Global Challenges in Recreational Fisheries

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Author: Oystein Aas

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GLOBAL CHALLENGES IN RECREATIONAL FISHERIES

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GLOBAL CHALLENGES IN RECREATIONAL FISHERIES

Edited by Øystein Aas

Co-editors

Robert Arlinghaus, Robert B. Ditton, David Policansky and Harold L. Schramm Jr.

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© 2008 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd Blackwell Publishing editorial offices: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK Tel: +44 (0)1865 776868 Blackwell Publishing Professional, 2121 State Avenue, Ames, Iowa 50014-8300, USA Tel: +1 515 292 0140 Blackwell Publishing Asia Pty Ltd, 550 Swanston Street, Carlton, Victoria 3053, Australia Tel: +61 (0)3 8359 1011 The right of the Author to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher. Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book are trade names, service marks, trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. The Publisher is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold on the understanding that the Publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services. If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought. First published 2008 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd ISBN: 978-1-4051-5657-8 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Global challenges in recreational fisheries / edited by Øystein Aas. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN: 978-1-4051-5657-8 (alk. paper) 1. Fishery management. 2. Fishing. I. Aas, Øystein. SH328.G56 2008 333.95′69–dc22 A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library Set in 11/13 pt Times by Newgen Imaging Systems Pvt. Ltd, Chennai, India Printed and bound in Singapore by Markono Print Media Pte Ltd The publisher’s policy is to use permanent paper from mills that operate a sustainable forestry policy, and which has been manufactured from pulp processed using acid-free and elementary chlorine-free practices. Furthermore, the publisher ensures that the text paper and cover board used have met acceptable environmental accreditation standards. For further information on Blackwell Publishing, visit our website: www.blackwellpublishing.com

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Contents

List of contributors Acknowledgments

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ix xii

Chapter 1

Introduction Øystein Aas

1

Chapter 2

An international perspective on recreational fishing Chapter editor: Robert B. Ditton 2.1 Overview Robert B. Ditton 2.2 Overview of recreational fishing in Australia Dennis D. Reid 2.3 Current status and challenges facing recreational fishing in the People’s Republic of China Jianzhong Shen 2.4 Recreational fishing in Finland Anna-Liisa Toivonen 2.5 The social and economic significance of recreational fishing in Germany Robert Arlinghaus 2.6 Recreational fisheries in Lithuania: Putting Lithuania on the recreational fishing map in Europe Algirdas Domarkas and Eglė Radaitytė 2.7 Recreational fishing in Malaysia Zahaitun Mahani Zakariah 2.8 Recreational angling in the Netherlands: Participation, trends and management Toine W.P.M. Aarts 2.9 Recreational fishing in Sweden Torleif Eriksson 2.10 An overview of angling in the United States of America Gilbert C. Radonski and Andrew J. Loftus

5 5 13

18 21

25

30 34

39 43

47

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vi

Contents

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Biological impacts of recreational fishing resulting from exploitation, stocking and introduction Wolf-Christian Lewin, Daryl Peter McPhee and Robert Arlinghaus Marine recreational fisheries management challenges and marine protected areas: Comparison between the Mediterranean and Australia Daryl Peter McPhee, Ana Gordoa and X. Illas European sea bass in the North Sea: Past, present and future status, use and management challenges Jonathan E. Colman, Mike G. Pawson, Johannes Holmen and Thrond O. Haugen Scale and participation in recreational fisheries management: Nordic examples Pekka Salmi, Erik Neuman and Tapio Hakaste

56

75

93

111

130

Chapter 8

Substitution in recreational fishing Brad Gentner and Stephen Sutton

Chapter 9

A bioeconomic analysis of different management regimes in recreational fisheries Jon Olaf Olaussen and Anders Skonhoft

170

Economic impact of angling in Scotland and Iceland Sveinn Agnarsson, Alan Radford and Geoff Riddington

188

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

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Meaning and relevance of the ecosystem approach to recreational fisheries management: Emphasis on the importance of the human dimension Robert Arlinghaus and Ian G. Cowx

Trends and developments in catch and release Chapter editor: David Policansky 11.1 Overview David Policansky 11.2 Factors affecting C&R mortality of striped bass caught on natural bait in Chesapeake Bay Rudolph Lukacovic and James H. Uphoff Jr.

150

202 202

208

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Contents

Potential effects of circle hooks on the US recreational Atlantic billfish fishery Jason Schratwieser 11.4 The Atlantic salmon C&R story Eva B. Thorstad, Tor F. Næsje, Guy W. Mawle and David Policansky 11.5 The challenge of ethical angling: The case of C&R and its relation to fish welfare Robert Arlinghaus

vii

11.3

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

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Competitive fishing: Trends, Opportunities and challenges Chapter editor: Harold L. Schramm Jr. 12.1 Competitive fishing and its role in recreational fisheries management Harold L. Schramm Jr. and John C. Harrison 12.2 Socio-economic analysis of competitive fishing in Poland Arkadiusz Wołlos, Hanna Mioduszewska and Harold L. Schramm Jr. 12.3 Legislative treatment and current status of competitive fishing in Germany Thomas Meinelt, Robert Arlinghaus and K. Jendrusch 12.4 From the inside looking out: A tournament organization’s perspective on growing competitive fishing Charlie Evans

214 219

223

237

237

249

254

259

International fishing tourism: Past, present and future Trude Borch, Øystein Aas and David Policansky

268

Subsistence versus sport: Cultural Conflict on the Frontiers of Fishing Jonathan Lyman

292

Recruiting new anglers: Driving forces, constraints and examples of success Richard Wightman, Stephen Sutton, Bruce E. Matthews, Kirk Gillis, Jonathan Colman and Jan-Rune R. Samuelsen

303

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viii

Contents

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Index

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The role of non-government organizations in recreational fisheries management: Challenges, responsibilities and possibilities John C. Harrison and Jason Schratwieser

324

Recreational fisheries in the twenty-first century: Towards a code of conduct Ian G. Cowx and Robert Arlinghaus

338

Epilogue: Benchmarking global recreational fishing Øystein Aas and Harold L. Schramm Jr.

353

363

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List of Contributors

Toine W.P.M. Aarts Sport Fishing Netherlands, Bilthoven, The Netherlands Øystein Aas Norwegian Institute for Nature Research, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Lillehammer, Norway Sveinn Agnarsson, Institute of Economic Studies, University of Iceland, Reykjavik, Iceland Robert Arlinghaus, Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries, Department of Biology and Ecology of Fishes, Müggelseedamm, Berlin, Germany Trude Borch, Norut Social Science Research, Tromsø, Norway Jonathan E. Colman, Department of Biology, University of Oslo, Blindern, Oslo, Norway Ian G. Cowx, International Fisheries Institute, University of Hull, Hull, UK Robert B. Ditton, Texas A&M University, Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences, College Station, Texas, USA Algirdas Domarkas, The Union of Fisheries Specialists, Vilnius, Lithuania Dennis Dunbar Reid, New South Wales Department of Primary Industries, Cronulla Fisheries Research Centre, Cronulla, NSW, Australia Torleif Eriksson, Department of Aquaculture, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Umeå, Sweden Charlie Evans, FLW Outdoors, Benton, Kentucky, USA Brad Gentner, Gentner Consulting Group, Silver Spring, Maryland, USA Kirk Gillis, Recreational Boating and Fishing Foundation, Alexandria, Virginia, USA Ana Gordoa, Spanish Research Council (CSIC), Blanes, Girona, Spain Tapio Hakaste, TE-centre of Häme, Tampere, Finland John C. Harrison, Recfish Australia (Australian Recreational and Sport Fishing Industry Confederation Inc.), Grange, Queensland, Australia

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x

Contributors

Thrond Haugen, Department of Biology, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway Johannes Holmen, Department of Biology, University of Oslo, Blindern, Oslo, Norway Kai Jendrusch, Felsberg, Germany Wolf-Christian Lewin, Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries, Department of Biology and Ecology of Fishes, Berlin, Germany Andrew J. Loftus, Andrew Loftus Consulting, Annapolis, Maryland, USA Rudolph Lukacovic, Maryland Department of Natural Resources Fisheries Service, Stevensville, Maryland, USA Jonathan Lyman, Department of Fish and Game, Juneau, Alaska, USA Bruce E. Matthews, Recreational Boating and Fishing Foundation, Alexandria, Virginia, USA Guy W. Mawle, Environment Agency, Bristol, UK Daryl Peter McPhee, School of Geography, Planning & Architecture, University of Queensland, St Lucia, Australia Thomas Meinelt, Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries, Department of Inland Fisheries, Müggelseedamm, Berlin, Germany Tor F. Næsje, Norwegian Institute for Nature Research (NINA), Trondheim, Norway Erik Neuman, Skärgårdsutveckling AB, Mariehamn, Åland, Finland Jon Olaf Olaussen, Department of Economics, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway Mike G. Pawson, CEFAS, Lowestoft Laboratory, Lowestoft, Suffolk, UK David Policansky, Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology, National Research Council, Washington, DC, USA Eglė Radaitytė, Lithuanian State Pisciculture and Fisheries Research Centre, Head of EU Matters, International Relations and Science Section, Vilnius, Lithuania Alan Radford, Glasgow Caledonian University, Glasgow, UK Gilbert C. Radonski, Andrew Loftus Consulting, Cape Carteret, North Carolina, USA

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Contributors

xi

Pekka Salmi, Finnish Game and Fisheries Research InstituteSaimaa Fisheries Research and Aquaculture, Enonkoski, Finland Hal Schramm, U.S. Geological Survey, Mississippi Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, Mississippi, USA Jason Schratwieser, International Game Fish Association, Dania Beach, Florida, USA Jianzhong Shen, College of Fisheries, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, P.R.China Anders Skonhoft, Department of Economics, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway Stephen Sutton, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, James Cook University, Townsville, Queensland, Australia Eva B. Thorstad, Norwegian Institute for Nature Research (NINA), Trondheim, Norway Anna-Liisa Toivonen, Finnish Game and Fisheries Research Institute, Helsinki, Finland James Uphoff Jr, Maryland Department of Natural Resources Fisheries Service, Stevensville, Maryland, USA Richard Peter Wightman, Environment Agency – England and Wales, Almondbury, Bristol, UK Zhen Zahaitun Mahani binti Zakariah, Maritime Institute of Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

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Acknowledgments

I wish to thank the following people and institutions for their support and inspiration in this endeavour: z

z z z z z z

Wiley-Blackwell for accepting this book for publishing and for their support and follow-up during the production process. A special thanks goes to the publisher, Nigel J. Balmforth, and to editorial assistant Kate Nuttall. The Norwegian Research Council for economic support to the book project. Robert Arlinghaus, Robert Ditton, David Policansky and Hal Schramm for their help as co-editors. Great job! All the authors who contributed to this volume, and who had to put up with my direct and sometimes strict and demanding replies. The numerous professionals who have helped in reviewing the various versions of the chapter drafts. The Norwegian Institute for Nature Research, for which I work, for accepting my use of research time to compile and make this book. The administrative officer at NINA, Margrethe Tingstad, for her excellent help in editing and completing the manuscripts.

This book is partly a product based on the activities and networks established at the fourth World Recreational Fishing Conference held at Trondheim, Norway, in June 2005. All the sponsors, committee members and participants at that meeting have also helped in the making of this book. Thank you to all of you! Øystein Aas Professor, Senior Research Scientist Norwegian Institute for Nature Research, Lillehammer/Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Ås/University of TromsØ, TromsØ Norway February 2007

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Chapter 1

Introduction Øystein Aas

Admittedly many of the problems have been recognized, thought of, written about and even variously acted upon; but the fact essentially remains that there is no generally recognized body of integrated recreational fisheries management theory or understanding. A.L.W. Tuomi (1977)

Through the efforts of many workers, our knowledge and professional ability in recreational fisheries are steadily growing. Yet, many challenges remain. This book represents the third in a series published by Blackwell Scientific (now Wiley-Blackwell), focusing on multidisciplinary research and management challenges related to recreational fishing. These volumes (Hickley and Tompkins 1998; Pitcher and Hollingworth 2002; Aas 2007) are closely linked to a conference series that started with the European Inland Fisheries Advisory Committee’s conference in Dublin 1996, later named the first World Recreational Fishing Conference (WRFC). Since then, the conference has been arranged every third year. In 1999, the second WRFC was conducted in Vancouver, Canada. The third WRFC was held in 2002 in Darwin, Australia, and the fourth WRFC took place in Trondheim, Norway, in 2005. The fifth WRFC is scheduled for November 2008, under the leadership of the International Game Fishing Association (IGFA), in Dania Beach, Florida, USA. Indeed, we seem to have succeeded in making this a viable and lasting meeting place! There has been a steady increase in countries and stakeholder groups represented at the conference, and at the Trondheim conference, 250 participants from almost 30 countries and five continents attended, with representatives for management agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), research institutions and the recreational fishing business. Yet the WRFC conference series has the obvious potential to reach much farther and attract many more people working with recreational fishing. It is my hope that the growing interest in the conference series will continue and especially that regions and groups that have been under-represented will attend to a larger degree. During the more than 10 years that have gone by since Dublin 1996, the term ‘globalization’ has acquired a practical and not just an academic meaning to 1

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2

Global challenges in recreational fisheries

citizens and professionals, including our little community of recreational fisheries managers, researchers, businesspeople and NGO representatives. Where Hickley and Tompkins (1998) documented large national and regional differences in views and practices, we have moved forward to better insights, starting to be able to explain these differences (Aas 2002). However, there is still much to be learned and much cooperation to be developed. The main goal for this book is to provide an updated, thought-provoking textbook on major topical issues and challenges in recreational fishing management. Further, we want to add strength to the global network of professionals working with recreational fishing in different arenas and sub-sectors. Subsequently, the overall objective with the book is to contribute to sustainable recreational fishing management, both in developed and developing countries. The fourth WRFC focused on several topics and targeted all stakeholders in the recreational fishing sector, including researchers, managers, NGO representatives and businesses. This book reflects that diversity, as it contributes a variety of chapters, both in terms of content and approaches. The editorial panel and the authors have tried to avoid typical single-storied cases, and instead we have tried to pick out topics and issues that are of interest to many regions of the world, and several state-of-the art papers are included in the book. The authors are a mix of researchers, managers and NGO representatives, making the chapters a mix of typical research papers, essays and discussion papers. Our hope is that this will make the book more attractive to readers. All chapters have been refereed to international journal standards, revised and carefully edited, but the different types of papers that are being presented have, of course, been taken into account in the reviews.

