Economics and management strategies for restocking sandfish in Vietnam

This paper assesses the costs and benefits of a proposed project for restocking sandfish (Holothuria scabra) in Khanh Hoa Province, Vietnam. It identifies the key stakeholders, institutional framework, management and financing required for its implementation. The recommended management strategy includes a 50 percent harvest at optimum size. Limiting the number of boats fishing an area, possibly through licensing, can control the number of sandfish removed. The easiest way to prevent harvesting of undersized sandfish is to control the size of processed sandfish from processors. The potential benefits of restocking are shown by the rapid changes in selected indicators, particularly the net present value, the internal rate of return, and the benefit-cost ratio. Probability analysis is used to estimate the uncertainties in the project calculations. Based on a conservative estimate, the restocking of sandfish is expected to be profitable, although cost-benefit analyses are sensitive to the survival of restocked sandfish and their progeny, and the number of boats fishing for sandfish in the release area.

Economics and Hawaii's Marine Fisheries

This paper reviews economic research conducted on Hawaii's marine fisheries over the past ten years. The fisheries development and fisheries management context for this research is also considered. The paper finds that new approaches are required for marine fisheries research in Hawaii: A wider scope to include other marine resource and coastal zone issues, and increased and closer collaboration between researchers and the fishing community.

Guam's Small-Boat-based Fisheries

Recent trends in Guam's small-boat fisheries and current knowledge of their biology, management, and economics are summarized. Annual estimates of participation, effort, and harvest are given for the pelagic and bottomfish fisheries for 1980-91 and for the spearfishing and atulai fisheries for 1985. The pelagic fishery is the largest, with annual landings ranging from 168 to 364 metric tons (t), followed by the bottomfish fishery (14-43 t), spearfishingf ishery (517 t), and bigeye scad fishery (3-20 t). All of the pelagic species are highly migratory and require regional management. They are heavily exploited by Guam-based domestic purse-seine and foreign longline fisheries, but region-wide catch and effort as well as the status of the stocks are largely unknown. Bottomfish and reef-fish stocks are shared to an unknown extent with those of the northern Marianas and are locally manageable. Certain vulnerable species of bottomfishes and reeffishes are overfished. Bottomfish and spearedfish landings are dominated by small species with high turnover rates.

Economics of tropical fisheries; High seas fisheries (list of papers)

GCFI and the International Conference on Tropical Oceanography held joint sessions on Nov. 17 and 18, 1965. The invited papers are listed and will be published with later sessions of the International Conference on Tropical Oceanography.

Change in Pacific Northwest coastal ecosystems. Proceedings of the Pacific Northwest Coastal Ecosystems Regional Study Workshop, August 73-14, 1996, Troutdale, Oregon

Over the past one hundred and fifty years, the landscape and ecosystems of the Pacific Northwest coastal region, already subject to many variable natural forces, have been profoundly affected by human activities. In virtually every coastal watershed from the Strait of Juan de Fuca to Cape Mendocino, settlement, exploitation and development of resou?-ces have altered natural ecosystems. Vast, complex forests that once covered the region have been largely replaced by tree plantations or converted to non-forest conditions. Narrow coastal valleys, once filled with wetlands and braided streams that tempered storm runoff and provided salmon habitat, were drained, filled, or have otherwise been altered to create land for agriculture and other uses. Tideflats and saltmarshes in both large and small estuaries were filled for industrial, commercial, and other urban uses. Many estuaries, including that of the Columbia River, have been channeled, deepened, and jettied to provide for safe, reliable navigation. The prodigious rainfall in the region, once buffered by dense vegetation and complex river and stream habitat, now surges down sirfiplified stream channels laden with increased burdens of sediment and debris. Although these and many other changes have occurred incrementally over time and in widely separated areas, their sum can now be seen to have significantly affected the natural productivity of the region and, as a consequence, changed the economic structure of its human communities. This activity has taken place in a region already shaped by many interacting and dynamic natural forces. Large-scale ocean circulation patterns, which vary over long time periods, determine the strength and location of currents along the coast, and thus affect conditions in the nearshore ocean and estuaries throughout the region. Periodic seasonal differences in the weather and ocean act on shorter time scales; winters are typically wet with storms from the southwest while summers tend to be dry with winds from the northwest. Some phenomena are episodic, such as El Nifio events, which alter weather, marine habitats, and the distribution and survival of marine organisms. Other oceanic and atmospheric changes operate more slowly; over time scales of decades, centuries, and longer. Episodic geologic events also punctuate the region, such as volcanic eruptions that discharge widespread blankets of ash, frequent minor earthquakes, and major subduction zone earthquakes each 300 to 500 years that release accumulated tectonic strain, dropping stretches of ocean shoreline, inundating estuaries and coastal valleys, and triggering landslides that reshape stream profiles. While these many natural processes have altered, sometimes dramatically, the Pacific Northwest coastal region, these same processes have formed productive marine and coastal ecosystems, and many of the species in these systems have adapted to the variable environmental conditions of the region to ensure their long-term survival.