3.1 Economic Effects of Biological Interactions
3.2 Evaluation of Different Management Measures
3.3 Arrangements with Non-local Fisheries
3.4 Mechanics for Making Economic Studies
Any fishery requires certain inputs (vessels, gear, fuel, etc.) and produces certain outputs (food, foreign exchange, etc.). The net contribution of the fishery to the national economy will be given by the excess of outputs over the inputs. Both can be measured in different ways; in addition other aspects of the fishery, e.g., the number of people employed, or the extent to which it improves the social balance of a country by providing economic opportunities in a region that is otherwise economically backward, often are, or could be, taken into account in determining the benefits of a fishery. It is therefore not necessarily easy to compare two patterns of fishing, for example the present pattern of fishing with what would happen if a certain management measure were introduced. Although it is common to express the effect of a management measure in terms of the likely change in total catch, this is by no means the only, or indeed the best measure to use to determine whether or not to introduce that particular measure. Only in the case of regulation of the mesh size in trawls or other nets, in which the fishery operations remain essentially unchanged except for the mesh change, is the total catch the best measure, but even for such a regulation, unless the fishery is homogeneous, differences in the effects on different groups of fishermen may be important in determining whether or not to go ahead with a mesh regulation. Even when, for reasons of national priority, the total fish supply should be maintained at a high level, this does not mean necessarily that maximizing the catch from any one particular stock would be the correct policy; the inputs (fuel, etc.) in doing this might be better used in increasing fish production from some other resource.
This means that the policy makers in a country must be provided with a considerable range of information about the implications of different actions if the best decisions, in the light of overall national policies and objectives, are to be taken. The information needed is likely to include data on the inputs (number and costs of vessels of different types, costs of fuel, gear, maintenance, etc., often including the foreign exchange component of these costs) and on the number of people employed at different levels, and stages of the fishery. Output data would include the weight and gross value of the catch (again often including the potential export value), and the net returns to the fishery as a whole, and to the individual fishery enterprise, as well as the effect on the volume and price of fish to the consumer (again often with regional variations within the country being taken into account).
Part of these calculations are normally done in respect of most investment plans. Decisions on whether, for example, to build some new vessels are normally based on the capital costs of the vessels, their operating costs and the expected value of their catches, and the resulting return on investment calculated over say a 15-year effective operating life of the vessels. If this return is high enough this is often assumed to be reasonable evidence that the decision should be to go ahead. As discussed in the following section, this can be a dangerous assumption.
The nature of fish resources makes an evaluation based only on
catches of the particular vessels being directly considered incomplete and, in
many cases, highly misleading calculations. The reason for this is shown in
Figure 1, which shows the curve relating the total catch to the total amount of
fishing, and the effect of increasing the amount of fishing on a stock of fish
which, while moderately heavily fished, is still far from being fully exploited.
The increase in fishing effort, from E1 to E2, will
increase the catch from C1 to C2, but will decrease the
catch per unit effort by an amount equal to the differences in the slopes of the
two lines OC and OC2. As a result, the catch by the original fleet,
still exerting a fishing effort E, will fall from C1 to
. The additional vessels
will take a catch equal to PC2, but their net addition to the total
catch will be only equal to QC2, the difference being the losses
caused to those vessels already fishing. If the fishery is carried out by one
country and the wisdom or otherwise of the additional investment is being judged
in terms of the contribution to the economy as a whole, then using the actual
catch by the additional vessels overestimates the benefits very considerably.
(In the case of the situation of the figure, the true benefits will be only
about half that estimated from the gross catch of the additional vessels). The
effects on the estimation of the net benefits (e.g., the real return on
investment) are much more severe. For example, an investment in new vessels that
appears, on the basis of the catches of these vessels, to be highly successful,
may in fact be adding less value to the total national fish catch than merely
the running costs of the additional vessels.