Short overview Chapter 2 is a global outlook on recreational fishing, using reports from nine countries to illustrate and highlight important diversity in recreational fishing worldwide. Participation, economy, rights regimes and basic management frameworks are presented, showing huge diversity among countries and pointing to major challenges and opportunities. The application of ecosystem management to fishery management and a comprehensive overview of the biological impacts of angling are then to follow in Chapters 3 and 4, providing important basis for sustainable, proactive management of recreational fisheries. Then, we focus on some specific issues for management of recreational fishing in the marine environment. Multiple-use interests are often more prominent in marine than freshwater environments, and setting aside areas at sea for conservation is gradually becoming an issue, representing challenges as well as opportunities to recreational fishing. These are presented and discussed in Chapter 5 using

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Introduction

3

Australia and the Mediterranean as examples. Climate change represents yet unknown challenges to society, and day-to-day recreational fishery management already faces challenges from changed distribution and productivity on several fish species. Management of the European sea bass in Northern Europe is an interesting case in this perspective, discussed in Chapter 6. The principle of subsidiarity influences fishery management as well as other sectors of natural resources management. Challenges associated with this are discussed in Chapter 7, using Sweden and Finland as cases. Chapters 8, 9 and 10 apply different aspects of economy to fishery management. The phenomenon of substitution has been used to explain consequences of management decisions by economists and social-psychologists. Here, the two disciplines are compared and important lessons for future research and management are identified. Bioeconomic models are among the more powerful tools to illustrate outcomes from decision making in fishery management. This is illustrated using an example from Norwegian Atlantic salmon fisheries in Chapter 9. The importance of recreational fishing for income and job creation is illustrated in Chapter 10, again building on cases from more than one country – here Scotland and Iceland are used. Chapters 11 and 12 are state-of-the-art compilations on catch-and-release and competitive fishing. An update and overview of these important and intriguing topics in recreational fishing is presented, major trends and diversity are discussed and new research findings are presented. Fishing tourism is the topic addressed in Chapter 13. Despite its being a major type of tourism in several areas in the northern and southern hemisphere, few efforts are made to place and analyse fishing tourism in relation to other similar categories of tourism. In Chapter 14, a thought-provoking essay addresses the meeting between native people and sport anglers, an issue of relevance in several of the most sought after fishing destinations on the globe. Chapter 15 presents novel experiences on how to recruit new anglers in the USA, Great Britain and Norway, hopefully to inspire other countries. NGOs represent major players, and their analysis of major challenges and opportunities in the years ahead are presented in Chapter 16. A global code of conduct for recreational fishing has been discussed at previous WRFC conferences. Major aspects of the development of such a code is presented and discussed in Chapter 17. The diversity and general approach of this book will hopefully make it relevant and of interest to recreational fishing professionals in all continents and in different institutions, organizations and businesses related to recreational fishing. We also hope that the approach will make the book highly applicable in graduate university courses in recreational fisheries management. Compiling and writing this book has been a challenging task for all involved. Such extra efforts always are. While acknowledging this and thanking all contributors, I also hope that it has been somewhat fun for us all.

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References Aas, Ø. (2002) The next chapter: Multicultural and cross-disciplinary progress in evaluating recreational fisheries. In: T.J. Pitcher and C. Hollingworth (Eds) Recreational Fisheries. Ecological, Economic and Social Evaluation. Blackwell Science, Oxford, pp. 252–263. Aas, Ø. (Ed) (2007) Global Challenges in Recreational Fisheries, Wiley-Blackwell. Oxford. Hickley, P. and Tompkins, H. (Eds) (1998) Recreational Fisheries. Social, Economic and Management Aspects. Blackwell Publishing, Oxford. Pitcher, T.J. and Hollingworth, C. (Eds) (2002) Recreational Fisheries. Ecological, Economic and Social Evaluation. Blackwell Science, Oxford. Tuomi, A.L.W. (1977) Fisheries Management Goals, Problems, and Options. Report and Technical Papers of the Second European Consultation on the Economic Evaluation of Sport and Commercial Fisheries. EIFAC Technical Paper 26.

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Chapter 2

An international perspective on recreational fishing Chapter editor: Robert B. Ditton

Abstract Besides using ‘recreational fishing’ as a rubric for all non-commercial forms of fishing, it is difficult to generalize further about recreational fishing because of social and cultural differences. The socialization process is probably generalizable between countries, cultures and subcultures, but there is anecdotal evidence that the meaning of recreational fishing to people in various countries and cultures and even how the activity is practised differ frequently. There is much to be learnt about recreational fishing in its various forms. To begin to explore the extent and character of recreational fishing, authors in seven developed nations and two developing nations provided an overview of recreational fishing in their respective countries with attention to the following topics: number of anglers, participation rate, fishing frequency, annual non-durable expenditures for fishing, management institutions and fishing constraints. An assessment of similarities and differences was made with a special attention to social science research needs and management implications.

2.1

Overview

Robert B. Ditton Traditions and chronologies of angling development have varied by country and region of the world to the point where it is virtually impossible to define recreational fishing in any agreed-upon way. Every nation in the world with recreational fisheries has developed or will develop a definition of recreational fishing that is socially and culturally defined by participants in the activity, and recognized by those charged with fishery resource management in each region and country. In this regard, as we increase global communication, we must be careful not to apply our own values or research results to understanding recreational fishing in other countries, cultures or subcultures. If terms like ‘recreational fishing’ 5

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or research results on angler behaviour and motivations in the United States, for example, are being discussed in an international context; they cannot and should not be generalized to other nations, cultures or subcultures. It may turn out that future social science research efforts reveal few significant differences in experience preferences between particular angler groups in the United States and elsewhere despite differences in preferred species, but that remains to be seen.

Objectives There are four objectives of this chapter. First, are there some fundamental generalizations we can make about recreational fishing and those who participate in it worldwide? Second, what do we know or think we know about social and cultural differences and similarities from the current human dimensions literature? Third, what are the differences and similarities among a purposive sample of nations in terms of selected descriptors of recreational fishing such as number of anglers, participation rate, fishing frequency, annual non-durable expenditures for fishing, primary management authority and fishing constraints? Fourth, where does all of this lead us in terms of having a greater understanding of recreational fishing as a discretionary time pursuit, social science research needs and management implications?

Social meanings of recreational fishing As we move from country to country, culture to culture and to various subcultures and ethnic groups, we find anecdotal evidence that the meaning of recreational fishing to people, how the activity is practised and even what the activity is called differ frequently. There are similarities as well. In most Western countries, recreational fishing is described and defined mainly from a white middleaged male perspective because this is the predominant group of participants and, as a result, the angler group that managers and scientists know best. Can and should we assume that majority perspectives on experience preferences, consumptive orientation, species preferences, satisfaction, and so on are representative of the angler population overall or population subgroups? The answer is clearly no if the goal of management is to serve the diversity of recreational fishing wants and needs. Similarly, there has been little to no attention to understanding gender differences in recreational fishing perhaps because, as Henderson notes, most researchers (and likely fishery managers) assumed that the male experience was representative of all participants (Henderson 1994). As with most other leisure pursuits, recreational fishing is a social activity that involves family, friends and various combinations thereof. In his early personal community hypothesis, Burch (1969) proposed that people shared various interests

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International perspective on recreational fishing

7

and activities with other people in their personal communities at home and work. Understanding social group composition helps us to understand the various social meanings individuals assign to their activities (Cheek and Burch 1976). Therefore, instead of some singular view of recreational fishing, going fishing with family is quite different in terms of experience preferences sought than going fishing with close friends from the neighbourhood or from work, or than fishing alone (Field and O’Leary 1973).

The socialization process The family social group plays a major role in why some young people participate in recreational fishing and others do not and how they become participants in their youth and continue later in life. Ultimately, these understandings help us understand why rates of fishing participation are high in some places and low in others. Young people go through a learning process and are socialized into fishing mainly on family vacations and holidays. Socialization is a psychological process by which individuals are initiated into the culture of an activity, and learn various aspects of that culture including the acquisition of the skills, knowledge, experience, equipment as well as the norms involved in fishing (Kelly 1990). While the socialization process is generalizable between countries, cultures and subcultures, there are likely to be significant differences in exactly what information is transmitted about fishing and how it is transmitted. These are the very differences that prevent us from making many generalizations about recreational fishing and how it is practised worldwide. Individuals can be socialized into fishing as youngsters through their childhood experiences or as adults. Furthermore, early childhood experiences can influence leisure choices including fishing styles, and the extent of involvement as an adult, as demonstrated by Siemer et al. (1989). Socialization among minority group members can take place later in childhood because family members have had less exposure to recreational fishing and are less likely to participate. Their learning process depends on friends at school and co-workers. For example, African American males in the United States of America start fishing in freshwater between the ages of 17 and 22 on average. This means that they start fishing later in life and have fewer years of fishing on average than their Anglo counterparts (Hunt and Ditton 2002). We are just now beginning to understand the socialization process among seniors and women because of their expressed demand for recreational fishing.

The role of culture in understanding recreational fishing Cultural patterns contribute to what people think about fishing and, more specifically, how they participate in the activity. Culture embodies a system of

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shared beliefs, values, customs and behaviours that members of society use to cope with their world and with one another (Bates and Plog 1990). Right from birth, members of various cultural groups begin learning their patterns of behaviour and ways of thinking about things through interaction, observation and imitation (Samovar et al. 1998). Individuals develop a basic definition of self and groups through this interaction process as well as specific perceptions of reality (Kelly 1990). These perceptions are based on belief and value systems that are learnt and perpetuated from generation to generation through continued shared experiences (Bates and Plog 1990; Samovar et al. 1998). This socialization process differs as cultures differ in terms of their social, perceptual and behavioural patterns. Differing cultures help explain important differences regarding fishing behaviours, practices and attitudes among various subpopulations of anglers in the United States and among anglers in other places in the world. For example, catch-and-release fishing is an appropriate fishing behaviour for some anglers who have learnt it from those who mentored them in fishing but not for others who have learnt something different. In the United States, catch-and-release fishing is widely promoted as a means to reduce pressure on recreational fishery resources but marketing messages are not likely to take precedence over the generational learning as to what constitutes recreational fishing and which are appropriate practises. For some anglers, catch and release is what constitutes ethical angling; for others, it is a way to keep on fishing while harvesting the largest fish possible. It is a concept that makes little sense to African and Hispanic American anglers in the United States, for example, who have more diverse species preferences and for whom retention and eating fish is an important part of the fishing experience (Hunt and Ditton 2002). It is a well-accepted norm of participation among billfish anglers (Ditton and Stoll 2003), but for anglers in other cultures, based on their beliefs and values, it is seen as ‘playing with the fish’ and a totally inappropriate form of fishing based on the concepts of fishing they learnt previously (Lyman 2002; see also Policansky et al. Chapter 11, this volume). Important conflicts can occur within the angling community when angler segments with different understandings of fishing, attitudes and behaviour come together (Arlinghaus 2005). For example, in the United Kingdom, there is the potential for conflict between Polish immigrants and UK residents in terms of the disposition of the catch of carp (Cyprinus carpio L.). Polish immigrants like to eat the carp, whereas the value of the carp for UK coarse anglers is for catch-and-release fishing. Overall, it is difficult to generalize about fishing, or any leisure activity for that matter, because activities vary by social and cultural context. Thus, the term ‘recreational fishing’ is nothing more than a label or rubric of convenience for including all non-commercial forms of fishing, but there is much to be learnt from what constitutes recreational fishing in its various forms. The socialization process is probably the common denominator present in recreational fishing

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9

everywhere but with differences as to who provides the mentorship, when and where socialization takes place and for how long a period of time.

International overview of recreational fishing To better understand the extent and character of recreational fishing in various countries, several authors were asked to provide an overview of recreational fishing in their respective countries with attention to the following topics, to the extent that data were available: z z z z z z z

description of freshwater and saltwater fishery resources extent of participation in recreational fishing (number of anglers and their effort and rate of participation) catch social and economic significance of recreational fisheries institutional arrangements constraints to recreational fishing future outlook for fishing.

Seven developed countries were selected for analysis purposes: Australia, Finland, Germany, Lithuania, Netherlands, Sweden and the United States. The two developing countries selected were China and Malaysia. Looking at similarities and differences in terms of selected descriptors of recreational fishing, participation (Table 2.1) was considered a useful way to illustrate the extent of diversity involved in recreational fishing.

Developed nations For the seven developed nations, there was diversity in recreational fishing participation rates (percentage of the population that participated) ranging from a high of 55% in Lithuania to a low of 4.7% in Germany; three countries had participation rates of 30% or higher (Sweden, Finland and Lithuania; Table 2.1). Participation rates in recreational fishing are of interest when considered with population growth. If the number of anglers remains about the same while the population increases, this usually leads to a decline in rate of fishing participation. This is happening in the United States, where the rate of fishing participation has declined from 19% (1991) to 17% (1996) to 16% (2001) and this trend has been greeted by various efforts to recruit new participants to recreational fishing (see Wightman et al. Chapter 15, this volume). In developed nations, where the population is aging, where there are more people living in metropolitan areas and increases in subpopulation groups with low rates of fishing participation, this could be an issue as well.

