Toward Efficient Bycatch Management in Multispecies Fisheries: A Nonparametric Approach

Linear programming-based models of individual multispecies groundfish operations in the Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands area are developed and applied to the question of determining efficient bycatches. The policy tool is halibut quotas, which restrict the bycatch of halibut and also induce changes in the target species catch composition and bycatch of other prohibited species. Efficient quotas can be interpolated from the locus of shadow values for discrete halibut quotas relative to the opportunity cost of prohibited species bycatch induced by the policy-set quotas on halibut bycatch. Because of information limitations intrinsic to fisheries management, the efficient halibut quotas are considered in the context of ranges of marginal value and marginal opportunity cost developed using short- and long-run groundfish fishery models and standard error estimates of opportunity cost.