This is a very general result. Events in the sea are not independent. Any action, whether of development or management, that changes the pattern or intensity of fishing, will affect virtually all other fisheries in the same area. These effects can be positive or negative and large enough to vitally affect the results of any calculation (as in the example above), or so small as to be negligible.
One of the earliest tasks in any economic or social assessment of the results of a proposed action must therefore be a detailed discussion with the biologists to identify, and as far as possible quantify, the interactions that can be expected to take place. This is most straightforward for two fisheries exploiting the same stock; if there are no differences in age-composition, the interactions are described by Figure 1, and the relations that can be derived from it. Differences in age composition between fisheries mean that one of the fisheries will be more affected by any interactions than the other; fisheries on older fish will be affected by, but in most cases affect little, the fisheries on younger fish.
Interactions between fisheries on different species have tended to be ignored in the past, but it is clear that intensive fisheries on a wide range of species, as are now occurring in the CECAF area, can occasion significant inter-specific interactions. At present the scientific understanding of the processes involved - even in areas better studied than the CECAF region - is not good enough to make quantitative assessments of the interactions, but it is possible to make qualitative evaluations. It can be expected that increased fishing on one species will tend to increase the abundance of and, other things being equal, the catches from, stocks of species that are preyed upon by, or compete with, the first species, but tend to decrease the abundance of species for which the first species is an important food item. In the CECAF area the most significant effects may be competition within the two major groups of fish - schooling pelagic fish and demersal fish (including cephalopods). Indeed, there have been suggestions that cephalopods increased in the northern part of the CECAF area following the early heavy exploitation of valuable demersal species such as hakes and sea-breams. Similarly, in other parts of the world declines in one pelagic species (e.g., sardine) have been correlated with increases of other species (e.g., anchovy) and it has been suggested, for example, that the recovery of the stock of Californian sardine would be made more likely by increased fishing for anchovy.
While there is a tendency for most national fisheries in the CECAF area to be based on an increasing range of species, many coastal fisheries are still selective towards certain preferred species. In these cases there might be some benefit to those fisheries from the development of non-local fisheries on other, competing, species. For example in the northern part of the area the stocks of mackerels and horse-mackerels are of very little importance to the current fisheries of the coastal states for which sardines and sardinellas are much more important. To the extent that the very large offshore fisheries by distant water fleets for the former species have had had any effects on the existing catches of the coastal countries, these effects are likely to have been beneficial.
Too much should not be made of these theoretical benefits. First, the biological interactions are not well known, and the biological interactions may in some cases be very slight. Second, the biological interactions are not the only effect. No fishery is purely directed to one species and other species may be caught deliberately or incidentally. These incidental catches may have much more significant (and harmful) effects on fisheries on the other species than any possible beneficial biological interaction. Therefore, especially when considering the effects of large-scale industrial fisheries, it is very important to collect information and the extent of the incidental catches of species that are not the main target of those fisheries but do support other fisheries.
Despite these interactions between fisheries on different species, by far the most important interactions to be considered in analysing the overall economic impact of a given policy are the interactions between fisheries on the same species. A common and important situation is where a coastal state (or group of adjacent coastal states) is exploiting a stock of fish, but considerably less than to its full capacity, and a non-local country wishes to participate in the fishery. Such participation appears reasonable, and is in conformity with the current draft provisions of the UN Conference on the Law of the Sea. It would, however, tend to be detrimental to the coastal state’s fisheries; against this, non-local fishing will usually be carried out under some provisions that will benefit the coastal state - payment of licence fees, requirement to land a certain part of the catch in the coastal state, etc. Before such an agreement is reached, an economic analysis should be made to balance these benefits and losses and so ensure, for example, that the licence fees are at least large enough to counter-balance the expenses incurred by the coastal state, including any losses to its existing fisheries.