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2006 Population

Number of anglers

Participation Fishing frequency Expenditures/year Primary management rate (%) (days/year) (non-durable goods) responsibility €161

Licence for sampling purposes

Two states have licences

6

State level

7a

20

No licence Permits to fish in private waters

3.4 million

Private or collective owned

Various licences

90 milliona

Private landowner

20 million

€379

€176

1300 million

31

19

Australia

4.7

35–40

China

3.3 milliona

1.9 million

National and State licence. Permits to use private waters

82 millionb

No licence

5.2 million

No licence

Finland

Board of Angling Development (government and non-government members)

Germany

National level

16

€326

€111

State level

Privately owned fishing rights holders

Water boards and fishing clubs

State licences

Various licences

Sport fishing Netherlands licence

€40.5

Undetermined Undetermined

1.5 milliona

11

16

55

24.4 millionb

1.78 million

3.6 millionb

Malaysia 16.5 millionb

33

Lithuania

Netherlands

3 million

212.3 million

10

9 millionb

USA

Estimated. http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/index.html

34.1 million

Sweden

Privately owned fishing rights holders

Nation

Table 2.1 Descriptors of recreational fishing for selected nations.

a b

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11

In terms of annual fishing frequency, Germany had the highest number of days per year (31). Three nations clustered between 16 and 19 days per year: Finland (19), Sweden (16) and the United States (16). Likewise, in terms of expenditures per year for trip-related expenditures per year, we see a clustering of expenditures by Germany (€379) and the United States (€326), and another clustering by Australia (€161), Finland (€176) and Sweden (€111). It was surprising to see as much clustering here because we did not know whether responses were only for trip-related non-durable expenses (which were sought) or included durable supplies and equipment as well. Sweden and Finland appeared to have similar licensing arrangements with waters and fishing rights thereto owned by riparian land owners with some notable exceptions made for non-owners. With the fisheries governance systems in Finland and Sweden, the waters are privately owned but generally collectively managed. Most of the inland waters are under private ownership along with the possession of land. The decision maker is commonly a collective, a shareholders’ association, which jointly controls the interests of individual owners in fishery matters and often takes care of fish stocking operations, for instance. Although the water owners still have basic use and management rights in Finnish fisheries, several use rights of non-owners have recently been protected by law, such as simple angling with hook and line and ice fishing. The latest reform in Finland was to separate rod-fishing licensing from the landowners’ sole right. In Sweden, decisions by the parliament have opened the way for free recreational fishing along the Swedish coast and in the four largest lakes. These waters and the recreational fishing on crown land in the mountain area are managed by state government agencies. Fisheries management responsibilities lie with state government fisheries agencies in the two youngest nations reviewed (Australia and the United States), and generally with some mix of government involvement and private landowners or fishing rights holders and the private organizations that represent them in the five remaining older nations (Finland, Germany, Lithuania, the Netherlands and Sweden). Whether or not selected nations have recreational fishing licences runs the gamut from all states having required licences with consistent information collected therein (United States) to some states having licences (Australia) to the recent case where licences are issued by a private sector organization (Sport Fishing Netherlands) to situations where waters and/or fishing rights are privately owned and a governmental fishing licence is required but not mandatory in all situations (Finland, Germany, Sweden) to the case where there is no universal licence but permits are required for particular fisheries (Lithuania).

Developing nations Developing nations are typically characterized by an emerging attention to natural resource protection and sustainable management. China and Malaysia have

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12


a diversity of fishery resources but due to a lack of management, many have become overfished or otherwise depleted in certain locales. When one considers the enormity of the Chinese population, for example, and the estimated recreational fishing participation rate (percentage that participate) of 7%, the management challenge comes into focus. There are opportunities as well. Instead of trying to restore and manage common-property native fisheries, developing nations such as China have encouraged private sector fisheries, which yield opportunities for both aquaculture and recreational fishing on a fee basis. The fee-fishing phenomenon in China provides some evidence that Chinese anglers derive a variety of non-catch-related benefits (i.e. social, psychological and environmental) from their fee-fishing activity since they are paying above fish market prices to catch their fish. It is a positive sign that Malaysia plans to implement a licence for recreational fishing in offshore waters that will provide support for its pelagic fisheries, perhaps because of their importance to the tourism economy. Currently, there are no universal recreational fishing licences in China and Malaysia that would provide a source of funding support for fisheries management or a complete census of anglers for follow-up research purposes. In conclusion, what do we know? First, from the overviews of the nine countries, we find some notable and interesting differences in recreational fishing worldwide in terms of the number of anglers, annual fishing frequency and expenditures, management infrastructure, constraints to fishing and whether or not they have a fishing licence for revenue generation and sampling purposes. There are some notable similarities among the selected countries using the same variables. Second, if we are to understand and appreciate the cultural differences in recreational fishing; how and when anglers were socialized into recreational fishing; how it is practised in each country, culture and subculture; its various forms and products; and what fishing means to various groups of participants; then these understandings are likely to be particular to countries, cultures and subcultures and cannot be generalized from understandings elsewhere. Third, as social science understandings of recreational fishing in most countries, cultures and subcultures are limited, there is a need for an international partnership of effort to encourage more comparative research efforts in this area. Fourth, if it is recognized that both social and biological science understandings are essential for effective fishery management, then anything less will have profound implications for the quality of recreational fishing experiences provided. Fifth, some of the countries we reviewed, where fishing is a more ubiquitous activity, appear to make effective use of population-level surveys to understand anglers and their fishing behaviour. However, those countries with licensing programmes in place appear to have a greater opportunity to randomly sample angler populations and subpopulations and achieve the understandings needed in a more cost-effective way to meet angler wants and needs. They also have the opportunity for their anglers help support the costs of fisheries management.

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2.2

13

Overview of recreational fishing in Australia

Dennis Reid Recreational fishing in Australia may be defined (FAO 1999) as ‘any fishing for which the primary motive is leisure rather than profit, the provision of food or the conduct of scientific research, and which may not involve the sale, barter or trade of part or all of the catch’. This definition excludes subsistence fishing activities of indigenous Australians living in traditional indigenous communities. With a population of 20 million, Australia comprises six states and two territories. A large proportion of the population (83%) lives within 50 km of the coast and the climate ranges from tropical to cool temperate. Australia’s Fisheries Zone is the third largest in the world, but the nation ranks only fifty-third in terms of world fish production. The marine waters are of relatively low productivity, partly reflecting the generally narrow continental shelf. Commercial fisheries produce 270,000 tons annually (value US$1.8 billion), while exports of seafood are 60,000 tons and imports 190,000 tons. Recreational fisheries harvest approximately 27,000 tons of finfish annually (Henry and Lyle 2003).

Fisher numbers and effort An estimated 3.4 million recreational fishers fish at least once per year, with total effort of 21 million fisher days (Henry and Lyle 2003). The participation rate of the population (more than 4 years of age, fished at least once per year) is 20% nationally, with participation rates in individual states varying from 13% to 32% (Table 2.2). The participation rate of residents of coastal cities is typically half to two-thirds that of non-urban areas close to the coast. Fishing by international tourists is relatively minor, with 4% of the visitors fishing during their trip. Most tourist fishers are from the United Kingdom, Japan, the United States and New Zealand. Males participate in fishing at about twice the rate of females (26% nationally for males, 12% for females), and the highest participation is by children 5 to 15 years of age. Similar rates apply to the groups from 16 to 60 years, but decline for the over 60 age groups. Approximately 80% of the total fishing effort is expended in marine and estuarine waters, with 20% in freshwater rivers and lakes. The more populous states of New South Wales and Queensland account for more than one-half of the national recreational fishing effort. The average effort per fisher is approximately 6 days per year, with 85% of fishers spending less than 10 days fishing per year.

Species caught by recreational fishers Approximately 4200 fish species, including 300 freshwater species, have been described in Australia, with 90% of these being endemic species. Recreational

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6.7 5.8 17 999

Total population (million)

Population (>4 years)

Participation rate %

Number of fishers (000s)

NSW

550

13

4.3

4.9

Victoria

785

25

3.2

3.8

Queensland

479

29

1.7

2.0

Western Australia

328

24

1.4

1.5

South Australia

Table 2.2 Population, participation rate in fishing and number of fishers, by state/territory.

125

29

0.4

0.5

Tasmania

44

32

0.1

0.2

Northern territory

19

19

0.3

0.3

Australia capital territory

3352

20

17.2

20

Total Australia


15

Table 2.3 Top ten species by weight of total harvest. Common name

Family

Weight (tonnes)

Number (millions)

Flathead

Platycephalidae

2,336

7.4

Whiting

Sillaginidae

2,098

11.8

Mackerels

Scombridae

1,789

0.5

Bream

Sparidae

1,706

4.8

European carp

Cyprinidae

1,474

2.1

Pink snapper

Sparidae

1,422

1.3

Tunas/bonito

Scombridae

1,328

0.2

Australian salmon

Arripidae

1,113

1.7

Emperors

Lutjanidae

1,036

0.7

Red emperor

Lethrinidae

984

0.2

Other finfish

11,800

29.7

Total finfish

27,000

60.4

fishers harvest about 500 fish species, with the top 10 species comprising 57% of the total weight (27,000 tons) of all harvested fish (Table 2.3). Recreational fishers also harvest approximately 60 non-fish taxa, mainly crustaceans (prawns, freshwater crayfish, rock lobster, crabs and yabbies) and molluscs (squid, octopus, abalone, mussels, scallops and cockles). The overall release rate of fish is 44% and varies greatly by species. Freshwater native fish have suffered a long-term decline, mainly as a consequence of habitat degradation, commercial and recreational fishing, and prolonged and severe droughts. While native freshwater species are highly regarded by recreational fishers, the greater abundance of introduced species such as European carp, redfin perch and trout has led to the predominance of introduced species in the freshwater recreational harvest. While European carp ranks as the greatest harvest weight of the freshwater species, it has been listed as a noxious species in the eastern states and it is illegal to return caught carp to the water.

Fishing methods In terms of number of fishing trips, line-fishing accounts for 85% of the trips for all methods, with fishing by nets, traps, spear, hand collection of lobster and abalone accounting for the remaining 15%. Line-fishing includes the use of bait or lures, with advances in technology leading to a greater use of lures in the past decade. Fishing from boats accounts for 42% of all fishing trips. Net-fishing employs gill-nets, seine-nets and cast-nets for finfish, tangle-nets for crabs, and drag-nets, small scoop-nets and push-nets for crustaceans. Net-fishing for crustaceans occurs in estuaries and freshwater impoundments and rivers. The use of

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traps is limited to the harvesting of rock lobster and freshwater yabbies. Underwater harvesting involves spear fishing for finfish and hand collection of rock lobster and abalone.

Economic and social aspects Although the participation rate in fishing in any one year is currently about 20%, the population who have ever fished is about 75%, with about one-quarter of fishers dropping in or out of fishing in any single year. An increased diversity of recreational activities over the past two decades has arguably reduced the participation in recreational fishing by younger people. Estimated directly attributable fishing expenditures in 2000–2001 by recreational fishers were AU$1.8 billion, or the equivalent of AU$540/angler-year. Expenditure on boats and trailers was AU$940 million, which was the largest individual expense for fishers. Associated travel amounted to AU$395 million and expenditure on fishing gear AU$182 million. A total of 511,000 boats with a capital value of AU$3.3 billion were used for recreational fishing in 2000–2001. The primary motivation factors associated with recreational fishing are for relaxation (37%), sport (18%), being with friends or family (15%) and enjoying the outdoors (13%). Only 8% of the fishers considered catching fish for food as the primary motivation factor.

Major institutional arrangements affecting recreational fishing The administrative powers over recreational fishing are the responsibility of the individual states and territory governments. Two states (New South Wales and Victoria) have a general fishing licence that covers fishing for any freshwater and saltwater finfish, crustaceans and molluscs. In three other states (Tasmania, South Australia and Western Australia), a licence is required for certain highvalue species, such as abalone and rock lobster, and for certain fishing methods such as traps and nets. All states have catch controls (comprising bag limits and minimum and maximum sizes) and effort controls (closed seasons and areas, number of rods per fisher, number of nets or traps, allowed baits, etc.).

Major constraints on recreational fishing The profile of recreational fishing will change significantly with the aging of the Australian population over the next four decades. There is a projected 250% increase from 2005 to 2050 for the number of persons over 65, compared with 9% for those under 65. Persons over 65 currently have half the participation rate

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17

in fishing of those under 65 years of age; so if we assume the current participation rates by age group, the projected number of fishers will increase by only 10% while the total population is projected to increase by 25%. The changing demographics could also have significant impacts on the general profile of recreational fishing. For example, dive fisheries for rock lobster predominantly involve younger fishers. In 40 years, will the current 30-year-old divers still participate in the rock lobster fishery, but use traps instead of diving, or will they drop out of the fishery? Will there be a change in the boat/shore composition of fishers? Many such questions arise from the demographic changes which will occur in the coming decades. z

z

z

z

Effects of changing climate: Australia is currently suffering severe drought over much of the country. The largest river system has the lowest inflows ever recorded. Scientists have forecast increasing temperatures, greater frequency of severe weather events and rising sea levels. These effects will have impact on recreational fishing by direct effects on the distribution of fish, the abundance of particular species, species diversity and by climatic effects on fishers and their environment. Establishment of no-fishing areas: This is an important topic for recreational fishing in a number of states. Governments have to balance the conflicting demands of conservationists, recreational fishers, commercial fishers and the general public. Environmental effects of infrastructure development for an increasing population: The development of coastal land for housing and the environmental consequences of increased energy demands could impact recreational fishing through direct impacts on the resource and restriction on access currently available. Future competition between native and introduced species.

Outlook for recreational fishing Recreational fishing through charter operations and fishing guides has grown rapidly over the past decade, and this seems set to continue. These operations range from luxury game-fish charters to freshwater fly-fishing trips and lowcost estuary sightseeing trips. The enhancement of recreational fishing opportunities has gained increased interest and funding over the past decade. Government and community agencies have been very active in the stocking of estuaries and rivers, while there is strong funding support for research and monitoring of fish aggregating devices (FADs) in coastal waters and artificial reefs in estuaries. The growth of educational programmes has been an important recent development. These involve agencies working closely with community volunteers to run

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fishing clinics, instructional talks to schools and the general promotion of sustainable fishing.

