
Arantza. MurillasAZTI · Marine Research Division
Arantza. Murillas
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70
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January 2004 - November 2015
January 2000 - February 2004
Publications
Publications (70)
In recent decades, small-scale fisheries (SSF) activity along the Basque coast (eastern Cantabrian) has declined, which has led remaining vessels to undergo notable shifts in their targeted species and therefore the fishing gears used, aimed at enhancing efficiency. Within that context, this study combines logbooks and sales notes spanning from 199...
The mesopelagic or ocean twilight zone (OTZ) in the ocean contains huge numbers of fish in a relatively pristine environment and may therefore attract interest as a commercial fishery. In this study we evaluate in economic terms, the likely trade-offs between the different services provided by the mesopelagic layer in the Bay of Biscay and the soci...
An assessment framework of marine ecosystem services (ES) indicators to quantify the socio-ecological effectiveness of nature-based solutions (NBS) and nature-inclusive harvesting (NIH) under climate-driven changes was developed. It creates a common understanding about the health status of ecosystems, their services (ES), and the impact of implemen...
The Marine Strategy Framework Directive (2008/56/EC) aims to achieve Good Environmental Status of the European Union’s marine waters for which the EU Member States are preparing Programmes of Measures (PoMs) to coordinate policies and improve the marine environmental status. These Programmes are revised every six years, yet there is currently no co...
The aim of this research is to provide a comprehensive analysis of the degree of participation and influence of Small-Scale Fisheries (SSF) across the European Union Atlantic Area putting forward a set of good practices and recommendations for policymakers, Non-Governmental Organisations and SSF representatives. The actual margin for enhancing the...
The ICES Working Group on Economics (WGECON) was established to address the challenge of bringing fisheries economics into ICES science and advice, with the growing recognition that this can assist process understanding of uses of marine ecosystems, their drivers and responses to changes, and assessment and communication of trade-offs that include...
The Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) is the piece of legislation with which the EU aims to achieve Good Environmental Status (GES) of its seas. This Directive requires Member States (MSs) to set up and implement Programmes of Measures (PoMs) to achieve this goal. This paper presents a catalogue as well as the analysis of the 535 measures...
We highlight the potential benefits of adopting Ecosystem-based Fishery Management (EBFM). We compare the EBFM implementation with the more traditional single-stock approach. We show the contribution of the portfolio theory to the EBFM, which can be achieved by selecting an optimal portfolio to maximise the average revenues and minimise the varianc...
An Impact Assessment (IA) is a process aimed at structuring and supporting the development of policies. Besides the fact that IA assumes different features when applied to different sectors, really it should help policy makers in evaluating the contribution to the fisheries sustainability of new regulations. The recent improvements and development...
The competition for marine space is a recognized challenge, and the implementation of new activities, such as those emerging from Blue Growth initiatives, may amplify this competition. The marine spatial planning (MSP) framework requires decision makers to analyse spatially explicit environmental and socio-economic data to determine where user conf...
Coastal areas support human well-being and livelihood by providing ‘ecosystem services’, including provisioning goods, regulation services and recreational opportunities. The interactions between Human and Natural Capital are complex, since human activities highly rely on the quality of resources but can also have an impact on them. Therefore, unde...
This article seeks to extend knowledge of the mackerel (Scomber scombrus) market in the Basque Country (a region in Spain) by analysing possible relationships between this and other species with similar characteristics such as the sardine (Sardina pilchardus), the horse mackerel (Trachurus trachurus) and the Atlantic chub mackerel (Scomber colias),...
The EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) requires Member States to assess the costs and benefits of Programmes of Measures (PoMs) put in place to ensure that European marine waters achieve Good Environmental Status by 2020. An interdisciplinary approach is needed to carry out such an assessment whereby economic analysis is used to evaluate...
This research examines the social, economic and coercive incentives provided by fisheries management measures. Qualitative information was collected through interviews, and focus groups were organized to gather knowledge from regional stakeholders, to provide regional and European authorities with empirical evidence of the perceived legitimacy of c...
Food security is a current global societal challenge, and with the declines in wild fisheries, increasing aquaculture production is a possible way to address this question. Further developments of the aquaculture industry should be based on the Ecosystem Approach to Aquaculture which focuses on ecological sustainability, social equity, and harmonis...
