Fishing strategies and fishing success: An empirical analysis
based on trawl logbooks
By David B. Sampson
ABSTRACT
During a fishing trip a fisher must decide where to fish and how long to operate at each fishing location. Organizing fishing operations during a trip is extremely complicated, especially in a multi-species fishery. This paper presents results from an Oregon Sea Grant project that (a) developed quantitative measures of fishing strategies for the groundfish trawl fishery, (b) evaluated intra- and inter-annual changes in fishing strategies with respect to fish prices and fishing regulations and (c) identified fishing strategies that generated the greatest revenue flows for a given class of fishing boat. The term "fishing strategy" here means the fishing gear and sequence of fishing locations selected by a fisher during a fishing trip. Principal Components Analysis (PCA) was applied to Oregon trawl logbook data (1987-1997) to develop quantitative measures of fishing strategy based on a variety of trip attributes including days at sea, number of tows, average tow duration and inter-tow distance, the proportion of tow time by depth, trawl type, and during daylight, distance of the first tow from the departure port and the last tow from the return port, the maximum distance from the return port, and the proportion of tow locations that were occupied and productive during previous trips. The PCA scores were then analyzed using a Generalized Linear Model to gauge the importance of various explanatory variables including fish prices, boat attributes, weather conditions, and regulatory constraints (trip limits).
KEYWORDS: fishermen's behavior, fishing location choice, fishery dynamics,
fishing strategies
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