2.3

Current status and challenges facing recreational fishing in the Peoples Republic of China

Jianzhong Shen There are several reasons why there is great potential for recreational fisheries development in China. First and foremost, China is the largest country in the world with a population of over 1300 million. According to the China Angling Association, there are an estimated 90 million anglers or about 7% of the overall population. In China, there is no general angling licence and the exact number of anglers is unknown. China also has a vast area of inland water, coastline and islands. Its inland waters cover 17,160,000 ha, accounting for 1.8% of the total land area of China. Lakes account for 42% of the total inland waters and there are about 85,000 reservoirs with a total area of 20,050,000 ha. China has more than 18,000 km of continental coastline and 7300 islands with 14,000 km of shoreline. The meandering shoreline along the mainland includes many bays that provide habitat for reproduction and fish growth (Lin and Hong 2005). Also, China has about 800 native freshwater fish species and more than 3000 marine fish species, many of which are popular target species for anglers. In addition, China has a welldeveloped aquaculture industry with the highest yield in the world and plenty of opportunities for recreational fee fishing. Although China is a developing country, it is developing rapidly. With an increase in personal income and more free time, people want to spend money on recreational activities to enhance their quality of life. Also, angling in China is a traditional activity that dates back to the eleventh century bc or even earlier. It is one of the most popular recreational activities because people believe that it will be beneficial in tempering their will and patience, getting close to nature, enjoying the fresh air and natural sights, sharing the happiness of catching fish and challenging fishing records and relaxing from the stress of overwork. For most, it is a way to get fish as food, and for a few, it is a way of earning their livelihood while enjoying the pleasure of fishing.

Angling modes Angling in open public waters, such as large rivers, lakes and reservoirs, is either forbidden or neglected with no charge required due to the lack of fisheries management. Not surprisingly, these waters have low fish catches.

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19

Therefore, angling in China involves mostly fee fishing. Most angling occurs in private or collective-operated water bodies, such as ponds, tanks, semi-open middle-sized lakes or reservoirs stocked with farmed commercial-sized fish or artificial-breeding fish larvae or juveniles. Typically, anglers must buy a fishing permit. In general, there are two main types of fishing. One is to pay for the catch according to a defined price per unit of weight depending on fish species and services provided. This type of angling usually occurs in ponds and tanks where fish density is high and they are easy to catch. The extent to which the price is higher than the commercial market fish price depends on the extent of facilities and services afforded. The other type of angling is to buy a fishing permit for the day, month or year. This type of angling occurs usually in semiopen large- or middle-sized lakes and reservoirs stocked with fish. The price of the permit depends on the potential quantity of the catch and extent of fishing limitations. If anglers expect to catch more fish with no limitations on species caught, they will pay more for a permit. In China, most anglers, with few exceptions, use natural baits or artificial feeds. A variety of fishing competitions or related activities (e.g. fishing festivals) play an increasingly important role in the development of recreational fishing in China. Previously, fishing competitions were organized by the Chinese Angling Association and co-sponsored with fishing-related corporations, fishing clubs or large fish farms. Recently, local governments, other authorities, professional fishing clubs and organizations, and enterprises such as fishing gear manufacturers and baits factories have begun to sponsor fishing tournaments. Local government and authorities seek to promote commerce and trade, as well as to stimulate industrial development and the local economy, by sponsoring national or international fishing tournament events. Sea-fishing clubs have been formed in coastal cities to help promote recreational sea fishing in these locations. Accordingly, there are an increasing number of fishing competitions each year sponsored by a variety of organizations. Also, angling as a competitive event in the National Workers’ Games and the National Peasants’ Games further encourages the development of recreational fishing.

Target fishing species Because fishing usually occurs in farm ponds, tanks or stocked lakes and reservoirs, there is little use of natural species. Fish species differ by region, depending on the economic conditions and available aquatic resources. In relatively well-developed coastal regions, target species include fish, shrimp, frogs, turtles and tortoises. In comparison, soft-shell turtles (e.g. Trionyx sinensis) and tortoises, or piscivorous fish, for example, mandarin fish (Siniperca chuatsi), are high-valued species sought by high-income anglers. For most anglers, however, cyprinids, such as gold fish (Carassius auratus), grass carp (Ctenopharynogodon idellus),

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black carp (Mylopharyngodon piceus), black bream (Megalobrama amblycephala) and common carp (Cyprinus carpio) are the major freshwater target species. Gold fish is the most common and popular species targeted. These species are herbivorous or omnivorous, and are commonly farmed for food. Besides carnivorous fish [such as yellow catfish (Pelteobargrus fulvidraco), snakehead (Channa argus or Channa maculates), top-mouth culter (Erythroculter ilishaeformis) or Mongolian culter (E. mongolicus)], some introduced carnivorous species [such as large mouth bass (Micropterus salmonides) and channel catfish (Ictalurus punctatus)] are important secondary target species. In marine waters, popular target fishing species include large yellow croaker (Psedosciaena crocea), small yellow croaker (P. polyactis), yellow drum (Nibea albiflora), genuine porgy (Pagrosmus major), red porgy (Pagrus pagrus), black porgy (Sparus macrocephalus), Japanese sea perch (Lateolabrax japonicus), rockfish (Sebastes schlegeli) and grouper (e.g. Epinephelus maculatus).

Economic significance of recreational fishing Development of recreational fishing opportunities is an alternative way to increase profits by transferring farmed fish into angling products where prices are higher than the market price for fish. According to some surveys, the profit from recreational fishing enterprises is about 4–5 times that of farming only (Gao 2001). Second, when commercial fishermen were shifted into recreational fishing businesses, their incomes increased and overharvest was reduced. Third, with rapid development of recreational fishing, many new fishing gear manufacturing plants have been built, and now China is the largest producer of fishing gear and export country in the world. Furthermore, it is widely recognized that recreational fishing development drives service businesses such as hotels, inns, cafés, restaurants and so on.

Status of recreational fishing While recreational fishing is encouraged by national policy and supported by local government and fisheries agencies, the development of recreational fishing in China is uneven nationwide. The extent of fisheries development varies by geographic location, level of economic development and abundance and quality of fisheries resources. In several coastal provinces, for example, recreational fishing is relatively well developed because of their economic and resource advantages. Not surprisingly, urban and suburban areas have greater numbers of anglers and fishing-related expenditures than small cities and rural places.

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21

Challenges to the development of recreational fishing Although China has experienced rapid growth in recreational fishing, future development faces problems. First, recreational fishing enterprises are run mainly by households or small collectives and thus lack the capital needed to achieve their potential. Second, the fish targeted by anglers in China are mainly limited to domesticated or farmed omnivorous and herbivorous fishes. Few predatory or naturally bred fishes are available for fishing. Third, owing to the lack of management and poor quality fishery resources, fishing opportunities, as a result, are localized in ponds, tanks or stocked lakes, reservoirs, and rarely in the open waters. Fourth, anglers generally use artificial feed, with few alternatives, as bait for sport fishing. Further research is necessary to learn how to enlarge the scale of fishing opportunities and improve fishing conditions. In particular, we need to focus on (1) developing opportunities for high-value predatory species; (2) new fishing grounds, particularly in open waters; (3) new ways to fish, for example, fly fishing and (4) ways to attract more people to fishing while conserving and protecting the fish biodiversity. In particular, research is needed in policy and regulations, management measures and fishing techniques to keep fishing healthy and sustainable. Moreover, most anglers are male and mainly middle-aged or older (based on unpublished data available with the author). Therefore, for sustainable recreational fisheries development, we need a better understanding of this problem and need to take effective measures to attract more young people (males and females) into angling.

2.4

Recreational fishing in Finland

Anna-Liisa Toivonen Recreational fishing varies with the seasons of the year in Finland. There are many choices for autumn, winter and spring although summer is the high season because many different types of gear can be used. Most target species spawn in the spring but there are also autumn and even winter spawners. The behaviour of the target species also depends on the spawning of their prey. As a consequence, target species tend to be typical of the season. The choice of fishing gear is limited during the winter but fishing waters become much more reachable when there is ice. Gill-net fishing and ice jigging are typical fishing methods during the winter. Another seasonal specialty is catching crayfish, Astacus astacus L. and Pacifastacus leniusculus Dana, in August with a trap and bait.

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22


Number of anglers Fishing participation has always been reasonably high in Finland (Moilanen 2001; FGFRI 2002, 2004, 2005). While the trend is slightly decreasing, about 35–40% of the population fish during their free time at least once a year. The latest statistics report that there were 1.9 million recreational fishers among the population of 5.2 million Finns in 2004. Depending on ice conditions, more than one-half million fishers go ice fishing annually. Fishing is not a male-dominant nature-based recreational activity, as about 40% of all fishers are women and more than 25% are children, that is, under 18 years of age. Participation is highest, 50%, in the age group of 10–17. Families often spend holidays in summer cottages by the lakes and the sea. This is a natural way of socializing both women and children to fishing, and this explains the high rate of participation of these groups (Salmi et al. 2006). Simple angling with hook and line is the most common fishing method in Finland with more than 7 million fishing days a year (FGFRI 2005). Gill-nets, wire traps and spinning rods are used more than 6 million fishing days each. The next most common are the ice-fishing jig and trolling gear, with nearly 5 million and more than 3 million fishing days annually, respectively. The fly-fishing rod is used in one-half million fishing days even though fly-fishing opportunities are scarce compared with neighbouring Sweden and Norway.

Fishing methods A characteristic feature of the Finnish recreational fishery is the relatively wide use of gill-nets compared with other countries. The tradition is connected to the summer cottage culture that has prolonged the tradition from when it was subsistence fishery to the present and where the skills of gill-netting have been passed on to current generations. In recent years, however, the trend has been towards active fishing methods using rods and away from the use of passive and more efficient gears such as gill-nets and wire traps. Catches of recreational fishers have accordingly decreased in recent years. One-half of the catch is caught with passive methods using gill-nets and wire traps. Hooks and lines, ice-fishing jigs, spinning rods and trolling gear are all equally efficient in that their share of the total catch is about 10% each. The level of catch is presently about 38 million kg/year and its value is €46 million (in commercial fishers’ prices excluding VAT). More than 80% of the catch is from lakes and rivers, and less than 20% is from the sea. In comparison, the commercial catch (excluding Baltic herring, Clupea harengus membras L.) from the sea is around 20 million kg and the value is close to €17 million (excluding VAT).

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23

Recreational catch By definition, the recreational catch is not to be sold, but it can sometimes be bartered. It is consumed, however. One-half of the catch is perch ( Perca fluviatilis L.) and pike (Esox lucius L.) about quarter each (Figure 2.1), and the other half consists of roach, (Rutilus rutilus L.), vendace (Coregonus albula L.), bream (Abramis brama L.), pike-perch (Sander lucioperca L.) and whitefish (Coregonus lavaretus L.), to name the most common. The share of trout (Salmo trutta L.) and salmon (Salmo salar L.) is marginal, only 2% of the catch.

Economic significance Economic value of recreational fisheries was measured in the Nordic countries (Toivonen et al. 2004) in terms of consumer surplus. The monetary values date from 1999 and are obsolete as such. The aggregate running expenditure of recreational fishers excluding all long-lasting items and including only the age group of 18–69-year-old fishers was about one per mille (‰) of the gross national income (GNI) in Finland, Norway and Sweden, and somewhat less in Denmark. Employment factors were relatively close to those of private consumption but higher than that only in Denmark. Most inhabitants in Finland live in big cities in the southern parts of the country. Even though fishing is relatively more common among country dwellers than city people, the large majority of fishers still come from the cities. Fishing activity takes place all over the countryside 35 30

Percentage

25 20 15 10 5 0 1992

1994

1996

1998

2000

Perch

Pike

Roach

Bream

Pikeperch

Whitefish

2002

2004 Vendace

Figure 2.1 Proportion of species in catch. Perch and pike together constitute half of the catch.

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24


Number of residing fishers

Number of fishers fishing in the regions annually

0–9999

0–9999

10,000–19,999

10,000–19,999

20,000–29,999

20,000–29,999

30,000–180,000

30,000–180,000

Figure 2.2 Finland is divided into 226 fisheries regions. The map on the left shows where the fishers live, and the map on the right shows where the fishers go fishing. One fisher fishes in 1.5 fisheries regions on average.

(Figure 2.2) close to the attractive fishing waters. Again, this means the economic activity created by the fishers is often directed to regions where there are less job opportunities than in the cities. Fishing is thus an activity that helps keep the countryside alive.

Major institutional arrangements According to the Fisheries Law (286/82) and Fisheries Act (886/82), the right to fish belongs to the landowner who can sell fishing licences. To enhance the use rights of the non-owners, simple angling with rod and line became ‘everyman’s right’ in 1993. Similarly, in 1982, ice fishing was first allowed in any county in Finland for a special licence fee, and eventually became ‘everyman’s right’ in 1996. Starting in 1997, the right to fish with a spinning rod was separated from the landowners’ licence system. Provincial lure-fishing fee licences (€27 in 2007) can now be bought regardless of the landowner. Waterways with salmon, brown trout or whitefish populations are special cases. Gill-net fishing requires a licence from the landowner. All 18–64-year olds who fish must pay a management fee (€20 in 2007) to the state if they conduct other forms of fishing than angling or ice fishing. For household and recreational fishing outside private waters in the sea, only the management fee is needed. In Åland Islands non-residents are required to secure a licence from the landowner for any fishing. The governance of the fishing waters is somewhat complicated in Finland (Salmi and Muje 2001). Even if the waters are private, there is often a shareholders’ association to take care of the local decision making. Fisheries regions

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25

form a wider intermediate institutional frame both in terms of water areas and interest groups involved. State governance is under the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and their district organization.

