Course:ECON371/UBCO2011WT1/GROUP1/Article 2: By-catch deprives Bears

Summary

This article illustrates the difficulties that BC's costal grizzly bears are facing due to increasing by-catch from commercial salmon fishermen. Large amounts of salmon, especially chum salmon, are caught unintentionally by commercial fishermen, while they are intending to fish for more in-demand species, and then discarded due to low market value. The article reported that over 20 percent of the weight of these commercial fishermens' catch was discarded. The discarded fish rarely survives, due to the rushed fishing practices many commercial fisheries abide by to maximize their profits.

The decreasing amounts of salmon harms the BC coastal grizzly bears, as they rely on it as an "essential seasonal food." The article also states that the amount of salmon a grizzly bear can eat is strongly related to the resilience of the bears and the size/condition of their litters. Additionally, when the grizzly bears are finished eating the salmon, they bring the carcasses back to the forest, providing nutrients for various other animals as well. Disrupting the salmon supply could disrupt the entire BC costal ecosystem.

The article then goes on to detail what the economic value would be of less healthy or decreasing numbers of grizzly bears. Eco-tourism involving the bears is mentioned as a large economic contributor for the region, which would presumably decrease if the number of bears were to decrease. The article suggests that the salmon would be more valuable to the region alive than dead. It also mentions ways that the large amount of by-catch could be avoided, including moving fisheries towards areas where it is easier for them to target the strong stocks that they wish to catch, while minimizing the weak stocks that they will just discard; using more sustainable fishing techniques to deal with fish which are accidentally caught; and moving to quota-based fisheries, which are now standard practice in many other BC fisheries. It also suggests having independent observers or video cameras onboard with the commercial fishermen, to ensure that the regulations are being followed, and to monitor the levels of by-catch.

Analysis

Like our previous article on blue-green algae in Lake Winnipeg, this article demonstrates a classic example of an open-access resource facing inefficient use. Unless the commercial fisherman are given an incentive to do otherwise, they will continue to practice fishing techniques that maximize their profits, but might not be best for the surrounding ecosystem. As the article points out, a fishing quota would help to minimize by-catch, by giving firms an incentive to make sure that the fish they catch will be the ones they want to keep. Having an on-board independent observer to ensure compliance could be expensive, but using video cameras on-board could be a solution to that. The video cameras also wouldn't have to be watched all the time. A person could be hired to watch them at randomized times, and anyone seen to be practicing unsustainable practices would be fined. This would give an incentive to the firms to practice sustainable fishing all of the time, because they would never know when someone would be watching them.

There would be several other ways to try to make the fishing industry in British Columbia more economically efficient, from a social efficiency standpoint.

A tax on the total amount of fish brought on board would create an incentive to fish more selectively, but it would also create an incentive to keep all of the fish caught, even if it wasn't worth anything, instead of trying to throw it back. However, it would cut back on the total amount of fish caught, which would help to ensure that the bears and other animals have enough to eat. Taxing the amount of fish that the fishermen end up selling would ensure that they would only keep the fish that are worth enough in the market, so if this was combined with legislation making it mandatory to practice sustainable by-catch practices, the fishermen would have an incentive to throw back less desirable fish in a manner which would keep the fish alive. This could be enforced with on-board video cameras as well.

Another option would be for the government to issue individual standards to each commercial fishery of how much they could fish, based on the size of the fishery and the locations where they fish. This would attempt to make it less desirable to fish in "mixed-stock" areas where they more likely to have excess by-catch. The standards could also take into consideration the size of the nets used for fishing and the number of workers on-board, since, presumably, the more workers and the smaller the nets used, the less likely a lot of undesired fish would be caught.

It is difficult to measure the benefits provided by the existence of healthy grizzly bears in the coastal regions of BC. People who have never seen the bears might get some benefit just by knowing that well-fed grizzly bears are still roaming around in these areas of BC. These feelings could be measured using the contingent valuation method, with a questionnaire describing the risks of having fewer grizzly bears and measuring the sample's willingness to pay to prevent that risk. The question asked could be a referendum-type question, where a large group of people are asked if they would be willing to pay x dollars to help the grizzly bears, where x varies. As the amount x increases, the number of yes responses should decrease, and this would give an indication of the number of people willing to pay at the different values, which could then be scaled up to the general population. This method would still have its problems, however, as people aren't used to placing monetary values on the natural world, so their willingness to pay responses might not be accurate.

Additionally, one could still do a travel-cost benefit analysis to measure the costs people pay to travel to see the bears, and compare that to how many people travel to other places which have coastal, forested areas but do not have grizzly bears. These individual benefits would then be scaled up to display the market demand for travelling to grizzly bear inhabited areas. This still wouldn't measure all of the benefits, for a few reasons. First, the bears also bring the fish carcasses back to the forest, which helps to sustain other parts of the ecosystem. There is a possibility that not having the grizzly bears could disrupt many other forms of life in the area. A look at the expected value of deterioration of the ecosystem, and the costs of that deterioration, based on how many bears are alive could be examined. In addition, there are probably people who live in coastal BC who benefit from having the grizzly bears and other wildlife alive, but don't incur any travel costs to see them.

Another similar possibility would be to measure the revenue generated from eco-tourism in the area. This would measure the benefits to visitors in the area of having a well-functioning ecosystem. This revenue would probably be lost if most of the grizzly bears couldn't survive, or if the surrounding environment was degraded.

Once the marginal willingness to pay estimates have been calculated, they can be turned into a marginal damage function, by looking at how much people would be willing to pay to have less of the damages done. This can be equated to the firm's marginal abatement costs, by looking at how much the more by-catch friendly fishing methods cost the firm. As it seems like the firms aren't currently abating any of the damages, the efficient level of damages would probably be less than it is currently, implying that more of the by-catch should be saved for the bears and other animals of coastal BC.

Prof's Comments

Overall good points.

The monitoring is difficult. On-board video that is periodically monitored is an interesting idea. I'm guessing that it would be hard for such equipment to work effectively in the conditions on the boat and out at sea.

Discarding of the unintended catch is in part done to avoid having it counted against a fisher's quota. This needs to be reconciled.

9.5/10