This paper analyses the activity of the Basque fleet during the mackerel fishing season and presents an economic analysis of the equilibrium of this fishery. It seeks to determine whether its economic structure represents an internal factor explaining the fishermen’s behaviour. The inverse demand function and the average cost function are therefore...
Fisheries policy is increasingly influenced by civil society organizations. The newest example of this is the formulation of the landing obligation, a regulation that should reduce the contested practice of discarding unwanted fish. In this paper the implementation process of the landing obligation in four European countries is compared. From this...
This article analyses the potential links between regional first-sale markets for mackerel in Spain using fractional cointegration techniques. The results indicate that this is not an integrated market, and we demonstrate that there are no links, at least in the long term, between any of Spain's five regional markets. This result has significant im...
This study compares the details and performance of fisheries management between the EU and a selection of other countries worldwide: Iceland, New Zealand, and Australia, which are considered in many respects to be among the most advanced in the world in fisheries management. Fisheries management in the EU, Iceland, Australia, and New Zealand has de...
The European hake (Merluccius merluccius) is widely distributed over the shelf of the Northeast Atlantic Ocean. This shelf is characterised by the dominance of mesoscale structures that strongly influence the survival of M. merluccius. Spatial as well as depth preferences vary during the life history of M. merluccius, showing an ontogenetic distrib...
Borja, A., A. Murillas, M. Pascual, M.C. Uyarra, 2015. Marine and coastal ecosystems: delivery of goods and services through conservation. In: Ecosystem Services and River Basin Ecohydrology. Eds. L. Chícharo, F. Muller, N. Fohrer. Springer. Pp. 83-105.
Socio economic effects of management measures of the future CFP (SOCIOEC) project started in 2012 and included 25 partners from 12 countries. The main aim of the project was to assess new management options of the CFP and improve methodology of the Impact Assessment (IA). The project covered several major research areas, affecting decision making p...
Despite the important role of ecosystem services, their study and associated monetary value is limited mostly to terrestrial, estuarine and coastal systems, with few studies undertaken in open marine waters and deep water systems. In addition, human activities are degrading marine ecosystems and the services they provide. To reverse this situation,...
In the frame of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) implementation, in 2012 EU member states (MS) provided an initial assessment (IA) of the environmental status of their marine waters, determined Good Environmental Status (GEnS), and established targets and indicators to achieve or maintain GEnS. Several documented legislative and socio...
Availability and easy access to a wide range of natural and human-activity data on the oceans and coastal regions of Europe is the basis for strategic decision-making on coastal and marine policy. Strategies within Europe’s Integrated Maritime Policy, including the Maritime Strategy for the Atlantic Area, Blue Growth, Maritime Spatial Planning and...
A Socio-economic Sustainability Indicator for the Basque tropical tuna purse-seine fleet with a FAD fishing strategy.
The increasing human pressures on marine ecosystems and the need for integrating planning tools for managing and protecting the marine environment have pushed towards accurate assessments of the spatial distribution of human activities and impacts. An accurate understanding of the spatial distribution of fisheries will help determine potential conf...
This article analyses the potential links between regional first-sale markets for mackerel in Spain using fractional cointegration techniques. The results indicate that this is not an integrated market, and we demonstrate that there are no links, at least in the long term, between any of Spain's five regional markets. This result has significant im...
This article applies the Rapfish methodology, a non-parametric and multi-disciplinary technique, with the objective of defining and evaluating a Sustainability Index of the Basque purse-seine fleet, fishing tropical tunain the Indian and Atlantic Oceans. The estimated Sustainability Index for the fleet fishing in the Indian Ocean is above a critica...
Valuing goods and services from open oceans provides arguments for the ocean’s protection and plays an increasingly
important role in debates on the use and management of natural resources. This paper identifies and estimates the monetary
value of some of the most important goods and services provided by open oceans. The list of goods and services...
This paper analyzes weekly prices for mackerel landed by the inshore fleet at the ports of the Basque Country in 1995–2008, using recently proposed econometric techniques applied to the fishing market. The idea is to learn to what extent fishermen can pass on the effects of negative shocks (e.g. fuel price increases) to their ex-vessel prices. This...
The present paper analyzes the suitability of weak and strong sustainability assessment in the context of fisheries management. This topic is a mainstream issue in the field of ecological economics, but its application to fisheries is rather unexplored, even though fisheries have been the focus of many pioneering studies related to natural resource...