Future outlook The future of fisheries in general, in light of global trends, was discussed by Laitinen et al. (2005). Although recreational fishing was not dealt with directly, one of the resulting four alternatives was a tourism-oriented fishery scenario where the demand for fishing tourism services grows significantly. At present, fishing tourism is an emerging industry that seems to have potential but still lacks established practices and any official status. Recreational fishing is among the top ten of all outdoor activities in Finland (Sievänen 2001) in terms of participation. With statistical evidence, few access barriers, a strong supply of opportunities and the tradition of spending leisure time in cottages, there is good reason to believe that participation in recreational fishing will remain high.

2.5 The social and economic significance of recreational fishing in Germany Robert Arlinghaus Recreational fishing in Germany constitutes a popular leisure activity of local, regional and national importance. The objective of this section is to update previous accounts on the socio-economic importance of recreational fishing in Germany based on the first nationwide telephone survey conducted by Arlinghaus (2004). Although non-angling methods are used locally in non-commercial recreational fishing in Germany, most recreational fishing takes place by rod and line. Hence, angling and recreational fishing are used synonymously here.

Number of Anglers There is no agreement in Germany on how an angler is defined. Many fisheries professionals count the total number of officially registered German fishing licence holders. The latest estimate was about 1.5 million people (1.8% of the total population of c.82.5 million as of 2005). However, holding an official fishing licence is not required in each of the 16 German states. Moreover, people fishing without an official licence in Germany or in other countries are not included in the aforementioned estimate of angler numbers, which is why the previous estimate is likely underestimated (Steffens and Winkel 2002).

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Angler numbers (millions)

7 6

Often

From time to time

Total

5 4 3 2 1 0 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 Year

Figure 2.3 Time series of angler numbers estimated by telephone surveys using random sampling of German households (Allensbacher Werbeträgeranalyse, unpublished data).

In the nationwide telephone survey conduced in 2002, anglers were defined as people aged 14 and older having fished at least once during their lifetime. The estimated number was about 3.8 million people. Active angles were defined as people having fished at least once during the 2002 fishing season in Germany or abroad in other countries. The estimate of active anglers in Germany was 3.3 million (95% confidence interval, 2.6–4.1 million). For people aged 14 and older in the population, the estimated number of active anglers was 4.7% of the German population. Further support for this estimate of angling participation is provided by a periodically conducted marketing survey that asks a large sample of German residents whether they angle often or occasionally. Unfortunately, this survey does not further specify what ‘often’ or ‘from time to time’ means. As shown in Figure 2.3, the total number of anglers is relatively stable at around 5 million people, of which around 1 million indicated they fish often.

Preferred fishing locations Nationwide, the most preferred waters are large rivers (for 31% of the anglers) and natural lakes (28%). Of the anglers, 15% prefer to fish in artificial standing waters, 6% in canals, 4% in small rivers and 4% in put-and-take fisheries. For 12% of German anglers, saltwater constitutes the main fishery. German anglers not only target German fishery resources, they also export their effort to a large

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extent to foreign fisheries. On average, 40% of their angling days were spent abroad in 2002. More than 60% of all anglers spent most of their time (more than 50% of the annual angling days) fishing in countries other than Germany. Popular countries include the Scandinavian countries. Also, locations overseas are visited regularly (Herrmann et al. 2002).

Target species Most German anglers prefer piscivorous fish such as pike (E. lucius L.), pikeperch (S. lucioperca L.), perch (P. fluviatilis L.) and various salmonid species, because these species are considered of higher culinary value than non-piscivorous fish species. Among non-piscivorous fish, carp (C. carpio L.) and smaller species such as roach (R. rutilus L.) or bream (A. brama L.) are the preferred target of some anglers, particularly among certain angler groups such as specialized carp anglers or match fishers. Because of the current interpretation of the Animal Protection Act, the only ‘reasonable reason’ to fish recreationally is to catch fish for consumption, and most anglers in Germany remove the legally sized fish they capture. About 75% of the angler catch is removed for household consumption, and the reminder is likely voluntarily or regularly released. The total harvest was estimated at 45,000 metric tonnes in 2002. In terms of species that constitute the main portion of the harvest, the harvest of most anglers is predominantly comprised of carp, various salmonids and pike. Among saltwater fish, cod (Gadus morhua L.) is found most often in the harvest (Figure 2.4). Other

1.1

Other saltwater fish

2.6

Other salmonids

3.3

Other cyprinids

3.7

Gras carp

1.1

Herring

2.1

Rudd

2.5

Roach

3.2

Perch

3.2

Zander

5.5

Bream

5.9

Eel

6.4

Cod

7.1

Brown trout

10.3

Pike

10.5

Rainbow trout

11.6

Carp

19.7 0

5

10

15

20

25

Relative frequency (%)

Figure 2.4 Relative frequency (%) of fish species primarily harvested by N = 474 German anglers as determined by a telephone survey (Source: Arlinghaus 2004).

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Economic significance It was estimated that the total economic impact of German recreational fisheries was €5.2 billion in 2002, with 52,000 jobs directly or indirectly dependent on angler expenditures. This estimate exceeded a previous estimate of jobs (20,000) assumed dependent on angler expenditures (Hilge 1998). The multiplier identified for €1 of angler expenditure was 1.8. The average annual use value over and above current expenditure was estimated with €134 per angler. The average annual non-use value was estimated at €21 per person. This suggests that the German population values recreational fishing even if they are not using the resources themselves. Economists distinguish option, bequest and existence non-use values, and the non-use value estimate stated earlier comprises the sum of these three. The total economic benefits generated by German recreational fisheries overall were estimated to be €6.4 billion in 2002.

Major institutional arrangements Ownership of freshwater fishery resources in Germany is usually dependent on ownership of land adjacent to the water body. Fishing rights can be purchased or leased from landowners who hold the fishing rights. In the latter case, the person or the group (e.g. an angling club or organization) that leases the fishing rights for a certain time period also has the duty to manage the fishery resources without causing harm to the ecosystem. This duty is established in state-specific fisheries legislation and nature conservation laws and by-laws. Legislation is enforced by public agencies either at the national or federal level. Thus, German recreational fisheries systems can be characterized as joint community–public cooperative management regimes. Although fishing rights are private entities, in most recreational fisheries, the fishery resources are typically used jointly by all anglers belonging to a club or purchasing a licence by paying a fee to the fishing rights holder (e.g. a commercial fisher or the angler association/club). Purchasing an angling licence in Germany often requires an angler to have passed an angling examination after attending a 30-h angling course (Von Lukowicz 1998) and to hold a state fishing licence called a Fischereischein. Recently, some northern states (e.g. Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, SchleswigHolstein) have relaxed this burden by allowing fishing for non-piscivorous fish or fishing by non-resident tourists without taking the exam. The funds generated through fishing licence sales are used to cover the administrative costs of statelevel fisheries agencies. Any additional revenues are used to fund projects such as fish stocking, habitat rehabilitation, scientific surveys and fish community monitoring.

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Major constraints Recreational fishing in Germany suffers from a number of issues such as (1) lack of social priority; (2) lack of management approaches for integrating the interests of multiple stakeholder groups and often conflicting management goals; (3) lack of cooperative institutional linkages between fisheries agencies and water management agencies and between different angler associations; (4) lack of systems thinking and (5) lack of research and monitoring. Moreover, many fisheries professionals and private fisheries managers disregard modern developments such as the need to integrate the human dimensions of fisheries into day-to-day management. Probably the greatest constraint, however, is the multiple-use characteristic of most fisheries. There are efforts to reduce fishing pressure in some areas, and many nature conservation stakeholders oppose recreational fishing on ideological grounds. Also, fisheries legislation differs in each of the German states, which can create an unnecessary burden on angler who want to fish in other states. In this case, it can be difficult to obtain a fishing permit and it is difficult for anglers to inform themselves about local-level regulations. Moreover, many habitats have been irreversibly modified, which has contributed significantly to fishery resource declines and reduced fishing quality. Addressing these issues is often beyond the control of fisheries stakeholders, which can lead to increased reliance on stocking to counter fish declines. Stocking, however, can also seriously harm entire fish communities and is therefore controversial in Germany. The social movements that strive to ban recreational fishing entirely, that is, the animal welfare movement, are also a major constraint. Animal protection is a part of the German constitution as of 2002, and the Animal Protection Act first enacted in 1972 sets severe limits on previously popular fishing practises such as competitive fishing, live baiting, holding fish in ‘keep nets’ and voluntary catch and release (Meinelt et al. this book). Fisheries stakeholders also view the explosion of fish-eating birds, especially cormorants (Phalacrocorax carbo) as a major constraint in German recreational fisheries (Steffens and Winkel 2002). Although the impact of cormorants on local fisheries will vary, it has been documented that they can alter fish community composition. Finally, a major barrier to the development of recreational fisheries is the lack of research understanding of the activity. For most fisheries, there is little or no information present on available fish stocks and the activity, attitudes and behaviour of anglers. Without this information, sustainable management is difficult to accomplish. Such research conducted with fishery operators and practitioners locally is urgently needed.

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Future outlook Today, recreational fishing is firmly established as the dominant or sole user of most freshwater and many coastal fish stocks. Since the last overview papers published on German recreational fisheries, there has been important progress. The mass media has greatly increased reports on recreational fishing, and politicians are more aware of the size and economic importance of this sector. It remains to be seen whether this attention will strengthen the sector in the future and improve its sustainability by addressing the issues mentioned earlier as well as the largely neglected potential of fishing to negatively impact fish communities (Lewin et al. this book). To address and understand the latter issue will require increased investments in research, monitoring and education.

Acknowledgements I thank the German Anglers’ Association and the Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries for their financial support.

2.6

Recreational fisheries in Lithuania: putting Lithuania on the recreational fishing map in Europe

Algirdas Domarkas and Egle˙ Radaityte˙ The goal of this section is to introduce the field of recreational fisheries in Lithuania, which has been going through dynamic changes in recent years. This section will discuss angling in Lithuania, the social and the economic value of recreational fishing using survey data on attitudes towards fisheries, money spent on fishing and non-compliance with fishing rules and the future of recreational fisheries in Lithuania.

Angling in Lithuania Angling has always been one of the most popular leisure pursuits in Lithuania. This is not surprising, as 4% (2639 km2) of the country’s territory is covered by water. In addition, there is the Baltic Sea coast and the Curonian Lagoon, which are also popular fishing locations. However, there has always been the common misconception that the development of recreational fishing and the introduction of fishing tourism could have no positive effect on fish stocks and assisting with conservation. It is only now with research and the involvement of non-governmental organizations that the full potential can be seen.

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Social and economic value of recreational fishing While the results of surveys conducted to date have not yet been presented on the international level, this presentation focuses mainly on survey results carried out previously. The first survey was conducted in 2002 by Vilmorus, a market research company, on behalf of the Alliance of Associations ‘Žuvininkų Rūmai’ (The Chamber of Pisciculturists, NGO). The study found that approximately 1.5 million (or 55%) Lithuanian citizens often take fishing rods and spend their leisure time fishing in rivers and lakes. About eight out of ten males fish while about three to four of ten females fish in Lithuania. This survey showed that recreational fishing was most popular among people between 18 and 30 years of age. This is characteristic of seven out of ten of survey participants. It is interesting to note that the age of angling enthusiasts correlates inversely with participation in recreational fishing by: as age increases, the percentage of fishermen in the population goes down. In the age group between 50 and 59 years, six out of ten persons participate in fishing, with the number dropping to three to four persons in the age group of 60 years or more (Table 2.4). Consequently, fishing as a recreation activity can be linked with employable age: two out of three respondents of working age participate in angling, while fishing loses its attraction in the retirement years, when only one out of three of surveyed pensioners take their fishing rods and spend time by rivers and lakes. Income is related to fishing participation in several ways: six out of ten persons with low income (up to approximately €58 per household member) seek an additional source of income rather than relaxation through angling. With increased income, the motivation for angling participation increases considerably (Table 2.4). A second survey conducted in 20031 showed that Lithuanians spent an average of 140 litas (approximately €40.5) on their angling-related needs per surveyed year. More men spent money on fishing needs (or they get more fishing rods as gifts) than do women. About 33.3% and 5.0% of the men and women spent money on fishing (Table 2.5). By average monthly household income, the highest percentage of persons having fishing expenses was the group with monthly incomes of over €145 per month (21.6%) and among those with monthly incomes of €58 or less (19.3%) (Table 2.5). According to the survey 2003, it was estimated that 0.5 million Lithuanian citizens spend approximately 72 million litas (approximately €21 million) per year for angling. This estimate can be compared with those for other fisheries in Lithuania. There are about 20 large aquaculture companies (formerly known as pond pisciculture farms) in Lithuania, producing fish valued at 9–10 million litas annually. The estimated cost of production is seven times less than that of anglers’ expenditures.

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Table 2.4 Data of recreational fishing survey (2002).

Fishing population

Fishing population (%) 55.00

Non-fishing population (%) 45.00

By gender Males (%)

78.36

Females (%)

34.50

Age indicators (years) 18–29

71.3

28.7

30–39

65.3

34.7

40–49

64.0

36.0

50–59

59.5

40.5

60 or more

35.1

64.9

Income indicators Under 200 LTL (∼ €58)

61.07

38.93

201–300 LTL (∼ €58–89)

43.73

56.27

301–500 LTL (∼ €89–145)

52.44

47.56

501 or more LTL (∼ €145 or more)

66.67

33.33

Note: LTL – the Lithuanian litas.

More than 100 companies fish in the Curonian Lagoon, rivers, lakes and other water bodies with the help of commercial fishing gear. Their catch is valued at approximately 3 million litas per year, which is 24 times less than the spending of Lithuanian anglers. Approximately the same number of big and small companies fish in the Baltic Sea. Their catch is valued at approximately 24–25 million litas per year, or three times less than that spent by Lithuanian anglers. When the income of all commercial fishers working in aquaculture, inland waters and the Baltic Sea are taken together, this still amounts to about one-half of the money spent by anglers. Recreational fishing has enormous growth potential – about 1.5 million Lithuanian people go angling at least once in a while, according to the 2002 survey. The main obstacles for them to become regular anglers are, among others, a poor economic situation and inadequate fishing conditions. Improvement in these two areas is expected to lead to an increase in the number of anglers and their spending on fishing needs. Meanwhile, illegal fishing is the main barrier to the development of recreational fisheries. This mostly affects fish stocks in small water bodies. A 2004 survey indicates that Lithuanian citizens had violated fishing regulations on up to 0.7 million occasions per year.

