Environmental Economics

5 out of 7 continents isn't bad, right?

We're working on PhD recruitment this week (if you applied to OSU AEDE and were accepted, join us, we're FUN!).  I put together a Google map with our PhD placements since 2007.  A bit scary that I might be influencing thinking for this many people and this wide an area.   

 

It ain't over 'til it's over

The Council's Socio-Economic Panel is in the midst of an interesting discussion about #wreckfish in the South Atlantic - listen in until 5 PM and then join us online again tomorrow beginning at 8 AM: https://t.co/dwPU1JelpN pic.twitter.com/a36dhZ5qMR

— SAFMC (@SAFMC) February 6, 2018

I drove to Charleston, SC today and listened to R.E.M. the whole dang way

I'm here:

February 6 & 7, 2018

Socio-Economic Panel
Crowne Plaza Hotel
4381 Tanger Outlet Boulevard
North Charleston, SC  29418

Briefing Book 

Webinar Registration 

February 6, 2017, 1:00 PM - 5:00 PM 

February 7, 2017, 8:00 AM - 12:30 PM

Public Comment

Click here to submit public comment on SEP agenda items

Click here to read what others have already said

Note: I listened to Spotify's "This is R.E.M." playlist for about 4 hours. Once that ran out of songs I listened to Radio Free Europe and, my favorite album, Reckoning (1984) to further remind me of my college and grad school days. 

Non-sequitur of the Day: Predatory journals at their best

From the inbox:

We had a glance at your published article Reply to "Comment on: A revealed preference approach to valuing non-market recreational fishing losses from the deepwater horizon oil spill and its corrigendum".

We found your article very innovative, insightful & interesting; we really value your outstanding contribution towards Scientific Community. The time and attention you devoted in presenting a realistic and pragmatic article was really appreciated.

With the theme of ‘Serving Scientific Community for a better mankind’,

International Journal of Poultry and Fisheries Sciences is publishing articles dealing with all aspects of etiology, diagnosis, treatment and prevention of liver diseases.

Challenge:  Define a logical path from recreational fishing losses to liver disease.

Go.

"Senior NOAA appointee calls for retraction of paper on illegal fishing"

It sounds like there may be some problems with this paper:

A top US official at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who was recently appointed by President Donald Trump, has called for the retraction of a paper that suggests the country exports a significant amount of illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing.

The paper, published July 6 in Marine Policy, estimated that in 2015 approximately one-fifth of Alaska pollock exports to Japan were either illegal, unreported, or unregulated — a value of as much as $75 million.

In an Oct. 11 letter (first reported by IntraFish), Chris Oliver, NOAA assistant administrator for fisheries, criticized the paper’s methodology for calculating the illegal hauls.

Oliver wrote to the journal’s editor-in-chief to say that the National Marine Fisheries Service:

Strongly objects to the authors’ claims regarding US seafood exports to Japan and doubts the validity of the methodology used to make such estimates. The allegations made in the paper absent any transparency regarding the data and assumptions supporting them are irresponsible and call into question the authors’ conclusions. Without significantly more information and transparency regarding data sources and methodologies applied, the paper should be retracted in its entirety.

Oliver has some expertise in Alaskan fisheries: Prior to joining NOAA in June, the official oversaw commercial fishing throughout Alaska as Executive Director of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, one of eight federally established organizations that manage the country’s fisheries.

A spokesperson for NOAA said neither Oliver nor the agency had anything further to say about the call to retract the paper.

First author Pramod Ganapathiraju, a fisheries consultant at IUU Risk Intelligence in Toronto, and last author, Gopikrishna Mantha, of King Abdulaziz University in Saudi Arabia, did not respond to our request for comment.

Hance Smith, editor-in-chief of Marine Policy, did not respond our question about whether he planned to retract the paper; however, he told us:

Upon receiving these [letters] we normally anticipate debate in the pages of Marine Policy, but do not otherwise comment.

[...]

via retractionwatch.com

However, no one should go around demanding that peer-reviewed journal articles be retracted (especially an official in the Trump Administration -- use twitter and call the authors funny names instead!). The more normal procedure is to write a comment on the paper and, if it has merit and the editor isn't afraid of the embarrassment that something wrong slipped through his/her the peer review process, it will be published. The authors will then have a chance to reply. If you don't like how the comment/reply goes, you can find another outlet to voice your concerns. There are plenty of options relative to bullying authors and journal editors. 

Are you interested in the internal workings of fish?*

From the inbox:

Dear Dr. Haab,

One of the articles you authored a while ago caught my attention and I am hoping to discuss with you publishing a followup article, or even a review article in the Internal Medicine Review. The article was entitled "A revealed preference approach to valuing non-market recreational fishing losses from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.". I am sure our readers would find an article that continues this work valuable. The parameters of the article are flexible and I am happy to help in any way I can.

