P491-BioMod Deliverable 4912 Linkage of Economic and Fisheries Indicators

Abstract

Developing and parameterising fisheries bioeconomic models is seen as playing an important role in the evaluation of proposed fisheries management strategies. One of the key challenges in doing this has been the different aggregation levels of the biological and economic data. For example, economic data (costs, prices etc) is aggregated at the supra-region level as a function of fleet components, whereas biological data is collected at the smaller regional level. Management plan evaluations are required at the regional level which means methods must be developed to scale and merge the economic and biological data at this level. Here we present a method based on the use of transversal variables (such as effort). By calculating a ‘unit cost per effort’ at the supraregion level, we are able to estimate costs at the regional level. This is made more difficult by the aggregation of fishing metiers and gears in the economic data, which have their own cost structure. Linear modelling techniques are used to help overcome to this issue. This report presents these methods using the North Sea fisheries as a case study. Note that this report was not prepared using MS Word. It was prepared using Latex / KnitR and R. This allows the computer code that was used to generate the results to be embedded in the report and executed during the report compilation, including the plotting of figures. This is preferable for scientific report writing as it ensures that the results presented here are ‘live’. Consequently, the following report may not strictly adhere to the JRC template.