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Table 2.5

33

Data of recreational fishing survey (2003).

Distribution of fishing expenses by gender Fishing population spending money on fishing Males (%) Females (%)

Fishing population who have fishing expenses covered by others

31.86

1.40

3.95

1.03

Income categories of the angler population Under 200 LTL (∼ €58)

16.94

2.42

201–300 LTL (∼ €58–89)

14.18

0.36

301–500 LTL (∼ €89–145)

17.20

1.06


20.25

1.27

Distribution of fishing expenses by age (years) 15–19

28.40

7.41

20–29

21.71

21.71

30–39

22.62

22.62

40–49

19.19

19.19

50–59

19.33

19.33

60–74

8.51

8.51

75 or more

2.74

2.74

Distribution of fishing expenses by gender per year Males (%)

Females (%)

Under 50 LTL (∼ €15)

53.80

18.18

51–100 LTL (∼ €15–29)

22.78

36.36


23.42

45.45

LTL – the Lithuanian litas (€1 = 3.4528 LTL).

Future of recreational fisheries All of the gathered data indicate that the current polarization of freshwater fisheries towards small-sized commercial fishing has no future and may doom anglers to years of poverty and despair. One way out of this is the redirection of the commercial industry towards recreational fisheries and fishing tourism. Many people in Lithuania consider angling their favourite pastime, at least to a certain extent. The observed increase in angling popularity makes possible the development of an entire new infrastructure to support this activity. The changing situation in Lithuania is rather slow, with virtually all financial assistance from the state going to support commercial fisheries and pond pisciculture. Approximately 10–12 million litas (approximately €2.9–3.5 million)

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are available for this purpose in Lithuania from the European Union. During the past 5 years, several million litas have been allocated to pond pisciculture companies to assist them in dealing with diseases and the after-effects of drought. Fish disease and drought effects can be seen in recreational fishing as well, but angler organizations have received no financial aid to deal with these problems. They also have little chance of getting support for the creation of ecologically based fisheries (i.e. organic fisheries). For example, while the Lithuanian State Pisciculture and Fisheries Research Centre breeds many fish, they raise none that are important for recreational fishing (grayling, brown trout, etc.) as their by-laws state they should only restore fish with commercial value. Insufficient pisciculture and management efforts have led to impoverished fish stocks in most water bodies, which have no appeal to anglers. All of these reasons are major factors hindering the development of the recreational fisheries market in Lithuania. Data collected until 2004 have convinced the Lithuanian government to pay more attention to the aforementioned problems. The Law on Angling was approved in 2004. As emphasized in this law now, angling has priority over commercial fishing in inland waters. To evaluate and develop new angling regulations, a Board of Angling Development by the Ministry of Environment was established with members from governmental as well as non-governmental organizations. These steps are expected to lead to an entirely new perspective on the development of recreational fisheries in Lithuania. Furthermore, the Lithuanian State Pisciculture and Fisheries Research Centre in cooperation with the Kaliningrad State Technical University and the Association of Fishing Enterprises Lampetra in 2006 launched a project titled ‘Development of Scientific-Technical Support for Reproduction of Fish Stocks in TransBoundary Water of Lithuania and Russia under the Neighbourhood Programme of Lithuania, Poland and the Kaliningrad region of the Russian Federation’. The project will involve new data collection and information published as a study about angling tourism, as well as a strategy for the development of recreational fishing in border water bodies.

2.7

Recreational fishing in Malaysia

Zahaitun Mahani Zakariah Recreational fishing is a great past time for Malaysians. The fishing activities have become so fashionable that avid anglers can choose either to fish in natural environments (seas and rivers) or man-made aquatic environments such as dams, abandoned mining pools and fish ponds. At present, recreational fishing activities in Malaysia are still unregulated and there are no regulations such as bag limits,

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size limits, permitted species and fishing gear restrictions. Although regulation is underprovided, recreational fishing practice in Malaysia is restricted to three types of fishing gear, namely, hook and line, ‘one hook squid jigging’ and castnet. Other fishing gear such as crab trap and scissors-net have to be licensed and are not considered recreational. Recreational fishing is a growing industry in Malaysia based on the popularity of fishing tourism and fishing competitions being organized throughout the year. However, the official number of recreational fishers is undetermined because the recreational fishing activity is not yet licensed. In the near future, through the Department of Fisheries, the Malaysian government is scheduled to licence offshore anglers.

The status of freshwater recreational fishing in Malaysia The freshwater ecosystem consists of rivers, streams, natural lakes, dams and abandoned mining pools. The riverine fish communities are determined by the unaffectedness of the ecosystem. The mighty rivers contain game-fish icons such as Malaysian red mahseer, Tor tambroides (Bleeker), snakehead, Channa micropeltes (C. & V.), giant featherback, Notopterus sp. and Sultan fish, Leptobarbus hoevenii (Bleeker) while hardy species such as African catfish, Clarias gariepinus (Burchell), sailfin catfish, Pterygoplicthys sp. and tilapia have become predominant in polluted urban rivers. These are the non-indigenous species that were accidentally introduced to rivers by aquaculture or the aquarium fish trade. A study showed that the sailfish catfish, Pterygoplicthys pardalis (Castlenau) endemic to South America was a widespread species in some rivers of peninsular Malaysia (Page and Robins 2006). Accordingly, fish ponds serve as alternative angling spots in urban areas where the rivers are relatively insignificant in their variety of fish resources. Nevertheless, a significant variety of fish can still be found in pristine river ecosystems. For example, the Malaysian red mahseer, also known as kelah, can only survive in clean river ecosystems. Like the other mahseer species, for example, Tor tor (Hamilton) in rivers of the Indian subcontinent, the Malaysian red mahseer is also a popular game fish. Anglers and tourists are willing to pay large amounts of money for the opportunity to catch this fish. To ensure its conservation, the Department of Wildlife and National Parks established a sanctuary at the Taman Negara (National Park). This national park covering 4343 km2 of virgin jungle, sprawls across the mountainous interiors of three states in peninsular Malaysia, namely Kelantan, Pahang and Terengganu. Under the supervision of the Department of Wildlife and National Parks, angling activity is only permitted in designated streams.

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The status of marine recreational fishing in Malaysia With its 4492 km of coastline and a 453,000-km-wide Exclusive Economic Zone, as well as the 561 islands scattered in its waters, Malaysia offers vast potential for marine tourism including recreational fishing. In Malaysia, marine recreational fishing activity is divided into inshore and offshore fishing. The latter is more commercialized because of the necessity for other things such as boats, fishing tackle and marine equipment, as well as accommodation (e.g. hotels, chalets and resorts). Figure 2.5 shows the prime marine recreational fishing sites in Malaysian waters that are usually located in the vicinity of islands, shoals, coral atolls and sea mountains. The pristine marine environments in East Malaysia offer magnificent angling havens. In terms of biodiversity, these natural marine ecosystems offer a huge variety of fish species. Malaysian waters host over 4000 fish species (Anon 1997), including trophy game-fish species such as billfish, yellowfin tuna, giant trevally, wahoo and cobia. Some near-shore waters in Malaysia are also hot spots for billfish. The highly migratory billfish congregates near shores along the east coast of peninsular Malaysia between July and September. A prestigious international angling competition, known as the Royal Pahang Billfish International Challenge, has been organized since 2004. The practice of catch and release is an important requirement of the competition. Besides natural ecosystems such as coral reefs, ship wrecks are also preferable fishing spots because they have abundant fish populations. Knowing that submerged structures at sea function as fish stock enhancers, the Department of Fisheries and Fisheries Development Authority of Malaysia have deployed fish aggregation devices (FADs) on the sea bottom. The prime destinations for deep-sea angling tourism and competitions are usually where these FADs are located. Recreational fishing activity not only targets finfish; squid jigging is also a popular recreational activity in the east coast of Peninsular Malaysia. With the availability of spawning squid aggregations, squid jigging competitions are often organized between March and September along the east coast of peninsular Malaysia.

Major constraints to recreational fishing in Malaysia Recreational fishing in Malaysia faces two major constraints: competition with the commercial fishery sector and the dwindling resource availability. There may be conflicts between anglers and commercial fishermen because they share common fishing grounds. It is possible that these problems are aggravated by the absence of regulations, particularly on catch limits. Without regulations, recreational fishers can catch unlimited numbers of fish.

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P. Langkawi

THAILAND

P. Pangkor P. Jarak ST RA IT S O F M AL AC

SINGAPORE

P. Tioman P. Pemanggil P. Aur P. Pemanggil P. Sibu

K. Rompin

P. Perhentian P. Redang P. Tenggol

PENINSULAR MALAYSIA

CA

Deep-Sea angling sites Billfish

SOUTH CHINA SEA

Luconi Shoals

SARWAK

SABAH

KALIMANTAN

P. Mantanani

P. Layang-Layang

BRUNE

Figure 2.5 Location of recreational fishing spots in Malaysia (Source: The Angling Association of Malaysia).

CELEBES

SEA

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The lack of designated areas for marine recreational fishing in Malaysia may cause competition for access to resources. This problem could be significant except where specific management measures have been applied to minimize conflict. Conflicts in freshwater recreational fishing have been minimized by the designation of angling areas in the National Park. Recreational fishing at freshwater fish ponds reduces reliance on the natural ecosystem. Resource conflict occurs when important trophy species like billfish become either by-catch or target species for trawlers. The Indo-Pacific sailfish Istiophorus platypterus and black marlin, Maikara indica, are the two types of billfish that seasonally congregate in the near-shore waters along the east coast of peninsular Malaysia. While this highly prestigious game fish generates big profits during the international angling competition, it is not a favourable eating fish for Malaysians. Instead, billfish species are sold at 6 MR (Malaysian ringgit) (or US$1.60) and consumed as fish crackers and fish meal. Dwindling fish resources in coastal waters are indeed a constraint on the sustainability of recreational fishing activity. The phase of rapid growth of catches that prevailed in the 1960s and 1970s has been linked to declining catches in the 1980s in coastal waters of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries (Pauly and Chua 1988). With increase of fishing capital (e.g. boats and gear), overfishing has taken place since 1970s in Malaysia (Jomo 1991). Until today, the clearest sign of overfishing in the coastal waters of Malaysia has been seen in the increasing percentage of ‘trash fish’ (Anon 2004). Perhaps, deep-sea recreational fishing in the Exclusive Economic Zone is the best alternative for avid anglers. There is a common but often-overlooked potential for the destruction of fish habitats (e.g. mangrove, coral reefs, seagrass beds and jungle rivers) due to the adverse impact of destructive fishing, logging and pollution. For example, without good conservation efforts, the pristine habitats of riverine fishes can be adversely affected by pollution and siltation due to logging activity and earthworks undertaken near riverbanks. Some endemic fishes are susceptible to changes in the river ecosystem. Extinction of some freshwater fish species caused by river impoundment has been observed in one of the hydroelectric dams in Malaysia (Zakariah and Ali 1996). Thus, intact forest habitat is indeed important for the conservation of pristine jungle rivers and its dwellers. In doing so, the Malaysian red mahseer has become a ‘flagship species’ that protects other riverine species and pristine jungle rivers.

Future outlook for recreational fishing in Malaysia Malaysia’s future outlook in recreational fishing is best illustrated by its work with the Malaysian red mahseer. With support from international organizations, such as

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39

the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the Network of Aquaculture Centres in Asia Pacific (NACA), Malaysia took further steps in mahseer management by organizing an International Symposium on Mahseer 2006: Biology, Culture and Conservation. The symposium, which was attended by ten Asian nations, adopted a ‘Mahseer Declaration, Kuala Lumpur 200’ to effectively safeguard this fish through sustainable exploitation, conservation and aquaculture. Like commercial fishing, recreational fishing also deserves consideration as a contributor to resource exploitation. Therefore, recreational fishing also needs to be regulated. In this light, Malaysia is planning to have regulations on recreational fishing. The Department of Fisheries has drafted the Regulation on Marine Recreational Fishing, which is made under the Fisheries Act 1985. Under this drafted regulation, a licence will be issued to offshore anglers. In terms of conservation measures, the drafted regulation will add sharks, swordfish, marlin and sailfish to the catch-and-release species list. Size limits will be imposed for other species like groupers and snappers.

2.8

Recreational angling in the Netherlands: participation, trends and management

Toine W.P.M. Aarts The total surface of the Netherlands is 41,528 km2, and the total surface of freshwater is 7653 km2 (18%). The coastline in the west and north-west is 451 km. This makes the Netherlands a water-rich country with numerous possibilities for recreational fishing. There are canals, shallow and deep lakes, rivers, streams, brooks, ditches, brackish waters and, of course, the sea.

Participation According to an investigation of The Dutch Institute for Public Opinion and Market Research (TNS NIPO), there are 1,780,000 anglers in the Netherlands, which is about 11% of the total population. Most participants are males over the age of 14 (1,000,000). There are also 260,000 females over 14 years of age participating. Also, there are 520,000 children under 15 years of age who go fishing at least once a year. On average, males over 14 years of age fish 14 times a year. Anglers fishing in coastal waters total about 673,000. About 70% of this group also fishes in freshwater. Group composition is as follows: 450,000 were males, over 14,120,000 were females over 14 and 103,000 were children under 15. In this group, males over 14 years of age fish on average 4.4 times a year (Figure 2.6).

