Use of catch and effort data to monitor trends in economic performance in fisheries

Abstract

In many low-valued fisheries, the quantity and types of data that might be available to support fisheries management are often limited. Generally, information on the economic performance of the fishery is low in priority in these fisheries. Basic catch and effort information, however, may contain implicit information about economic performance of the vessels. From these data, technical efficiency scores and measures of capacity utilization can be derived. The technical efficiency score can provide a proxy measure of the distribution of economic performance, while changes in capacity utilization theoretically reflect changes in the economic conditions in the fishery. Given this, changes in these measures over time should also reflect changes in economic outcomes and performance. To test this, we use data from a data-rich fishery, including catch and effort information as well as detailed economic information (i.e. vessel-level profitability). Key technical performance measures are estimated using data envelopment analysis and compared with the economic performance measures. We show that these technical performance measures can provide useful indicators of changes in economic performance when economic information is not available.