Determining the Appropriate Minimum Effort Levels for Use in Fisheries Dynamic Bioeconomic Models

Managing fisheries to achieve ecological, economic and social sustainability is complex. The use of dynamic bioeconomic models can be and have been used to assist in determining management targets. However, optimizing profits over time can result in large reductions in fishing effort in the short term with adverse social consequences. There exist other benefits from maintaining fishing effort even in adverse conditions (e.g., maintain crew and fleet capacity). For this reason, many bioeconomic models have included some form of minimum effort, catch or short-term profit constraint. In this paper, we consider a range of approaches to assess an appropriate minimum fishing effort, including the estimation of fishery breakeven effort levels, and approaches based on historical fishing levels. These are tested using a bioeconomic model currently used for fishery management. We find that breakeven approaches tend to result in the most conservative effort levels and the highest net present value of profits. In contrast, using a proportion of the moving average of the observed fishing effort results in less conservative change in effort, while resulting in positive changes in the net present value of fishery profits. The approach also has the advantage of being dynamic, adjusting with recent fishery conditions.