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Anglers in the Netherlands 2004 29% Male 15+ Female 15+ Children 36 cm), as indicated by tag recaptures, and the characteristics of the seasonal fisheries taking them. In particular, they propose that sea bass in the North Sea may now be considered as a separate management stock. It is not known, however, whether sea bass around Norway recruit from further south in the North Sea or are now part of a self-supporting stock. An interesting question that arises is whether the fjord structure of the Norwegian coast promotes a more pronounced population structuring compared with the sea bass from other parts of the North Sea, as it does for Atlantic cod (Knutsen et al. 2003). Similar growth patterns shown on scale samples from comparative cohorts and long-distance movements of tagged sea bass (a sea bass tagged in 2004 in the inner Oslo fjord was caught by an angler north of Bergen) indicate that at least some fish disperse relatively widely (Colman et al. unpublished data).

Fisheries management – general considerations Most exploited fish stocks need protection to be able to persist at or above a sustainable level. However, the objectives for management have changed from the

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European sea bass in the North Sea

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earlier goal of yield maximization to a more compound modern goal (Hart and Reynolds 2002). Hilborn and Walters (1992) recognize four themes for objectives: (1) biological, (2) economic, (3) recreational and (4) social. Ideally, fisheries management should be based on a broad foundation of scientific knowledge that relates to these categories, but opinions on which interest groups should contribute to this knowledge differ. The scientific environment is typically located within governmental institutes and universities and is often accused of not communicating with the commercial fishing industry, which is claimed to only take shortterm profit into consideration when negotiating management options. In the following, we provide an overview of the aforementioned four objectives in relation to sea bass and indicate how the different groups involved can contribute to an appropriate management plan. Whilst much of this is comparable to striped bass in the eastern United States of America, it is important to keep in mind the multinational aspects and newly establishing populations of European sea bass. The biological objectives incorporate the future well-being of the species in question and its ecosystem interactions, with the aim of maintaining self-sustaining stocks. Through sampling of commercial catches, age distributions and thus cohort strength can be measured, using mathematical population models with which predictions of future stocks, both in numbers and biomass, can be made (Hart and Reynolds 2002). Marine science institutes are mainly responsible for the production and application of these models to particular species, but input from fishermen who in their daily work observe the fish can also contribute valuable information. The economic objectives take into account all parties involved in the realization of potential values in fishing, both commercial and recreational. People from widely different labour areas, including fishermen, fleet owners, fish processing workers and logistics workers, make a living in the commercial sector. However, value distribution among these groups depends on whether large-scale companyowned or small-scale artisanal fisheries are involved. Recreational fisheries, as defined, generate little, if any, value measured in terms of fish sold, as most fish caught are consumed by the angler and his family and friends, or released alive. The economical potential, in some cases fully realized, lies in all sorts of business concerned with equipment supply, accommodation, transportation and guiding of anglers. Recreational objectives are somewhat harder to quantify, as they refer to the psychological need in humans to be engaged in self-experienced meaningful activities during their spare time. Social objectives are involved in all stages in the fishing industry. Most coastal communities were originally built around the fish and fishing industry, and many small communities are likely to vanish if the major local employment businesses disappear. In countries such as Norway, government authorities subsidise rural development, including fishing and fish processing. Small-scale artisan fisheries generate more jobs for fishermen, while large-scale commercial fisheries involve more labour-intensive onshore-based work and employ a number of people in factories. Promotion of recreational angling has incorporated social

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objectives with the aim of engaging more people in a healthy leisure activity, by emphasizing the valuable psychological aspects that contribute to the participants’ well-being, the better understanding and respect of nature and a positive influence on the quality of life that angling generates. Presently, a number of countries successfully combine management of commercial and recreational fisheries for marine species, and some fisheries management authorities regard recreational fishing for marine species to have a greater potential for generating value than commercial fishing. Well-known examples are Ireland (for sea bass, see the following section) and the United States of America [for striped bass, see Field (1997) and Chapter 11]. The change to management favouring recreational fishing in both these countries began with a population crash of the species in question, in the United States of America primarily caused by overharvesting by commercial fishing. To restore the populations of sea bass and striped bass, complete bans were placed on commercial fishing and recreational angling was strictly regulated. This means that, for these two species, the recreational angler has limited competition from commercial fishing and, as a consequence, can enjoy more fish in general, including more large fish. For striped bass, commercial fishing has also resumed and is regulated under the presumption of moderation and sustainable use.

Sea bass fisheries in north-west Europe Partly because of the high prices offered for the species, the commercial sea bass fisheries in north-west Europe have developed rapidly since the late 1970s. It is not always easy to distinguish between fisheries directed at sea bass and those where sea bass are taken as a by-catch, and sea bass are rarely exploited as the main target species throughout the entire year. However, the commercial sea bass fisheries can be split into inshore and offshore components. In the inshore fishery, small boats use a wide variety of fishing methods with relatively little activity in winter, and have in the past exploited juvenile sea bass less than 36 cm long in inshore nursery areas, where they can be extremely vulnerable. Once sea bass mature, they are less available to the inshore fishery, but they have been increasingly targeted on their pre-spawning and spawning grounds by French mid-water pair-trawlers since the early 1980s and more recently by British vessels, chiefly between November and April. Catches of sea bass taken by rod-and-line have comprised a substantial part of the overall landings in southern Britain for many years (Dunn et al. 1989; Dunn and Potten 1994), where the sea bass is widely regarded as the most important marine recreational angling species. In several areas, charter boats take groups of anglers out specifically to catch sea bass on offshore reefs and areas of tidal overfalls, the larger vessels going offshore as far as the Channel Isles. Recreational angling for sea bass is also popular along the French coast, particularly

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between the Cherbourg Peninsula and southern Brittany, and appears to have grown steadily around Jersey and Guernsey in recent years. Few sea bass are caught along the Irish coast of the Irish Sea to the north of the River Boyne, and the best sea bass angling extends from the west of County Wexford around the southern coast to County Clare, where sea bass shoal in estuary mouths, off rocky headlands and reefs and along open storm beaches. In the North Sea, sea bass have been caught regularly by recreational anglers along the south coast of Norway since the late 1980s. Recent reports indicate that sea bass are currently caught in coastal waters from the Swedish border in the south-east to the Bodø area in the north (Figure 6.2). They are also caught from the shore in the far north of Scotland, and near warm-water discharges from power stations on the Scottish east coast, areas that in the past have been considered to be on the periphery of the species’ normal range. Southwards along the English coast, small quantities of sea bass are taken as a by-catch in trawls and set nets and occasionally by directed angling, and they are regularly caught in the southern North Sea as part of a mixed fishery in fixed and drift nets, trawls and by lines. In particular, sea bass may be targeted in estuaries and around wrecks and offshore banks from May until November using gill-nets, lines and angling. Sea bass are caught in the southern North Sea by French boats using bottom trawls, and both shore and boat angling for sea bass has become popular and worthwhile along the Netherlands and Belgium coasts.

Commercial landings A combination of the official UK statistics and landings derived from a voluntary logbook scheme run by the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (CEFAS), have been used to provide ‘best estimates’ of sea bass landings in England and Wales (Pawson et al. 2007a). Other countries’ estimates are based on official reports. Commercial landings of sea bass from the North Sea have increased considerably in the last 20 years, because of a number of strong cohorts recruiting to the fishery and protection of juveniles (Pawson et al. 2005). Boats from the United Kingdom and France are responsible for the bulk of commercial landings in the North Sea area, although other countries along the continental North Sea coast have increasingly contributed, ranging from 2 t (Denmark) to 122 t (Netherlands) annually. There is some small-scale commercial fishing for sea bass in Norwegian waters, mostly as by-catch, though there are reports of targeted commercial sea bass gill-net fishing during the winter from the inner Oslo fjord area. No official statistics are available for Norway. Total international landings of sea bass from the southern North Sea and the eastern English Channel were relatively stable at around 500 t over the period 1984–1990, and then rose to a peak of 1900 t in 1994, since when they have fluctuated between 1210 and 1810 t (Pawson et al. 2007a).

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Recreational catch There is no routine collection of information on sea bass catches by anglers anywhere in Europe. However, good-quality data on recreational catch and effort in England and Wales were obtained for 1986–1987 and 1992–1993 as a result of two economic studies (Dunn et al. 1989; Dunn and Potten 1994), which estimated that some 24,500 sea-anglers fished regularly for sea bass in the United Kingdom in 1986/87 and took around 415 t of sea bass annually. A preliminary study on recreational fishing in France was carried out by IFREMER (Institut Français pour la Recherche et l’Exploration de la Mer) and BVA (Institut, D’Etudes de Marche et D’Opinion), using telephone interviews with a sample of around 2000 people greater than 15 years old, stratified by geographical and socio-economical characteristics of the population. When raised by the corresponding French population (48 million), the recreational sea bass catch in 2002 was estimated at 1200 t for the English Channel and 3600 t for the Atlantic. A repeat study in 2004 indicated that 900,000 persons said that they fish for sea bass, one-third of whom fish more than seven times in a year to take an estimated catch of 3450 t. Thus, the catch of sea bass in French recreational fisheries is probably as high as the commercial catch. There are no sea bass catch data for Ireland. The quantity of sea bass caught by anglers in other countries surrounding the North Sea is unknown. In Norway, sea bass catches are now more frequently reported in the media than a decade ago, and according to the anglers themselves, the number caught has increased dramatically over the last 15 years (Box 6.1). Anglers who specifically target sea bass estimate that they catch approximately one fish per 4-h fishing. Based on angling reports and interviews, we estimate anglers in Norway at present catch over 10 t per year, or five times that of the present commercial catch (Table 6.1), though we have no hard data to support this.

Management of sea bass fisheries Due to the northward extension of its distribution (Figure 6.1), the sea bass is regarded as a ‘newly colonizing species’ in a number of countries. Invasive fish species impose important questions to management: should they be considered a resource and encouraged (with appropriate management), or are they to be considered a threat for existing species and therefore eradicated? However, it is impossible to prevent marine species from expanding their distribution, and the only way of actively influencing a marine fish stock is by controlling its exploitation. Fisheries authorities therefore need to develop a framework for managing fisheries for new species, especially if it might be replacing another species due to temperature changes, for example. They may easily become subject to overexploitation if management regulations are lacking, with the unfortunate result that both the displaced and the newly arrived species may disappear.

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Box 6.1

119

Questionnaire survey of anglers from the inner parts of the Oslo Fjord

Methods: Anglers were approached at random either in the field while they fished or in sport stores while shopping for fishing equipment. A prepared questionnaire was read out loud and the angler’s answers were recorded. Although these interviews were carried out randomly, by anglers, days and places, most of those questioned were from the Oslo area and spent much of their fishing time in the inner Oslo fjord. Although we have no demographic or social–economic information, it is also likely that our interviewees represented an economically strong and motivated (state-of-the-art equipment, etc.) type of angler. However, fishing is the outdoor activity most Norwegians take part in, and anglers in Norway are representative of most of society. 2004 Questions

2006

#

%

#

%

Yes

24

77

16

94

No

7

23

1

6

Will you focus more on sea bass fishing in the future?

Do you think recreational fishing should be regulated, for example, with lengths or bag limits? Yes

14

44

13

81

No

18

56

3

19

Should near-shore commercial fishing be regulated, for example, for the benefit of recreational fishing? Yes

––

––

15

88

No

––

––

2

12

What characteristic of sea bass do you appreciate most? The fight

6

75

2

12

As a food source

2

25

3

19

The excitement of catching a ‘new’ species

0

0

11

69

Why do you fish in general? For food

13

22

0

0

For sport and recreation

22

38

9

56

The social aspects

15

26

7

44

Other reasons

8

14

0

0

Trends: There was a clear understanding among all our interviewees that sea bass were increasing, but this was much more prevalent in 2004 than 2006. (continued)

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Box 6.1

Continued

Almost all of those asked (94%) in 2006 replied that they were going to direct more of their efforts towards sea bass fishing in the future. Sea bass is clearly becoming a major sports-fish in Norway, and our data show that this trend is increasing. Regulations: Anglers interviewed in 2004 were much less positive towards regulating sport fishing in saltwater. Before 2005, there was little tradition for regulating recreation/sport or hobby fishing in coastal Norway, apart from the use of nets. In 2005, tourists were regulated as to the amount of fish they could keep (15 kg). This law has been much debated, and the ensuing media coverage is likely to have influenced our interviewees in 2006. Most of those who answered in 2006 felt that sport (81%) and commercial (88%) fishing should be regulated. Unfortunately, we did not have this question in 2004. Sea bass fishing in Norway appears to be evolving from a ‘by-catch’ among hobby and recreational anglers to a more focused sport fishing activity. In 2004, the answers to questions about why the interviewees fished and what they appreciated most about catching sea bass reflect a traditional hobby, for example, for food and ‘other reasons’. This changed rapidly over 2 years and, in 2006, most of those interviewed said they fished sea bass for the excitement. They also preferred sea bass fishing for the challenge and strength of the fish and valued the social aspects of sea bass fishing. A high number (6 out of 8, or 75%) in 2004 also answered that the fight was the best thing about catching sea bass. This might be a result of the low number who could answer that question in 2004, because catching a sea bass was obviously a prerequisite. By 2006, sea bass fishing was already becoming well established among those interviewed, and the fish’s fight evidently became less of an important impact factor. Over the 2-year period, there was a clear shift in anglers’ thoughts as to why sea bass might be increasing in abundance in Norway, with global warming as the leading explanation. Interestingly, those interviewed in 2004 had broader ecological explanations with a number of plausible reasons, such as interspecific competition, population growth and dispersal, or better resources; while in 2006 it would seem that everything happening in nature is now a consequence of climate change. This is something we would like to investigate in future studies.

United Kingdom In the late 1970s, recreational anglers reported that sea bass were declining in abundance around the English and Welsh coasts, though the commercial fishery was quite small at that time. Pawson et al. (1987) showed that the exploitation pattern of sea bass had been shifting towards younger ages in the early to mid-1980s,

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Table 6.1 Estimated annual sea bass landings (in tonnes) in countries surrounding the North Sea and eastern English Channel, based on reported catch-records over the period 2000–2004. Commercial landings United Kingdom

575

France

886

Netherlands

122

Denmark

2

Norway

2+ and growing

Other countries

Unknown (negligible)

Source: Pawson et al. 2007a; Colman et al. unpublished data.

