. Fluctuations in stocks and catches are particularly problematic from the fishing and processing industries points of view, since they lead to losses relative to a situation with the same total catch, but where the catch is stable over time.

I will examine the Fraser River sockeye fishery from an economic perspective. I will first extend an analysis conducted by Walters et al. (2006), who evaluated retrospectively the performance of management, and how much "extra" catch could have been obtained from the various stocks given the information that we have today, and under different assumptions about the causes of the cyclic nature of some stocks. Their analysis focused on biology and on maximizing catch. I will build economics onto their model, incorporating information about prices of fish, costs of fishing, the amount of fishing capacity (i.e., vessels and gear) in the fishery at various times, and discounting.

The second part of the study will be a Bayesian decision analysis that will combine uncertainty about the biology of the system with economics and with possible management approaches. The result will be a quantitative assessment of the economic trade-offs and risks that must be faced when deciding on a management approach to Fraser sockeye in future years. This analysis will also include possible impacts of Fraser River temperature changes on the stocks, and, therefore on the fishery.