These losses may be estimated from Figure 1, where the
non-coastal fisheries can be considered as the additional fisheries. The
reduction in catch that is caused to the existing fisheries (i.e., the coastal
state fisheries, as the figure is now being used) is equal to the amount
C1 or the
proportion PQ taken by the additional (i.e., non-local) fisheries. The value of
this catch is the amount that should be paid in licence fees, or other
considerations, if the coastal state as a whole is not to be a net loser, and
this amount can be very considerable. In the example it is about half the gross
value of the catch and can, as full exploitation of the stock is approached,
reach nearly the full value of the catch. This is just another way of saying
that, when a stock is nearly fully exploited, the net addition to the total
catch by additional effort is very small and most of the catch of the additional
vessels is at the expense of the existing fleet. On the other hand, if the stock
is still very lightly exploited, the minimum licence fee, as calculated on this
basis, would be very small. Therefore the assessment of the current state of the
stock (even if only rough) should be an integral and early part of any
discussions on the arrangements whereby non-local vessels are allowed to
participate in a fishery.
The calculations based on Figure 1 are correct if the two groups of vessels are exploiting the same part of the stock. In practice for many of the CECAF stocks, there is a more or less distinct tendency for the young fish to be in shallow water near the coast and to be exploited by the local fisheries and for the older fish to be offshore and to be exploited by the larger, long-range vessels. For these stocks, so far as catches from a given year-class are concerned, the long-range fleets will not affect the local fisheries. However, if the spawning stock is reduced by the combined effect of the two fisheries to such a level as to reduce the recruitment of young fish, then the local fisheries will be affected, possibly seriously.
Most analyses of fisheries treat the situation in the sea as being constant apart from the disturbances due to fishing. In fact many fish stocks undergo considerable fluctuations from year to year or over longer periods. This means that the average value of, say, expected annual catch, does not give a complete picture, and what is left out may be critical. For local fisheries, supplying a limited market, the main consideration may be the ability to catch enough for that market; additional catches above that level bring little benefit, but smaller catches would cause losses. The assessment of the impact on such fisheries of some proposed development or management action should include an evaluation of the frequency with which the catches are likely to fall below the optimum level. In somewhat similar situations other measures can be used to gauge the success or otherwise of different measures. For example, for some salmon fisheries, one measure that has been suggested is that the size of the catch in particularly bad years should be used. The higher this is, the better, no attention being paid to the size of the catch in particularly good years, since the fishermen mainly concerned cannot take advantage of them, but would be badly affected by particularly low catches.
The economic evaluations discussed here are necessary before policy decisions are taken regarding either development or management, using these terms in the narrow sense, to describe actions to increase the amount of fishing by, for example, building new vessels, or actions to restrict the fishery by regulation of one kind or another. Though “development” decisions can be considered as merging into “management” decisions when concerning matters such as the termination of low-interest loans, or duty-free fuel on the grounds of heavy exploitation of the resource, the former do differ in making less demands on the economic analysis. The decisions normally centre on some particular proposals, or small group of alternative proposals coming from potential investors, or some funding agency, e.g., to build some new boats, and whether 10 or 20 should be built. The economic analysis then needs only to consider these proposals.
In the case of management, however, the range of alternatives is usually much less well defined. Biological analysis may have shown that there is much too much fishing and this analysis may have been accepted in principle by the governments concerned, but until the economic analysis is begun, there is often little idea of how the reduction in fishing might be achieved. The analysis must therefore include a systematic consideration of the range of alternatives that should be considered. These may be treated in three stages: the level of the total fishing effort, (i.e., whether to aim at a high level, with a high total catch, but with high costs, and also probably high employment on the catching side, or at a lower level, with a somewhat lower total catch, but considerably lower costs, and greater net economic returns); how the chosen level of total effort will be exerted (e.g., whether to have a small number of powerful and economically efficient vessels, or many small, less efficient vessels that will generate more employment) and how these choices of total effort and pattern of fishing can be achieved and enforced (e.g., by catch quotas, closed seasons, large licence fees, etc.).