Would you or perhaps one of your students have time to contribute an article over the summer?

 Sincerely,
 Lisseth Tovar, M. D.

 Senior Editor

 Internal Medicine Review

Those parameters must be REALLY flexible.

*Yes, that was my actual response.

"Fishermen Can Make Their Catch Count for Red Snapper Fishery with iSnapper"

From the inbox:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
DATE: May 31, 2017

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — With the announcement by federal fisheries officials that this summer’s federal recreational Gulf of Mexico Red Snapper season would be the shortest ever at just three days, fishermen are invited to join the effort to collect more robust catch data with the goal of providing a longer season through better science.

By downloading and using iSnapper, a mobile application created by the Center for Sportfish Science and Conservation (CSSC) at the Harte Research Institute (HRI) for Gulf of Mexico Studies, anglers can take an active role in helping to secure the long-term sustainability of this prized Gulf of Mexico fishery.

“Management is currently hindered by the lack of accurate and timely catch data for the private and for-hire recreational fishery,” said Dr. Greg Stunz, HRI Endowed Chair for Fisheries and Ocean Health and Director of the Center for Sportfish Science and Conservation “iSnapper represents an opportunity to improve data collection and recreational access to this fishery.”

The announcement of the three-day federal season, beginning June 1, troubled anglers and coastal community officials who have seen a recovery in the Red Snapper fishery and don’t understand why seasons keep getting shorter. Challenges with collecting accurate fisheries data during the short seasons is a major part of the problem, and iSnapper, available for iOS and Android, was launched in 2015 to give anglers an easy, secure method of reporting their catch, and provide researchers with access to timely, accurate data about what private recreational anglers are catching. ...

Last year, despite some inclement weather at the beginning of the season, a total of 120 fishing trips were entered using iSnapper, with 1,238 Red Snapper reported harvested during the federal season. More than 600 anglers were reported as having fished for Red Snapper, with other popular species caught including King Mackerel and Cobia. ...

The ability to collect timely and accurate catch data from recreational fishermen is a major challenge to fisheries management, which is designed to keep fish populations stable and prevent overfishing that can diminish a species’ population. Because of these problems, the Red Snapper quota for the recreational sector includes a 20 percent buffer to ensure that quota is not exceeded, which would violate federal laws. With more accurate data sourced directly from fishermen in near-real time, this buffer could be reduced or even eliminated, allowing a greater amount of fish to be harvested.

The CSSC previously launched iSnapper as a pilot project with charter for-hire captains in 2011 to see if app technology could provide a faster and more accurate means of reporting catch. That app was an overwhelming success, and this new version of iSnapper opens the door to a much wider audience of recreational fishermen who want to aid in better fisheries management.

For more information visit iSnapper.org or the CSSC’s website, SportfishCenter.org.

Here is the link to the NMFS funded report: http://sportfishcenter.org/sites/default/files/2015_iSnapper_Results.pdf.

Will someone out the economist(s) who is working on the demand model with these data?

Apparently famous sports economists are famous among fisheries economists

Where I am today.  At lunch, this was overheard (paraphrased):  Whether it's Whitehead et al, or Haab et al, you guys are cited all the time.  

Catch shares slow the fisheries frenzy: Some confirmatory evidence

Guest Post by David Kaczan, Anna Birkenbach, and Marty Smith

Economists regularly turn to one famous example when making the case for property rights in fisheries: Alaskan halibut.

In the early 1990s, the halibut derby was madness. At the approved moment, thousands of boats would race each other out of Alaskan harbors. They would spend a short designated period, just a few days, battling dicey weather in the Gulf of Alaska, dropping as many lines as their crew could handle, and filling their holds to the brim. For those who were successful, this race offered the riches of a gold rush. For those left behind, it was an expensive exercise in sleeplessness and danger.

As class after class of natural resource economics students learns, this crazy dash was a classic tragedy of the commons. Fishers competed with each other to secure as much of the catch for themselves as they could. And they were also racing the authorities. As soon as the season’s total allowable catch was reached – often just 24 hours after starting – the fishery was closed to preserve stock for the following year.

Starting in 1994, individual rights to specified proportions of the total allowable catch – “catch shares” – were allocated to fishers. The need to race was mitigated. Today the season is a relatively calm, months-long endeavor.

Not surprisingly, given anecdotes like this, economists have long felt themselves on secure ground when advocating for catch shares in fisheries management. Yet despite wide acceptance, the hypothesis that catch shares slow the race to fish has not been systematically tested across fisheries.

