Simon Mardle

• Managing Director at Fishor

The shifting policy focus towards Ecosystem Based Management in Fisheries (EBFM) requires the integration of knowledge and disciplines and the engagement of stakeholders to support decision-making processes. Scientists contribute to this through (i) participatory research projects, (ii) stakeholder partnerships and (iii) institutional scientific ad...

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 process leading to the Exit of the United Kingdom from the European Union has placed the seafood sector under the spotlight. Fishing has been one of the key elements of the debate prior to the referendum. It has also been at the heart of several parliamentary commissions in the UK parliament, in the EU parliament and elsewhere since the vote....

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 UK fishing sector has been under the spotlight since the beginning of the Brexit debate. Political commentators claimed that up to 90 per cent of British fishers supported Brexit as they considered the UK was disadvantaged compared to other EU Member States. Their main grudge is about the equal access that all Member States have had to all EU w...

Cod and haddock are two of the “big 5” UK supermarket fish species and intrinsic to fish and chip shops nationwide. UK whitefish fleets produce a significant amount, however there is a reliance on imports to maintain supply. The UK is in a strong position to compete for raw material from Iceland and Norway given high prices paid for imports and inv...

The aim of this study is to present a description of the bilateral trade between the UK and the EU-27 in different possible scenarios, based on relevant case-studies. Also the study describes the main markets of fish and fisheries products and economic-related issues. It provides an economic analysis of the expected consequences of Brexit.

The methodology report is intended to be a supplementary report to reports on findings from the Seafish bioeconomic model. The main purpose of the methodology report is to provide more detail on the operation of the three modules that together form the Seafish bioeconomic model and to provide more detail on the design and operation of the individua...

The purpose of this report is to present findings from a model of the landing obligation developed by Seafish. Several simulations are presented to evaluate the impacts on UK demersal fleets. The questions that the report responds to are focused on the next three years (2017-2019): • which stocks are likely to create potential choke points for the...

The European Common Fisheries Policy landing obligation has introduced significant uncertainty over quota uptake in the coming years. This year (2016) is the first year of the landing obligation for fleets targeting demersal stocks even though it will not be fully introduced across demersal quota stocks until 2019. A recent Seafish economic impact...

Seafish has undertaken an economic impact assessment (EIA) of the landing obligation for key UK fleets targeting demersal stocks. The purpose of the EIA is to provide information that supports decision-making and understanding at a fleet segment, home nation and national level. The EIA has been undertaken in two phases: choke analysis and bioeconom...

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...

Achieving a balance between fishing capacity and fishing opportunities is one of the major challenges in European fisheries. One way to achieve this is to introduce individual tradable quotas or similar management measures. In several mackerel and herring fisheries in the Northeast Atlantic, such systems have already been introduced on a national b...

Seafish is undertaking an economic impact assessment of the landing obligation, introduced as part of the Common Fisheries Policy of the EU. The purpose of the economic impact assessment is to provide information that will support decision-making and understanding at a fleet segment home nation and national lever.

Seafish is undertaking an economic impact assessment of the landing obligation, which has been introduced as part of the Common Fisheries Policy of the EU. Interim Report One contains an analysis of choke situations that might arise within the UK fleet.

A recent analysis of the potential for management cost recovery in the UK suggested that such a policy would be detrimental to UK fishers if other European countries did not implement a similar charging policy. Most of the waters exploited by UK fishers are also exploited by fishers from other European member states, and hence the additional cost b...

Deep-water corals are slow growing, fragile and vulnerable to the impacts of deep-water fisheries and the development activities of the offshore industries. In Ireland there is now evidence of major damage to deep-water corals linked to a recent expansion of the Irish deep-water fishery. This fishery uses trawls fitted with robust rock hopping gear...

With the UK Marine Bill promoting the creation of a network of marine protected areas and similar commitments in other countries there is a need for tools to assist in their design and management. Although physical science often drives designation, the implementation of marine protected areas also encompasses political and socio-economic issues. Th...

IntroductionThe Decline in the Number of Fishing VesselsThe Application of Methods in Fisheries EconomicsPiecing Together the PuzzleRegulating Fisheries within a Political EconomyReferences

The scientific basis of fisheries management advice has traditionally focused on the individual fish stock as the unit to be managed. However, the management advice applies to the vessels fishing those stocks, rather than to the stocks themselves. Where previously annual total allowable catches (TACs) were the primary management measure for stocks...