Decisions on the total amount of fishing are relatively uncomplicated. They have to be taken for the stock as a whole and agreed among all participants, in practice this means accepting something towards the highest amount of fishing that can be justified as being reasonable. The economic analysis needed is of the potential economic benefits that are foregone, for participants as a whole, and individually, from a high level of total effort compared with a somewhat lower level of effort, and a higher catch per unit, and hence higher returns to the individual fisherman.
In any international fishery any decision on the level of the total amount of fishing must be accompanied by a decision, implicit or explicit, on how this total is allocated between countries. This allocation can be implicit, for example a single unallocated quota which will allow unrestricted fishing until the quota is reached, after which the fishery is closed, implicitly allocates a major part of the catch to those with the most powerful (but not necessarily the most economically efficient) fleets who can maximize their share of the quota before the season is closed. More often, at least recently, allocations of the total catch are done more explicitly, either by allowing exemption for some participants up to some predetermined total (as is done for tuna in the eastern tropical Pacific) or by agreeing on shares of some total allowable catch. The negotiations leading up to these agreements are much more likely to be productive if each participant has information on the potential economic benefits from a low fishing effort; many, if not most, fishing industries would be happier catching 50 000 tons of fish profitably, rather than losing money catching 100 000 tons. Even in terms of total food supply the former alternative usually makes sense, provided there are alternative supplies’ of food towards which the profits can be utilized. Nevertheless, negotiations on allocation and on the level of total fishing effort or total allowable catch on which the allocations are based have usually concentrated almost wholly on the gross catch, and the shares of it, rather than on the potential economic benefits.
Once the level of total fishing effort has been agreed, there is a wide choice of how this effort, or the share of it allocated to a country, can be exerted, i.e., whether by large or small vessels, during a short season or spread over the whole year, etc. This is a matter for each country individually. Provided in the case of shared stocks that there has been an explicit agreement on allocations, then it does not matter to other countries whether a country takes its share with a few powerful vessels, or a fleet of canoes.
The national decision on what pattern of fishing would be most desirable should be based on a variety of social-economic factors, for example the possible social advantages and problems of marketing in landing fish from small vessels at a number of minor landing places, rather than from big vessels at a major port. These need to be explored in as much detail as possible, covering the whole process of fishing from catcher to consumer, including the relevant infrastructure - marketing and distribution, maintenance of vessels, etc. The advantages and disadvantages of different patterns of fishing need to be matched against the general policies of the country, e.g., is there an aim to discourage migration to the big cities. For this purpose national objectives should be specified in as much detail as possible.
Determination of the measures needed to achieve the desired pattern of fishing present the most difficulties. This is because many of the problems are unique to fisheries and therefore unfamiliar to most legislators and administrators and because long-term effects of many measures are very different from the immediate effects. Most decisions are, in the first instance at least, based on the immediate and obvious effects and, therefore, fail to achieve their objectives when the long-term effects are different. For example, control of the amount of fishing has sometimes been achieved by the limitation of the number of licences issued and these have usually been issued to existing fishermen. Usually, it is hoped that the main beneficiary of such a scheme will be the individual fisherman owning his own boat, but, usually, in the absence of other measures, the long-term effect of licence limitation is the concentration of licences in large companies.
Fortunately, the long-term effects of each different management technique (licence limitation in its various forms, closed seasons, catch quotas, etc.) are similar, regardless of the particular fishery to which it is applied. World-wide there is now enough theoretical and practical experience to predict reasonably well the effects of applying one or the other measure to a particular fishery in the CECAF region, provided suitable expertise can be applied to the problem. A major role of the project should be to make known and available to CECAF countries, individually, or collectively, this experience.
