The special session, titled “Global fisheries contribution to national economies: Management and policy options for Rebuilding” was composed to three parts. Dr. Rashid Sumaila started the session off discussing the current situation in global fisheries and their contribution to human welfare. Andrew Dyck followed Rashid with a discussion of some modeling of the potential contribution of sustainable ocean fisheries. Slides for the first two speakers are below:

Dr. Gordon Munro was next to approach the crowd with a summary of the importance of developing the economic theory of rebuilding fisheries. Slides for his presentation are below:

We thank everyone who was able to attend the session this year. The data and modeling from this project is ever growing and there will be much more to come from the Global Ocean Economics Project in the near future.

Photo courtesy of ecology.com

The Fisheries Economics Research Unit has been working hard to prepare a chapter for the upcoming Green Economy Report, which is part of the United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) Green Economy Initiative. For our contribution to the Report, which is to organize and prepare the fisheries chapter,  we have been in collaboration with more than 50 authors and contributors. The report seeks to demonstrate how ‘green’ investment in various sectors of the economy can be positive contributors to economic growth and employment as well as meeting environmental sustainability goals.

Recently some results stemming from the fisheries chapter of the Green Economy Report have been featured in the media. Yahoo News reports on comments by Pavan Sukhdev, head of UNEP’s green economy initiative, saying that:

“[fishing capacity is] 50 – 60% higher than it should be.”

Illegal-fishing.info, a Chatham House, U.K. managed initiative further reports Sukhdev describing the more than $27 billion dollars spent each year to subsidize marine fisheries as “perverse”. This is largely due to the fact that subsidies represent roughly 30% of the value of fish caught each year which create a situation where fishing fleet capacity is “higher than it should be”.

News of this report have reached the shores of China as well where the People’s Daily Online reports comments by UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner who says that:

“[t]he lives and livelihoods of over half a billion people, linked with the health of this industry, will depend on the tough but also transformational choices the governments make now and over the years to come.”

Our research group, along with many others around the globe, continue work on the fisheries chapter which is scheduled to be released as part of the complete Green Economy Report late this year (2010).

Photo by whl.travel via Flickr

The Fisheries Economics Research Unit’s Dr. Rashid Sumaila was in attendance to speak about the importance of overfishing to Asia, which, consumes more than two thirds of the landings from the world’s marine environments.

Dr. Sumaila was also among others concerned with fisheries at the meeting such as Henk Brus, who believes that wider tuna nets that allow younger fish through will not only make tuna fisheries more sustainable but profitable as well.

via Chem.info

Photo via: Wikimedia Commons

From Ellen’s Twitter stream recently:

“Have you heard of this documentary “End of the Line?” I just heard about it. If you care about the planet, please watch it.”

and again appealing to her fans to go out and watch the film:

“Get more info here: http://endoftheline.com RT @nevergiveup2010 Where can I find this documentary? Is it online?”

The film has even made it into the list of films Ellen loves. It’s great to see this film waking waves in popular culture in the USA while Rashid is currently attending a screening session in Malta. We continue to hope that this film will receive as much buzz in North America as it has enjoyed in Europe.

Photo by Grace Ong

Ahmed is one of several authors on the paper who collaborated to draw attention to some of the current issues in world fisheries. A recent article in The Gazette summarizes some of the key points of the Science paper, and its implication for fisheries governance in Newfoundland; especially for cod recovery.

Ahmed Khan is currently pursuing a PhD with Dr. Ratana Chenpagdee at Memorial University in Newfoundland, Canada.

Scientists have predicted: every second breath of humans depends on the oceans. So the oceans are central to our livelihoods and our survival on the planet.

For more information about this video with transcription, see the full post at sumprememastertv.com.

Eny describes the video, which she believes to be the only one documenting this particular fishery saying:

“[t]his video clip shows crew members of “Sumber Jaya”, a pair-boat purse seine (called “Slerek”), hauling sardine in the Bali Strait, Indonesia. The fishing activity occurred during the night of September 22, 2004, from about 7PM to 4:30AM. The fleet had 48 crew members, including the skipper/captain (who sat on the ‘high bench’). My two assistants and I were invited by the fleet owner to participate in the fishing activity as observers. We were on the ‘fish boat’ throughout the night. In this clip, my camera was pointing towards the ‘net boat’. Listen to the crew members sang – in a cappella – interlocking notes as they hauled the net.”

You can learn more about Eny Buchary and her PhD research work, of which this video is a part, by visiting her homepage. More about the fishery pictured in the clip above will appear in Eny’s PhD dissertation titled In search of viable policy options for responsible use of sardine resources in the Bali Strait, which she will defend in February of this year. The citation for her dissertation is:

Buchary, E. in press. In search of viable policy options for responsible use of sardine resources in the Bali Strait, Indonesia. PhD dissertation. University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. 350p. Unpublished (to be defended in February 2010).

Dr. Huang’s research interests have focused on fisheries topics such as in her job market paper Measuring the Dynamic Efficiency Costs of Common Property Resource Exploitation:A Dynamic Discrete Choice Model of the Fishery as well as energy markets and other topics in economics.

You can learn a little more about Dr. Huang’s research interests, her publications, and contact information on her homepage at Duke University.

Welcome to the group Dr. Huang!

Photo by Eric Robinson

Abstract: Thirty years have passed since Munro published his 1979 work on the potential applications of game theory to fisheries. It is pertinent to ask now: has this potential been realized, and in what forms? This paper highlights progress in the field over the past three decades. We begin our review with the early two-player dynamic game-theoretic analyses. Next, we illustrate how coalition theory has been brought in over the past decade to allow the modeling of games with greater than two players, and how coalitional externalities, a major issue in international and shared fish stocks management, have been incorporated recently. Finally, we highlight new areas for game theory to come into its own in fisheries, which will most definitely include the potential for catch rights in international shared-stock fisheries, as well as ecosystem dynamics to be modeled in a game-theoretic context. As game theory can offer insights into the challenges of achieving cooperative fisheries management, we hope the next decade of fisheries economics research will include a bigger leap from academic game theory exercises to impacting policy decisions.

The paper is available on-line through science direct and will be published in volume 102 of Fisheries Research.

Key concepts excerpted from the video are:

“almost every subsidy is potentially harmful”

“Subsidies even contribute to widespread illegal fishing”

“there are still complex issues on the negotiating table and it is crucial these are resolved….and soon.”

See the Fisheries Subsidies blog for more discussion of the video.

Also see UNEP’s Economics and Trade Branch (ETB) for further information