In tropical regions, mangroves, clean (unpolluted) water-bodies and fish are important aspects of wetland areas, which are considered as the basic requirement for livelihood improvement in local communities. Particularly, their conservation is very important to both inland as well as inshore fisheries. However, conservation of such areas is depende...

Kell, L. T., Mosqueira, I., Grosjean, P., Fromentin, J-M., Garcia, D., Hillary, R., Jardim, E., Mardle, S., Pastoors, M. A., Poos, J. J., Scott, F., and Scott, R. D. 2007. FLR: an open-source framework for the evaluation and development of management strategies. – ICES Journal of Marine Science, 64: 640–646. The FLR framework (Fisheries Library for...

This paper presents the methodology and results of a research project dedicated to the objectives of the Common Fisheries Policy. Stakeholders’ preferences concerning fisheries management objectives are elicited with the help of a multicriteria decision analysis method, and are used as inputs in a multi-objective optimisation model of the fishery u...

A feature of fisheries that distinguishes them from most other industries is the level of control imposed on the production process. Previous studies have identified inefficiency in fisheries that is directly related to the management restrictions. The development of Slack-based measure (SBM) models allows the effects of management distortions to b...

The measure of capacity utilisation of fishing vessels with multi-output Overcapacity situations appear regularly in the activity of marine natural resources exploitation. Measuring capacity utilisation and efficiency for fishing vessels is then required. In this paper, Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) methodology is used in the case of multi-produc...

In determining the importance of criteria in the management of wetlands, two key issues arise: that is whether they should be conserved for environmental benefits, or whether they should be used for development activities. This is indeed the conflict faced in many natural resource management problems. This paper considers the development of stakeho...

Fisheries management is characterised by multiple objectives. Decision making is often impeded by different stakeholders placing different importance on these objectives. While compromise solutions are often achieved, more efficient solutions might be possible if the preference structure of stakeholders was known. In this paper, the potential of ch...

Fishing exclusion zones have become a key management tool for habitat protection and species conservation within fisheries. In many instances, where overfishing or habitat destruction is taking place, they are being promoted strongly. For fisheries management, their use is widespread and their popularity growing. It is clear that in some cases mari...

Numerous studies have proposed methodologies to model fisher behaviour with the aim of predicting the outcomes of decision-making on board a fishing vessel. Both short- and long- term processes (e.g. investment) impact fleet dynamics. The proposed structure of the models has tended to depend upon the nature of the fishery and the control variables...

A variety of approaches exist for the determination of a weighting scheme from a pairwise comparison matrix describing a scale-relation between objectives or alternatives. The most common context for such an algorithm is that of the analytic hierarchy process (AHP), although uses in other areas of the field of multicriteria decision making (MCDM) c...

In determining the importance of criteria in the management of fisheries, two key issues stand out-the definition of a succinct set of criteria and the determination of which interest groups play a defining role in the management development process. This is indeed the case for all natural resource management problems, and many other environmental...

The timetabling problem is generally large, highly constrained and discrete in nature. This makes solution by exact optimisation methods difficult. Therefore, often a heuristic search is deemed acceptable providing a simple (non-optimal) solution. This paper discusses the timetabling problem for a university department, where a large-scale integer...

To manage fishing capacity, fisheries managers must be able to assess both the current and desired levels of capacity. An approach for estimating levels of capacity that has recently gained increased attention in fisheries economic research is Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). This can be used to estimate capacity output for individual fishing boats...

The main objectives of fisheries management are generally similar throughout the world. These are often stated in policy documents such as the Common Fisheries Policy and the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act. However, at the local level often the key objectives of management are more detailed, characterised by both the overr...

Fisheries management is typically a complex problem, from both an environmental and political perspective. The main source of conflict occurs between the need for stock conservation and the need for fishing community well-being, which is typically measured by employment and income levels. For most fisheries, overexploitation of the stock requires a...

