Attendance to Symposium on
Responsible Fishing Technology for Healthy Ecosystems and Clean
Environment

AFMA recently announced the completion of amendments to the ETBF management plan, and the call for applications for statutory fishing rights. These fishing rights, and the effort allocation of effort that accompanying them, will be managed using Spatial Area Factors (SAFs). SAFs are multipliers that translate the actual amount of fishing effort expended, e.g. in thousands of hooks, into the amount of effort units that are taken off an SFR holders allocation. The intent of these SAFs is to allow spatial management of the fishery, by providing incentives for fishing in areas with low SAFs and disincentives in areas with high SAFs. If used effectively, these SAFs may provide a mechanism for reducing many of the management conflicts in the fishery, such as catch of seabirds and turtles, local depletion of target stocks, and under-exploitation of high seas areas. However, in order to effectively apply the SAFs, AFMA will need to be able to determine the motivational effect of the SAF on fishermen's location choices. Moreover, the SAFs will affect the total allowable effort (TAE) that is actually realized in the fishery in a given year, so not only will they affect individual fishers, they will also affect the performance of the fishery as a whole. It will be critical to be able to make some predictions about how the realized TAE will change, based on the structure of the SAFs in order to weigh alterative management options prior to implementing them. Finally, a move from TAEs to TACs and ITQs will substantially affect the structure of the fishery. Although we will not directly address those changes in this proposal, the behavioral models developed in this project would be rapidly adaptable to a TAC/ITQ system, and could form a basis for informing management as to the potential effects.