Economic Outcomes for Harvesters under the West Coast Groundfish Trawl Catch Share Program: Have Goals and Objectives Been Met?

Abstract

The West Coast Groundfish Trawl Catch Share Program was designed to achieve multiple economic goals and objectives, including increasing net benefits, profitability, flexibility, and utilization of harvest allocations. In this article, we leverage seven years of comprehensive cost and earnings data to evaluate progress towards these goals with a focus on harvesters. Our assessment shows that five years post-implementation, net benefits to the nation have doubled, and indicators of productivity and profitability have increased. The fleet that targets Pacific whiting has seen the largest gains, due in part to increases in total allowable catch and the elimination of the race-to-fish. However, increased revenues have not been realized to the degree that was expected for harvesters targeting non-whiting groundfish, partly due to lower than predicted consolidation and relatively low quota utilization. Economic outcomes indicate that tradeoffs exist between certain objectives of the program, specifically between achieving full utilization and flexibility for harvesters. Results are discussed in the context of the design and evaluation of catch share programs for diverse, multispecies fisheries.

Outcomes of the West Coast Groundfish Trawl Catch Share Program: The First Five Years

“…For example, it is unclear how to balance the goals of increasing net benefits and profitability with the objective of minimizing adverse impacts on participants and communities because the primary source of both is consolidation (Errend et al 2018, Russell, Van Oostenburg, and Vizek 2018. Similarly, the goal of full utilization may compete with the goal of increasing operational flexibility; the flexibility of individual harvesters and processors to make the decisions that maximize individual profits may result in less-than-full utilization of the quota (Errend et al 2018. The framework for evaluating options that involve tradeoffs and multiple sources of costs and benefits provided by Nayani and Warlick (2018) may be helpful in making these difficult decisions.…”

“…The first two papers evaluate the program from an economics context, including net economic benefits, profitability, flexibility, and the utilization of harvest allocations (Errend et al 2018, Guldin et al 2010. A unique component of the program was mandatory cost and earnings data collection ("Economic Data Collection") from all catch share participants, which makes such evaluation possible.…”

Crew in the West Coast Groundfish Catch Share Program: Changes in Compensation and Job Satisfaction

“…Job satisfaction did not change for crew on groundfish vessels, with 74-77% ranking their job satisfaction as "Good" or "Excellent." For whiting vessels, all crew ranked their job satisfaction as "Good" or "Excellent" in 2012, a slight increase from 2010, but that value dropped to 83% in 2016, potentially a result of low catch attainment in 2015 and 2016 (Errend et al 2018). The percentage of groundfish crew rating pay satisfaction as "Good" or "Excellent" increased steadily through the three survey periods from only 54% during the 2010 survey to 96% in the 2016 survey.…”

“…Ex-vessel revenue, the number of vessels, the number of crew days, and the number of crew positions The first component of wage calculations is ex-vessel revenue. Ex-vessel revenue for whiting and non-whiting landings is higher under catch shares compared to the pre-catch share period (Figure 1), largely due to a combination of rising whiting total allowable catch (TAC) and higher ex-vessel prices for both whiting and sablefish, particularly in 2011 (Errend et al 2018). Since the implementation of the catch share program, ex-vessel revenue for groundfish vessels ranged from $23 to $32 million per year; and due to consolidation in the number of participants (Figure 1), average revenue per groundfish vessel is higher than the pre-catch share period.…”

“…The non-whiting groundfish component of the trawl fishery was not a derby fishery owing to existing cumulative landings limits that distributed catches throughout the year, and because overcapitalization had already been largely limited by the 1994 Limited Entry program and the 2003 buyback program 1 that removed nearly 40% of active vessels from the fishery. As a result, the transition to catch shares coincided with only a modest decrease in the number of active vessels and season length increased only for some subfisheries and actually contracted for others (Errend et al 2018). Therefore, the impacts of the catch share program on crew were expected to differ from those seen in other fisheries.…”