A multi-species, multi-métier bioeconomic optimisation model of the English Channel is used to estimate the optimal fleet size and configuration from both a multi-objective and profit-maximising perspective. The multiple objectives incorporated into the analysis are maximising overall economic profits, maintaining employment and ensuring 'relative...

The decision to enter or exit a fishery can be expected to depend on the anticipated profitability of operating in this fishery, as a function of observed vessel performances in previous years. For a vessel exiting a fishery, there may be several reasons including decommissioning, selling or operating elsewhere. Entry may be related to new vessels,...

The FAO International Plan of Action on the management of fishing capacity calls for all member states to provide estimates of the total capacity of their fleets by 2001. In the UK, a "capacity" measurement system is currently in place, base d on vessel size and engine power. An assumption is made that this measure is related to the harvesting abil...

Effective management of fishing capacity requires reliable estimates of current capacity, and to this end most countries have developed a form of capacity measure usually based on some physical characteristics of the fleet. In the United Kingdom, the "capacity" measurement system currently in place is used as the basis of existing capacity reductio...

A multi-species, multi-métier bioeconomic optimisation model of the English Channel is used to estimate the optimal fleet size and configuration from both a multi-objective and profit-maximising perspective. The multiple objectives incorporated into the analysis are maximising overall economic profits, maintaining employment and ensuring 'relative...

The management of a fishery is a complex task generally involving multiple, often conflicting, objectives. These objectives typically include economic, biological and social goals such as improving the income of fishers, reducing the catch of depleted species and maintaining employment. Multi‐criteria decision making (MCDM) techniques appear well‐s...

Bioeconomic optimization models are regularly used in fisheries policy analysis. However, the use of these models has been restricted in fisheries, as in other similar fields, where there are a large number of non-linear interactions. In this paper, the basic features, advantages and disadvantages of the use of the evolutionary methods, specificall...

The use of genetic algorithms (GA) for optimization problems offers an alternative approach to the traditional solution methods. GA follow the concept of solution evolution, by stochastically developing generations of solution populations using a given fitness statistic, for example the achievement function in goal programs. They are particularly a...

Management of public resources, such as fisheries, is a complex task. Society, in general, has a number of goals that it hopes to achieve from the use of public resources. These include conservation, economic, and social objectives. However, these objectives often conflict, due to the varying opinions of the many stakeholders. It would appear that...

Model development packages have, in recent years, become a standard tool for the development of linear and integer programmes. This can be seen by the popularity of such algebraic modelling languages as GAMS, AMPL etc. Traditionally, they have been designed around text based systems, and therefore offer a formal and structured declarative language...

Management of public resources, such as fisheries, is a complex task. Society, in general, has a number of goals that it hopes to achieve from the use of public resources. These include conservation, economic, and social objectives. However, these objectives often conflict, due to the varying opinions of the many stakeholders. It would appear that...

The management of a fishery is a complex task generally involving multiple, often conflicting, objectives. These objectives typically include economic, biological and social goals such as improving the income of fishers, reducing the catch of depleted species and maintaining employment. Multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) techniques appear well-s...

This paper presents ideas from goal programming (GP) used as an accompaniment to linear programming (LP) for the analysis of LP infeasibility. A new algorithm (GPIIS) for the detection of irreducibly inconsistent systems (IIS) of constraints is presented using this approach. The structure necessary for implementing such a procedure into a commercia...

This paper presents a comparison of linear and goal programming methods applied to the downstream oil industry. A realistic, hypothetical model is developed. Results are presented and conclusions are drawn.

Spatial bio-economic models are becoming increasingly important in the attempt to offer ever more dependable advice to fisheries managers for use in the policy process. The main reason for this is the escalating interest in marine protected areas and more precisely fishing exclusion zones. As such the key issue of fishing effort dynamics needs to b...

This paper addresses the question on the origins of excess capacity situations in fisheries. DEA model is applied to the trawling fleet in Brittany (France) and provides performance scores, in term of unbiased capacity utilization on a monthly period (from January 1994 to December 2003). However, DEA method does not inform on the origins of scores....

Abstract Most analyses of efficiency use data that has often originally been recorded by individuals in the industry under examination. In some cases, incentives exist to provide inaccurate output data, which will result in the resultant analyses being distorted. This is particularly relevant in the case of fisheries, where significant incentives e...