At present about half the catches taken in the CECAF region are caught by non-African vessels. All of these catches, except for some tuna, are taken within the 200-mile zone. Under the terms of the new Law of the Sea these would come under the jurisdiction of the coastal state, but this jurisdiction carries with it the requirement to allow access by non-local vessels in cases where the coastal state cannot fully utilize the resources. It is clear that for some time into the future the coastal states will not be able to replace fully the effort executed by the non-African vessels and, although a reduction in effort is desirable for some stocks (e.g. hakes and cephalopods), the “full utilization” of the stocks as a whole will require some non-local fishing. The existing draft texts of the new Law of the Sea do not, however, offer much guidance on what the level of this fishery should be or under what conditions it should be carried out, and some of the guidance offered can be misleading. In particular, there is the implication that the non-coastal states should be allowed access to a definable “surplus” equal to the difference between a clearly specified “total allowable catch” and the amount that the coastal state can harvest. In practice there is no uniquely definable value of the total allowable catch. The value that the coastal state (in the case of a stock occurring in only one jurisdiction) will set in a particular season will depend not only on the state of the stock at the beginning of the year but also on the objectives of national policy. If these include, for example, high economic returns, minimizing possibly harmful ecological disturbance, or the most rapid rebuilding of a depleted stock, the allowable catch will be less, and possibly very much less, than if the objective is the maximum possible catch.
It might appear that the attainment of the maximum sustainable yield (MSY) - with the emphasis placed on sustainable - would provide a uniquely definable, and usuable target. However, it is clear that there are strong economic and biological objections to MSY and that at most it can be useful as a guide to the upper limit to the amount of fishing and the total allowable catch (TAC).
The decision on the level of total fishing effort, and hence of the total allowable catch to be taken in a given season, cannot therefore be made according to a single objective formula, determined by the state of the resource concerned and applicable to all situations. If the coastal state (or coastal states jointly, in the case of shared stocks) determine some particular policy in respect of the resource which is definable in biological terms e.g. that it should be exploited as fully as possible, subject to the condition that the spawning stock should not be reduced below some predetermined level, then the biological situation of the stock determines the TAC. More usually the coastal state will take into account a wider range of factors in determining the TAC. This means that the decisions on the magnitude of the TAC and on its division between the coastal state and other fishing fleets should not be separated. The desirable logical sequence would seem to be that first, a rough order-of-magnitude value of the TAC is determined from the yield curve for the stock concerned, such as Figure 1, on the basis that under most circumstances it will be desirable to exploit the stock somewhere on the left hand shoulder of the curve (i.e. where the total catch is a substantial fraction of the maximum possible, but where each extra unit of effort is still producing a significant net addition to the total yield. From this rough figure, and the expected catches of the coastal state, a first approximation to the quantities that might be taken by the non-local fisheries can be estimated.
An examination should then be made of all the implications of the different ways in which a non-local fishery of this magnitude might be carried out. The study will include, for example, an evaluation of the possible benefits from licence fees, or contributions in kind by the government of the non-local fleets to the national economy, as well as the impact of these fleets on the resources and hence on the catches of the local vessels. From this study a preferred pattern of local and non-local fishing can be identified; from this, and in particular the effort that should be expected to be exerted by each fleet, and the knowledge of the current state of the stocks, the allowable catch for each fleet can be determined, and hence, as the final step, the total allowable catch.
Another reason in proceeding this way - determining the TAC as the sum of the allowable catches of local and non-local vessels, rather than determining the allowable catch of non-local vessels as the “surplus” remaining after subtracting local catches from the TAC - is that frequently the magnitude of the local catches depend on the magnitude of the non-local fishery. If the two fleets exploit the same stock and the catches of the local fisheries are determined by the fishing capacity of the vessels (rather than local markets, or capacity of the shore facilities), then as foreign fishing increases, the stock density will decrease and, therefore, so will the local catches.
