Effect of Trap Soak-time on the Trap-selectivity Profile and By-kill in Prawn-trap Fisheries

• Main Authors: Wright, Christopher S, Panek, Peter
• Format: Publication
• Language: English
• Published: International Institute of Fisheries Economics and Trade 2001
• Subjects: Fisheries Economics; Fisheries management; Fishery management: case studies

Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans seeks to manage British Columbia’s prawn fishery by limiting theseason length, vessel entry, and the number of prawn traps per vessel. However, fishers can still adjust their effort byincreasing the number of trap lifts during the season.This study examines the effect of trap soak-time on size-selectivity, looks at how it translates to by-kill, and reviews thetraditional management responses. The management recommendations in this paper focus on optimizing the interactionbetween CPUE, by-kill, enforcement costs, and fisher responses.Peer’s law (the solution to a problem changes the problem) predicts that trying to solve a fishery common-property resourceproblem only changes the problem’s expression. Thus, limiting entry changes a too-many-fishers issue to a capital-stuffingproblem, limiting gear changes a capital-stuffing problem to a gear-use issue, and regulating gear use leads to other problemsand ever more micro-management. Thus, regulation and related costs have become part of the problem of rent dissipation andpoverty in fishery dependent communities.Efforts to fine-tune regulations in BC’s prawn fishery have led to an ever expanding spiral of costly, clumsy, and intrusiveregulations, enforcement, and related procedures that dissipate resource rents, frustrate fishers, and ultimately are ineffectivein protecting the resource and/or the associated jobs. The best way out of this morass appears to be for managers of sedentaryspecies to confine their efforts to macro-management regulations that focus on limiting the consequences of fishing andensuring that individual fishers endure the consequences of their actions. International Institute of Fisheries Economics and TradeU.S. National Marine Fisheries ServiceMG Kailis Group