Environmental Economics

Marine Resource Economics listed in SSCI

From the inbox:

APRIL 2008
MARINE RESOURCE ECONOMICS LISTED IN
SOCIAL SCIENCES CITATION INDEX® - WEB OF SCIENCE

Marine Resource Economics is now listed among the following Thomson Scientific products:

Social Sciences Citation Index® (Web of Science)
Science Citation Index Expanded™ (Web of Science)
Current Contents®/Social and Behavioral Sciences
Current Contents®/Agriculture, Biology & Environmental Sciences

The Web of Science provides seamless access to current and retrospective multidisciplinary information from approximately 8,700 of the most prestigious, high-impact research journals in the world.  Users can also navigate to electronic full-text journal articles. http://scientific.thomson.com/products/wos/

Current Contents Connect® is a multidisciplinary current awareness Web resource providing access to complete bibliographic information from over 8,000 of the world's leading scholarly journals and more than 2,000 books.  http://scientific.thomson.com/products/ccc/

AS AN AUTHOR THIS MEANS:

• Increased visibility and citation of your work
• Elevated recognition and status of your research

Marine Resource Economics is the leading journal covering a range of natural resource use and economic and policy issues in the global marine environment

Gulf of Mexico red snapper: catch 'em while you can!

From NOAA FishNews:

NOAA Fisheries has announced the upcoming early closure of the recreational fishery for red snapper in federal waters of the Gulf of Mexico to further reduce the 2008 federal recreational red snapper fishing season from 4 months (June 1 – September 30) to a little over 2 months (June 1 – August 5).

Here is a link to the Federal Register notice.

Update (9:46 pm, 4/12/08):

From the inbox:

The purpose of the newly announced, extended closure of recreational fishing for red snapper in federal waters is to prevent the total recreational catch of red snapper from exceeding its quota.  The closure is deemed necessary because state regulations for Florida and Texas are more lenient than federal regulations.  Therefore, the same overall quantity of fish (recreational catch is counted as numbers of fish, but quotas are evaluated in terms of pounds) will be landed, except that the landings will occur in state rather than federal waters. There will be a redistribution of catches from LA-MS-AL (which have jurisdictions from 0-3 miles from shore) to FL and TX (that have more extended state jurisdictions), but the overall weight of catch will not change.

The analysis below neglected to ascertain that recreational catch in state waters would be allowed to increase. In the famous words of Emily Litella ... nevermind.

Four quick lessons in why fishery management is important

From the AP:

Watermen acknowledge that the [Chesapeake Bay Blue Crab] population is dangerously low, with poor harvests for about a decade. But they say the limits on sooks [female crabs], commonly used for crab cakes and crab soups prized by diners, will put many out of business.

Lesson 1:  Maryland crab cakes* are among the yummiest foods anywhere.

April fool?

From the inbox:

Attached please find a draft of the report on the SLYME model from the Eel Stock Assessment SubCommittee.  I will bring hard copies of the report to the meeting tomorrow.

More evidence that economists don't want to pillage the environment

Economics of Overexploitation Revisited, R. Q. Grafton, T. Kompas, R. W. Hilborn, Published 7 December 2007, Science 318, 1601 (2007)

About 25% of the world's fisheries are depleted such that their current biomass is lower than the level that would maximize the sustained yield (MSY). By using methods not previously applied in the fisheries conservation context, we show in four disparate fisheries (including the long-lived and slow-growing orange roughy) that the dynamic maximum economic yield (MEY), the biomass that produces the largest discounted economic profits from fishing, exceeds MSY. Thus, although it is theoretically possible that maximizing discounted economic profits may cause stock depletions, our results show there is a win-win: In many fisheries at reasonable discount rates and at current prices and costs, larger fish stocks increase economic profits. An MEY target that exceeds MSY and transfers from higher, future profits to compensate fishers for the transition costs of stock rebuilding would help overcome a key cause of fisheries overexploitation, industry opposition to lower harvests.

The one page "brevia" is not much longer than the abstract so don't worry if you can't get hold of the PDF. However, there is much analysis behind these results:

• "With use of perturbation methods..."
• "We modeled population dynamics with an age-structured model..."

The nitty gritty is available as "supporting online material" here.

More pier-o-nomics

The disappearing North Carolina fishing piers. The most recent news is about the Yaupon Beach Fishing Pier (map). From Fishing-NC.com:

Yaupon Pier was originally built in 1955, rebuilt in 1972 and again in 1992. At 27 feet above sea level, the Yaupon Beach Pier is the tallest in North Carolina. The pier also boasts the record weighing catch for any pier in the state, a 1150 lb. state record tiger shark by Walter Maxwell in 1966.

Previously I estimated the present value of the nonmarket benefits of the Yaupon Beach Fishing Pier at $2.55 million. This value exceeds the current market price which suggests the local government could purchase it to increase economic efficiency. The pier operates as a business, or at least it used to, but access to the ocean fishery has some public good characteristics so I'm OK with the notion of government involvement.

I hang my head in shame

Kentucky, Indiana blamed for polluting Gulf waters:

There's a Massachusetts-size "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico that's threatening a $6 billion fishing industry there -- and Kentucky and Indiana are getting some of the blame.

Findings by the U.S. Geological Survey put the two states in the top six among 31 states with waters that drain excess nitrogen and phosphorous into the Gulf, from sources such as farms, sewage treatment plants and power-plant emissions.

...

And that's a costly problem: The economic value of commercial and recreational fishing in the Gulf fishery was estimated at more than $6 billion in 2005 by the Gulf Fishery Management Council, which manages fishing from the end of state waters out to 200 miles.

When I go home to visit family I, yes, use electric power and flush the toilet. In 2008, I declare that I will cease to be part of the problem and become part of the solution. I will no longer visit my mother!

Overfishing: more liberal bias on the NYTimes editorial page

A NYTImes editorial reviews two recent NYTimes articles and points out how difficult regulation of international overfishing might be.

Before we get to the article, note that I always am suspicious of NYTimes editorials. At first read I detected no liberal bias in this editorial. However, realizing that it is the Times, after all, I read again more closely. This time with my liberal bias ears pricked. Sufficiently pricked, I am fairly sure that the article makes allusion to Rudy's lack of family values and Hillary's brave attack on corporate America. McCain gets a pat on the back for his climate change legislation but gets ripped, absolutely ripped, for his support of the war in Iraq. Obama, on the other hand, is fawned over as articulate and thin.

Cripes NYTimes editorial page, get rid of your liberal bias!

The big tuna

And I'm not talking about Bill Parcells (Anglers seek sushi jackpot):

The giant bluefin typically weighs more than 300 pounds and stretches 8 feet from nose to tail. Many are much larger.

...

To land a bluefin is to hit a sushi jackpot. Within hours of a catch, its prized red flesh will be rapidly shipped across the globe to be eaten in the restaurants and apartments of Tokyo and across Japan and Taiwan. Even with middlemen skimming profits along the way, a lone average bluefin will bring $2,500 or more for the men in North Carolina who catch it, enough to pay the bills.

SSC Minutes: "blood starts spurting from our ears"

Everything that we say at the Scientific and Statistical Committee (SSC) of the SAFMC is on the record: recorded and transcribed. It is always fun to search through the minutes for the few things that I end up saying into the microphone.