The table below illustrates this effect, in respect of a stock for which the yield-curve is the simple parabola, and is exploited by the local fishery at an effort equal to half that required to take the MSY. This requires 5 units of effort, and gives a catch of 75 units, compared with an MSY of 100 units. The effects of different levels of additional, non-local fishing, are given in the table, assuming the local effort remains constant.
|
Effort |
Catch per Unit Effort |
Catches |
||||
|
Total |
Local |
Non-Local |
Total |
Local |
Non-Local |
|
|
5 |
5 |
0 |
15 |
75 |
75 |
0 |
|
6 |
5 |
1 |
14 |
84 |
70 |
14 |
|
7 |
5 |
2 |
13 |
91 |
65 |
26 |
|
8 |
5 |
3 |
12 |
96 |
60 |
36 |
|
9 |
5 |
4 |
11 |
99 |
55 |
44 |
|
10 |
5 |
5 |
10 |
100 |
50 |
50 |
The concept of “surplus”, and the provisions emerging from the Law of the Sea discussions still provide some guidance as to the conditions under which non-local fishing is carried on. It is clear, for instance, that if increased fishing effort would give significant sustained yields, then such increase should not be unilaterally prohibited by the coastal state, even if it would result in some decrease in the stock abundance and, hence, other things being equal, in some decrease in the catches by local vessels. At the same time, it is equally clear that the coastal state need not be expected to grant access to resources within its jurisdiction under such terms that it would suffer a net loss to its economy. That is, the non-local fisheries should provide, in cash or kind, reimbursement to the coastal state covering at least (a) the net impact on the existing local fisheries of the additional effort, including, to the extent that quantitative estimates can be made, on fisheries on stocks other than those of the target species of the non-local fisheries (i.e. taking account of incidental catches and possible biological interactions), and (b) the costs involved in allowing access to foreign vessels; these will include additional research and arrangements for surveillance and enforcement. In addition coastal states may well wish to add a further item (c) to provide them with some net benefit from the foreign fishery. (It may be noted here that in one of the most detailed pieces of legislation concerning fishery management, that of the USA provision is made for the charging of licence fees to foreign fleets to cover (b), but not the other items; this may cause difficulties when foreign fleets exploit stocks already lightly to moderately fished by USA fishermen).
Provided there is reasonable agreement on the state of the stocks and hence of the effect of increased fishing effort on the local fisheries, recompense paid to the coastal state along these lines seems likely to minimize possible differences between coastal states and those operating long-distance fleets as to what is the desirable level of the total fishing effort. In particular, the tendency which would otherwise occur for the non-local fishery interest to press for a high level of effort (and of allowable catch), will be reduced or eliminated by the sharply increasing rate of recompense implied by (a), as the stock approaches full exploitation.
The actual method of recompense provided to the coastal state can take many forms. The simplest is the direct payment of licence fees according to some agreed formula, which will usually take account of the catch, and also of the number and size of the vessels engaged; this method however does not help the coastal state itself become involved in the fishery. Such involvement may be most directly facilitated by some form of joint venture arrangement, especially a form under which there is a gradual transition towards greater involvement by nationals of the coastal state at all levels, from top management downwards. In between there are arrangements, such as the requirement that foreign vessels should land a certain quantity (or a certain percentage of the total catch) at local ports, either for local consumption, or to be processed by local enterprises for export to third countries, under which the coastal state can obtain a share of the benefits (in terms of employment, income, etc.) arising from the fishery.
Any study of the relative attractiveness, from the point of view of the coastal state, of different arrangements should take account of all the possible alternatives, and not necessarily only those put forward by countries interested in operating non-local fleets. In particular, such a study should recognize that the actual catching process is not the only way, and is often not the best way, of obtaining benefits from a fishery. In many countries it is the ancillary activities, from vessel construction and maintenance, through the supply of fuel, etc. to the fishermen, to the processing and marketing that give the best returns. Coastal states may well find it more attractive to ensure that they get a full share of these activities, rather than of the sea-going work, which even in the CECAF area can be uncomfortable.
The analysis of the economic and social effects of different policies does not lend itself to the cooperative, multinational working group approach that is appropriate to the resources studies. Because of the differences between countries and the lesser need for the pooling of data from all sources, the analyses are well suited to being carried out by individuals or particular institutions.
