An Economic Analysis of FRDC Investment in Innovations
in Enhancing Wild Catch Fisheries (Cluster 14)
Background
Protecting and managing fish habitats and stocks is an essential part of fisheries management, but at times over exploitation can still occur. Enhancing habitats and stocks through managing change in physical habitats or biological stocks is an additional strategy that can be applied to both wild catch and recreational fisheries.
Captive breeding in hatcheries and release of juvenile fish stock has been and is being increasingly used to re-establish populations of wild fish stocks for both commercial and recreational purposes, as well as for restoring marine ecosystem health purposes.
The projects funded in this cluster fall predominantly into two groups:
- The efficiency of restocking protocols (e.g. rearing and survival) in freshwater with regard to survival and bolstering stocks to ensure rewarding angling and species conservation (Projects 1998/221; 2000/180; 2003/034). The State and Commonwealth governments have developed a national recreational fishing policy which recognises the rights of access of recreational fishers as well as the need to conserve and manage fish resources (http://www.daff.gov.au/brs/fisheries-marine/info/resource-management).Improving the stock of wild fisheries for commercial wild catch sustainability or for ecosystem health reasons (1998/219; 1999/222; 2000/179; 2002/048).
Two other projects in this cluster focused on cost reduction in wild catch fisheries (2004/248) and improving aquacultural systems dependent on catching wild species (1999/119).
Lessons Learnt for Future Investment
Lessons learnt from this analysis include:
- Enhancement of wild catch fisheries appears technically feasible but faces economic constraints due to the cost of rearing and release compared to the benefits from the enhancement. On the other hand enhancement successes have been obtained from the projects in this cluster for recreational fisheries where the impacts are more amenable to measure and where fish abundance is valued more highly.
- In attempting to develop low cost rearing and release systems (e.g. for prawns and reef abalone), improvements were developed that have had some applications and benefits to aquaculture industries.
- It was apparent that the government’s rural R&D priorities do not accommodate social benefits such as improved recreational experiences for fishers. The implication of this is that this area of research investment should be given a low priority by FRDC or that national RD&E priorities should be changed to provide some focus on social benefits.
- FRDC’s KPIs as reported in Table 21 do not encompass improvement in recreational fishing experiences.
Conclusions
Investment was made in a total of nine projects within the cluster with the FRDC contribution approximating 39% of the total nominal dollar costs involved.
On the basis of the seven benefits identified, and equal weighting for each benefit, it could be concluded that public benefits to Australia could make up 36% of the total benefits. If the subjective weightings for each benefit type are taken into account, then 38% of the total benefits could constitute public benefits to Australia.
The principal benefit valued from this cluster investment was the improved recreational experiences for fishers caused by successful restocking policies. Of the benefits valued, recreational fishing benefits made up over 80% of the total benefits. Other benefits were associated with spillover cost reductions to aquaculture and some cost reductions to wild catch fisheries.
Overall, the investment criteria estimated for the total investment of $17 million (present value of costs) in the cluster were positive, with a net present value estimated at over $30 million and a benefit-cost ratio of just under 3 to 1, both estimated using a discount rate of 5% (benefits estimated over 30 years from the final year of investment).
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