This paper analyses weekly prices for mackerel landed by the inshore fleet at the ports of the Basque Country in 1995-2008, using new econometric techniques never before applied to the fishing market. The idea is to learn to what extent fishermen can pass on the effects of negative shocks (e.g. fuel price increases) to their ex-vessel prices. This...
The research was carried out to investigate the management costs of selected European fisheries. First, the literature was reviewed for existing information, second, interviews were performed of experts from the countries of the case studies. The collected information from the case studies was used to assess the management regime innovations and ch...
The objective of this chapter is to estimate the likely implications for economic efficiency from the introduction of various innovative management systems in a number of European fisheries. Bio-economic models are developed to simulate and evaluate the impact of the management systems as they are applied to the following fisheries: Baltic cod (Gad...
The aim of this paper is to analyse the sustainability of fisheries exploitation through taking into account both the multidisciplinary and intertemporal dimension of the Basque trawl fisheries. The Rapfish methodology is used for the analysis of the ecological, economic and technological sustainability of the Basque trawl fisheries between 1992 an...
The shared stocks management has become an important matter of concern among policy makers, managers, stakeholders, and researchers. The setting of achievable management objectives is always a complicated task. Even within a country, clashing positions of involved parties turn this into a long and difficult process. In the case of shared stocks, th...
Fishing states generally aimed at focusing on sustainable management of fishing resources. Fisheries management need to face intense environmental change and important impacts from biological, socio-economic, political, and technological factors. The synergies among all these components are so important that there exists just one integrated fishery...
The traditional expected-net-present-value methods cannot properly capture the management flexibility and strategic value aspects of a fishery, and may understate its value. Instead, this paper develops a Real Options model to conceptualize and evaluate fishery exploitation flexibility. Specifically, general models to value the opportunity to eithe...
Tradicionalmente, la gestión pesquera se ha centrado en proteger los recursos de la
sobreexplotación frecuentemente mediante el TAC (total admisible de capturas) y recuperando
los sobreexplotados. En ciertas circunstancias, el TAC puede conducir a fallos del sistema de
gestión tanto de tipo ecológico como social y económico. El TAC se administra ge...
Traditionally, fisheries management has focused on protecting resources from overexploitation or on the recovery of already overexploited stocks. Total Allowable Catches (TACs) are a possible tool to achieve this resource-protection goal, but have in many case, led to different ecological, social and economic system failures. Quota based management...
Evidence shows that fisheries need close and careful attention because it has been observed that common property fisheries might be blamed for at least two sources of inefficiency. On one hand, resource overexploitation; on the other, the "static" or "passive" management applies, as outlined in the traditional fisheries literature. This paper prese...
This study presents a bio-economic model in which the dynamics of a fishery are affected by marine pollution both directly and indirectly. From the optimality analysis it can be seen that as long as a contaminating sector exists near coastal areas the policy on fish resource harvest will be more intense initially (when the environmental situation i...
Evaluating an aquaculture exploitation is extremely difficult because of the high level of uncertainty regarding both the farmed resource and output prices. That is why option pricing methodology may be preferable to traditional discounted methods, that cannot properly capture the management flexibility of the exploitation. This paper presents seve...
If one were to examine the institutional configurations under which real world fisheries operate, one would find virtually no fisheries operating under either pure open access or rent maximizing conditions. Instead, most of the world's most important fisheries operate under common property, although it implicates that the fishery operates in a soci...
The valuation of development opportunity of a fishery is made particularly difficult by the high degree of uncertainty attaching to the price of the fishing resource. The net-present-value and other discounted cash-flows cannot properly capture the management s flexibility, thus they may understate its value. The motivation for using an option-base...
The valuation of the opportunity to either invest or exploit a fishery is particularly dicult because of the high uncertainty concerning the resource price. The traditional net-present-value (NPV) and other discounted-cash-flows (DCF) methods cannot properly capture the management's flexibility and strategic value aspects of a fishery, thus they ma...
Resumen En este trabajo se analizan las posibles interrelaciones entre los mercados regionales de primera venta de verdel en España. Con este objetivo se utiliza una nueva metodología de análisis de cointegración fraccional (Hualde, 2009) basada en la propuesta de Gómez-Biscarri y Hualde (2010) para cointegración entera, que no ha sido aplicada con...