Productivity impacts of veil nets on UK Crangon vessels

Abstract

As with many shrimp fisheries, the North Sea brown shrimp (Crangon crangon) fishery has been characterised by by-catch and discarding of juvenile fish species that are of value to other fleet segments. To offset this externality, the mandatory use of veil nets or separator panels was introduced in 2003 for all vessels using an aggregate beam length of more than 8m. Sea trials prior to this date suggested that retained catch might be reduced by between 8% and 35%, depending on the area and season. These studies, however, do not consider the behavioural response by fishers to reduce this impact. In this study, the actual impact of the restrictions on the productivity of UK Crangon vessels was estimated using a production frontier approach. The ex post analysis suggests that a productivity decline of around 14% has been experienced by UK vessels adopting this gear. © Journal compilation © 2008 The Agricultural Economics Society.