The CECAF fisheries are vast and complex. Although there is some degree of interaction at the biological, operational or marketing level between any two groups of fishermen or fishing operations and none can be treated wholly in isolation, some degree of division can be approached from two directions: on the basis of the resource, an individual stock, or species and all the fisheries exploiting that resource or from the landward viewpoint, dealing with fisheries based in a particular port, or in a particular country. These approaches are not mutually exclusive and, in fact, need to proceed together. This may be best done in sequence; first, a set of broad studies of the fisheries on each stock, or group of stocks, to identify the general benefits that could result from different types of action (e.g. increased catches from underutilized resources, reduced costs from control of fishing on heavily fished stocks), with rough quantification of those benefits; then, more detailed studies at the country level of how these general actions might be implemented in practice and the form in which the potential benefits might be realized; this, in turn, will pose questions that will have to be answered by further analyses at the resource level which will also in general be required at regular intervals to take account of new information coming from the biological studies of the resource, and so on.
For the resource-directed studies, and particularly the first round of such studies, which is essentially preliminary to national studies, there seems to be no other source than the CECAF Project. None of the coastal states command at present much expertise in the necessary disciplines, and it would be difficult for analyses carried out by countries with long-distance fisheries to find acceptance by all concerned, even if they could command the necessary expertise. In fact many, if not most, of the fishery economists and others with the necessary experience to carry out the type of analysis needed are working in North America or in other countries with no direct interest in the fisheries in the CECAF area. They would need to be hired by the project to do the necessary work. In the first instance these studies would presumably cover the same groups of stocks as are being studied by the various stock assessment working groups and would be based, so far as the necessary resources information is concerned, on the results of these working groups. Account would be taken of the uncertainties in these results and the range of possibilities as to the current state of the resources. Since in most cases, these are still considerable, it is important not to base economic analyses on one single assumption regarding the resource. In particular, the implication of those alternative assumptions should be examined that are potentially unfavourable to the action being considered. For example, if investment in additional vessels appears to be economically attractive according to the “best”, or central, estimate concerning the magnitude of the resource and its state of exploitation, an examination should be made of using estimates that are consistent with the biological evidence, but of a smaller resource, and a heavier state of exploitation. Similarly, if restrictive management measures appear desirable on one set of resource estimates they should be reassessed using estimates of resource magnitude towards the upper end of the probable range.
The primary task of these basic resource studies would be to translate the biological conclusions of the assessment working group into economic terms, especially the determination of the potential net return (value of catch less the costs of capture) at different levels of a total amount of fishing. Since the costs of executing a given fishing mortality are not fixed, but depend on the nature of the fishery - the types of vessels, gear etc. - alternative patterns of fishing would have to be examined. In particular, in the case of heavily-fished stocks, attention would need to be given to the possible effects on economic efficiency of different methods of controlling the total amount of fishing e.g. catch quotas, limitations on certain types of gear etc. These studies would identify for each resource the approximate level of total fishing effort which would potentially be most desirable and the order of magnitude of the potential benefits. They should also, at least for typical elements of the fisheries on each stock, estimate some of the more detailed indications of economic performance - rate of return on investment, changes in price to consumers, etc.
These more detailed analyses are, however, better done at the national level, taking account not so much of other fishing on the same stock, but fishing on other stocks that may be carried out by the same vessels, or supply the same market. These national studies should in principle be carried out by the appropriate national institution, department of fisheries, or national planning office, but many of the coastal states of West Africa do not have the expertise to do this. Assistance through the CECAF project would therefore be valuable, probably in the form of short-term consultants.
So far as the project is concerned, the main difference in the two activities is that the resource-directed studies are of general interest and need to be disseminated as widely as possible and as quickly as possible. The national studies are matters for the country concerned and may well contain semiconfidential matters that the country may wish to use, for example, in negotiating with others, especially those exploiting the resource. The results, therefore, would be submitted only to the government and a wider distribution might only be done some time later, as a matter of record.
