Non-fishing ocean uses such as offshore renewable energy, shipping, seabed mining, oil/gas extraction, aquaculture, defence, or conservation/biodiversity are a major concern to fishers as they may implicitly or explicitly constrain the total area available for wild-capture fisheries and the search for alternatives fishing grounds. The extent to which specific or cumulative reductions in fishable area affects costs, total catches, profits, and operations of dependent shoreside industries requires an understanding of the adaptive capacity of fishing fleets: the degree to which they may redistribute their fishing effort, change fishing practices, and alter other measures of fishing behaviour.
This session invites presentations on methods that evaluate fishing fleets in the context of competing ocean uses. This includes the development of structural modelling tools that predict how a variety of factors might influence fisher behaviour, the application of models or tools to specific locations, closures, or fishing fleets, cumulative impacts of the spatial squeeze of fisheries, or the post hoc evaluation of areas closed to fishing with modelling or other assessment methods. Structural modelling analyses the mechanisms driving fishing location choice and aggregate effort patterns, which allows prediction, welfare analysis, and evaluation of multi-use policy alternatives. Case studies of effective management uptake of such information are of particular interest.
The economics and structural modelling of fisher behaviour have had relatively low exposure within the ICES community. Bringing the human dimensions of fisheries into ICES science and advice can facilitate the understanding of marine ecosystem uses, their drivers and responses to changes, and assessment and communication of trade-offs that include economic, social, and ecological dimensions. Such understanding of the behaviour of fishers is key in designing effective fishery management policy that is well articulated with the policy frameworks applying to other maritime sectors and with efforts to develop integrated marine spatial plans.