In a paper published in Nature this week, we attempt to fill that gap. Our analysis is broad and conceptually simple: we consider every U.S. fishery that underwent a transition to catch share management and for which monthly data are available (N=39). Using a difference-in-differences strategy, we compare the season length changes in catch share-treated fisheries to those in hand-matched controls – fisheries that did not undergo catch share implementation at the same time.

Many of these catch share fisheries are well known to lovers of American seafood: scallops from the mid-Atlantic, cod from New England, and red snapper from the Gulf of Mexico. Catch share fisheries represent around one third of the total U.S. catch.

The overall picture – the average treatment effect – shows that across the U.S. catch shares work as we expect them to. With fewer incentives to race, seasons lengthen. Fishers take around one extra month on average to bring in the harvest. This is good news: Fresh fish becomes available for longer, bad weather is avoided, overinvestment in gear is mitigated, fish stocks are protected, employment is stabilized, and safety improves dramatically.

To fisheries economists, the result is not surprising. But for the sake of current policy debates, rigorous evidence that the race slows, in fisheries across the country, is timely.

The nation’s primary federal fisheries legislation, The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, is up for reauthorization. Competing amendments currently before Congress highlight the fact that catch shares are far from broad acceptance.  The House’s bill places strong limits on new catch share programs. A competing bill, currently in the Senate, does not. Lawmakers in North Carolina and South Carolina are also moving to restrict new catch shares. While one paper cannot alleviate all the concerns driving these proposed bills, it helps to be able to point to the benefits.

For those already well-versed in the tragedy of the commons, more interesting, perhaps, are the exceptions to the expected result: some seasons actually become more compressed post-catch shares.

We hypothesize that these effects arise due to substitution of effort within multispecies fisheries. Fishers may speed up catch of minor species to leave time for more careful pursuit of other, higher value species. Pinning this down rigorously is the subject of ongoing work.

Another component of ongoing work is the potential effect of catch shares on fishers’ revenues. If the harvest is spread throughout the year, can fishers avoid market gluts, target fresh product markets, and thus get better prices? Frances Homans and James Wilen modeled this more than a decade ago. If broadly supported empirically, it would mean more value from the same fish for communities across the country.

So there’s plenty of work left to do on catch shares, and plenty of challenges in their implementation - but the evidence in favor of these policies’ benefits continues to build.

Some empirical evidence on the benefits of catch shares in commercial fisheries

AKA individual transferable quotas:

But derby-style fishing means commercial fishermen are sometimes forced onto the water in stormy weather or before their boats can be properly maintained. Miss the window to catch fish, and for some, it can mean the difference between keeping their businesses afloat or not.

But over the last decade or so, a different kind of fisheries management program known as catch shares has been gaining ground. The idea here is to allot fishermen a portion of the catch ahead of time, and allow them to fish until they reach it. Proponents claim catch shares create incentives for fishers to slow down, eliminating the need to race each other to fish.

A new study published online Wednesday in the journal Nature proves they're right.

"This is the first time we see broad systematic evidence that catch shares are slowing the race to fish," says study co-author Martin Smith, professor of environmental economics at the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University.

Researchers looked at monthly data from 39 federally managed commercial fisheries (worth a combined $402 million) such as Pacific halibut, Atlantic cod, New England haddock, Gulf of Mexico red snapper and more, which operate under catch share programs. The researchers then compared that to data from a similar control fishery that did not operate under a catch share program. They found that under a catch share program, harvesters — on average — took an extra month to fish.

That was a surprise, says Andrew Rosenberg, director of the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

"When you think about it, a month [longer] means fishermen made decisions about not fishing in bad weather and took their trips when it was safer. That probably meant it saved lives and reduced injuries," says Rosenberg, a former deputy director of the National Marine Fisheries Service. ...

Indeed, other studies have found that catch share programs do reduce risky behavior by fishermen.

And slower fishing has benefits for consumers, too: Some of the seafood we like best can be found fresh more frequently at seafood counters. ...

Despite the benefits, catch shares can be incredibly controversial. Opponents argue that such programs essentially privatize a shared public resource. They say it forces consolidation of the fishing fleet; pushes smaller fishermen out of business; prompts worries over non-local ownership of fishing quotas; and can negatively impact fishing communities.

Right now, opponents in North Carolina are fighting to keep catch shares out of their region. Last week, state Sen. Bill Rabon introduced legislation opposing the introduction of catch share programs. In March, South Carolina lawmakers adopted a resolution opposing catch shares in their region as well.

via www.npr.org

Good ol' North Carolina always gets the good national press.

Also, see the guest post by David Kaczan, Anna Birkenbach, and Marty Smith.