1982

1992

2002

Figure 6.1 The temporal trend in the spatial distribution of UK commercial catch statistics for European sea bass, showing the northwards extension to its geographical range since the 1980s. The catch per unit effort increases with increasing darkness of the shaded squares (data from Defra catch statistics data base).

and recruitment in some important fisheries occurred at 32–36 cm, owing to local fishing patterns targeting sea bass of 3–5 years old in and around harbours and estuaries. There was strong evidence of growth-overfishing (too many small fish being caught before they had a chance to grow) in many areas, and Pawson et al. (1987) estimated that yields in areas such as the southern North Sea would increase if the size at first recruitment to the fishery was delayed until around 45 cm total length was reached. However, because many inshore fisheries in southern England depended heavily on exploiting juvenile sea bass, a minimum size at recruitment no higher than approximately 36 cm was indicated. It should be noted that the UK’s strategy for sea bass conservation in the 1980s did not include direct controls on the level of fishing for sea bass. Effort limitation and catch quotas were considered ineffective in such a fragmented multispecies

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fishery that employs mainly small, inshore boats and also because there were insufficient assessment data on which to base quantitative recommendations. In 1990, a package of technical measures was implemented in England and Wales, comprising a national minimum landing size (MLS) of 36 cm (adopted by the European Commission in 1990 to apply to all north-western European waters), closure of 34 key sea bass nursery areas in estuaries or around the warmwater discharges from coastal power stations where juvenile sea bass congregate and are vulnerable to fishing, and mesh size regulations for enmeshing nets which effectively banned meshes between 65 and 89 mm (i.e. those most selective for sea bass of 30–36 cm). Pawson et al. (2005) showed that these technical measures increased protection of juvenile sea bass, achieved the predicted increase in yield of sea bass in UK fisheries and helped safeguard the stock fished close inshore by small boats.

Ireland A similar decline in sea bass catches in Ireland in the 1970s prompted the introduction of a number of conservation measures. A size limit of 38 cm was introduced in 1975, and increased to 40 cm in 1990, when a closed time for fishing for sea bass by nets and bans in certain areas were also introduced. Additional regulations in 1992 prohibited fishing for sea bass from a boat and using nets in their capture, banned the sale of wild sea bass and introduced a bag limit of two sea bass in any 24-h period and a closed season for angling for sea bass between 15 May and 15 June. The cumulative effect of these regulations has been to outlaw commercial fishing for sea bass in the Republic of Ireland, based on the argument that recreational fishing generated considerable value, and managing in its favour could be combined with the rehabilitation and sustainable use of the sea bass population.

France The offshore fishery for adult sea bass (>40 cm) shoaling for spawning between December and early May in the English Channel, Bristol Channel and in Biscay has increased steadily since the early 1980s, with a recent average of 20 French pelagic pair-trawl teams fishing each year. Although there are no direct effort or catch (total allowable catch – TAC) restrictions on this fishery, a national regulation limiting sea bass landings by French pelagic trawlers fishing in the Channel to 2 t/boat/week in January–April was introduced in 1996 to prevent markets from being oversupplied. Since 1998, this measure has been extended to all trawlers landing sea bass, and the current limit of 5 t/boat/week was also adopted by the United Kingdom in 2000 to prevent excessive landings by Scottish vessels participating in the winter offshore fishery.

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Norway Fishing regulations for coastal species are almost non-existent in Norway, though some small-scale, local regulations exist in numerous fjords for recreational fishing for salmonids. Sea bass is not recognized as a ‘Norwegian species’ but as a ‘rare visitor’, allowing unlimited harvest by commercial fishermen as by-catch and with no regulations whatsoever for recreational fishing. Sea bass catches are not registered in official statistics. The only sea bass catch registration system available is on our project’s Web site (www.seabass.no), and this is used mostly by recreational anglers. Although we have encouraged commercial fishing markets to use this register, or to record in some form the number of sea bass delivered to their market by commercial fishermen, the response has been meager. However, the number of catch reports is increasing each year.

Discussion Future management considerations The imperatives of large-scale commercial fishing and environmental challenges, both biotic and abiotic, shape all marine management regimes. When planning a management scheme, it is important to have a clear objective and also to understand to whom and how management will apply. This becomes especially challenging when the species is attractive for both commercial and recreational fishing. There are some simple scenarios that immediately come to mind: (1) plenty of fish, with no need to regulate commercial or recreational fishing, (2) limited numbers of fish, requiring both commercial and recreational fishing to be regulated and (3) severely depleted fish stocks, with very strict regulations or no fishing allowed by anyone. However, it is also important to understand the biological aspects and dynamic changes of the fish population, and the socio-economical values and potential consequences of commercial and/or recreational fishing. With respect to management of sea bass fisheries, assessments of sea bass stocks in UK coastal waters suggest that the current level of exploitation is sustainable and has led to an increase in exploitable biomass since the mid-1990s (Pawson et al. 2007a). Information on recruitment shows that year-class strength has generally improved since the early 1990s and, with the protection given to small sea bass, the growth-overfishing observed in the 1980s has been largely ameliorated. From what is known about stock mixing in sea bass and, in particular, the common traits in stock dynamics and biological parameters, it is reasonable to assume that these trends will be reflected throughout other areas, and that sea bass population in north-west Europe as a whole are probably being fished sustainably. However, forecasts of the actual or potential changes in yield accompanying these stock dynamics must take account of the availability of the sea bass population to the various fisheries. Pawson et al. (2007a), for example, suggest

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that the fisheries in the North Sea are not taking full advantage of the increased productivity of the sea bass population. Because sea bass are especially important to inshore artisanal fishers and recreational anglers, a management regime that results in moderate fishing mortality and produces relatively high abundance of medium-sized and large fish is likely to enhance the socio-economic value of the species (Drew Associates 2004), as well as ensuring long-term conservation of the resource, should environmental conditions become less favourable for good recruitment. In late 2005, stakeholders in England and Wales were consulted on a proposal to raise the MLS for sea bass from 36 to 45 cm so as to increase the numbers of larger sea bass in the population, and thus enhance angling opportunities. The results were polarized, with some respondents fully supporting the proposal, but many others suggesting that they would suffer a substantial loss of earnings (or lose the chance to take a meal-sized sea bass home). The outcome is that a 40-cm MLS is being considered in England (Wales decided not to change the present regime) in 2007, with an evaluation to be carried out 3 years later. No other country appears to be formally considering further changes to management of sea bass fisheries.

What do we learn from this? The United Kingdom has found that regulations based on a good understanding of the fish, its biology and its fisheries can produce the intended results, an increase in the sea bass population and higher yields. Pawson et al. (2005) suggest that technical measures do work, as they have for striped bass in the United States of America (Field 1997), though they must be aimed at specific management goals and it is important to understand and explain to stakeholders the implications of their implementation. They also emphasize the need to monitor the progress of the fishery and stock, to judge the success of or adapt the management scheme. Future plans to manage for the benefit of recreational anglers will require stricter restrictions on commercial fishing, with the aim to generate greater overall value to society. Whilst these may lead to more ecologically and socio-economically sustainable fisheries, they could also be considered to be discriminative against commercial fishermen. Anecdotal reports indicate that angling for sea bass has increased in Ireland, with more and larger fish being caught. Unfortunately, no monitoring was conducted either before or after these conservation measures were implemented, and the claim that these measures have worked is not borne out by official sources [Fisheries Science Services (FSS) 2006]. In the absence of a commercial fishery, it is difficult to monitor the effects of the management actions. There is also resentment that sea bass originating in Ireland may move offshore as they grow and mature, to be harvested by other nations’ fishing fleets in spite of the ban placed on Irish commercial fishermen and strict regulations for angling.

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Norway: a golden opportunity for testing a recreational-based management regime During the last 20 years, the amount of sea bass caught in Norwegian waters has increased dramatically. The reason for this increase is probably related to an expansion in sea bass abundance and distribution, and directed sea bass angling has increased over the same period in several areas in southern and western Norway. Over the last 5 years, reports of catches of sea bass have come from anglers as far north as Bodø, northern Norway (Figure 6.2). Most sea bass are caught between June and October, but occasional catches have been reported midwinter from the Oslo fjord, as well as along the southern and western coasts. Anglers report that they expect to increase their efforts to catch sea bass in the future (Box 6.1). Besides the socio-economic information, our interviews and information exchange with recreational fishermen contribute key information on angling hot spots for sea bass, their dispersal, distribution, feeding patterns and trends in population growth, and the gathering of vital biological samples such as scales and tissue (for genetic analysis). Our interviews also illustrate how careful we need to be when interpreting angler interview data. There are many biases, and the lack of systematic sampling restricts scientific validation.

Figure 6.2 Reported sea bass catch locations in Norway in 2005 (black dots). Reports represent angler catches that have been submitted via the online catch-report system at www.seabass.no or to the authors directly.

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Norway has a large angling population, though it is difficult to separate those fishing in fresh- and saltwater, as many combine their fishing to include many types of venue, species and methods. Only people 16 years and older need register, and only when angling for anadromous salmonids in freshwater. Thus, it is difficult to estimate the number of sea anglers in Norway. Household surveys indicate that half the adult population fish at least once a year, and over one-half of a billion Norwegian kroners (NOK; c.€70 million) are spent annually on fishing equipment alone. Considering the additional expenses involved with fishing trips, for example, boating equipment, cars and transportation, fuel, lodging, food, outdoor equipment and accessories, clothes and so on, the monitory value of angling in Norway is immense. At present, there is a very limited catch value possibly under NOK 1 million (around €0.1 million) reported for sea bass by commercial fishermen in Norway. The possibilities for developing fisheries based on the increasing abundance of sea bass in Norway requires us to learn from the experience in other European countries. On the basis of the comparative values for sea trout, Salmo trutta L., angling, it seems highly likely that the socio-economical value of recreational angling for sea bass will far outweigh the commercial value of sea bass in Norway, especially where the population is newly established and low in numbers. Even in England and Wales, where there are well-established commercial fisheries, sea-bass-related angling activities generate more money (£100 million, Drew Associates 2004) than the commercial catch (£6.8 million in 2003). Theoretically, therefore, restrictions on commercial fishing could further improve the total socio-economic value of sea bass fishing in Norway. For this reason, it should be considered whether to introduce regulations on commercial fishing for sea bass in Norway, especially now when there is little or nothing to lose for the commercial fisheries’ interests. It is easy to provide rational arguments why this is the most sustainable way of management for this species: z z z

Regulation policies in the United Kingdom have proven successful in restoring and securing sustainable stock sizes of sea bass. The continuing policy of banning commercial fisheries in Ireland. Positive results from other species, such as striped bass in particular, in the United States.

The only obstacle we see that can prevent politicians from accepting a ban on commercial fisheries for Norwegian sea bass is the unknown effect sea bass have on established commercial fish species. If a burgeoning sea bass population has a pronounced negative effect on, for example, cod, saithe, Pollachius virens L., salmon, Salmo salar L., or sea trout, it seems unlikely that politicians will protect sea bass from commercial fishing. To explore this issue, local trials of a ban on commercial fishing and promotion of sport fishing for sea bass could

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be held in areas with low commercial fishing activities (such as the inner parts of the Oslo fjord). Provided that such an experiment is adequately monitored through examination of anglers’ catches, the interactions between sea bass and other fish species can be revealed. Even though sea bass is likely to be an important target species of interest from an angler’s point of view in the future, it is important to keep in mind that it is part of a dynamic ecosystem and a fish community that interact in complex relationships. It would be equally detrimental if a management programme focused too much towards sea bass, resulting in the collapse of other fish species. How do we convince the policy makers that this novel idea is worth a try? Money! Economic value! We argue that the sea bass population needs protection from commercial harvest at this stage, irrespective of whether it eventually proves to be a valuable replacement for lost commercial fishing opportunities, or an additional sport fishing species. Simultaneously, we need to document the revenue created by the recreational fishing sector and promote them as a strong user group, thus securing recreational fishing’s rightful place at the negotiating table.

References Bonhomme, F., Naciri, M., Bahri-Sfar, L. and Lemaire, C. (2002) Comparative analysis of genetic structure of two closely related sympatric marine fish species Dicentrarchus labrax and Dicentrarchus punctatus. Comptes Rendus Biologies 325: 213–220. Castilho, R. and McAndrew, B.J. (1998) Population structure of seabass in Portugal: evidence from allozymes. Journal of Fish Biology 53: 1038–1049. Drew Associates (2004) Research into the Economic Contribution of Sea Angling. Final report to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, pp. 71 + annexes. Dunn, M., Potten, S., Radford, A. and Whitmarsh, D. (1989) An Economic Appraisal of the Fishery for Bass in England and Wales. Report to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. CEMARE, University of Portsmouth, p. 217. Dunn, M.R. and Potten, S.D. (1994) National Survey of Bass Angling. Report to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fish and Food. CEMARE, University of Portsmouth, pp. 45. Field, J.D. (1997) Atlantic striped bass management: where did we go right? Fisheries 22: 6–8. Fisheries Science Services (2006) Bass on All Coasts (Subareas VI and VII) in 2006 Stock Book. Fisheries Science Services, Marine Institute, www.marine.ie, p. 375–377. Fritsch, M., Morizur, Y., Lambert, E., Bonhomme, F. and Guinand, B. (2007). Assessment of sea bass (Dicentrarchus labrax, L.) stock delimitation in the Bay of Biscay and the English Channel based on mark-recapture and genetic data. Fisheries Research 83: 123–132. Hart, P.J.B. and Reynolds, J.D. (2002) Handbook of Fish Biology and Fisheries, Vol. 2: Fisheries. Blacwell Publishers, Oxford, p. 410. Hilborn, R. and Walters, C.J. (1992) Quantitative Fisheries Stock Assessment: Choice, Dynamics and Uncertainty. Chapman & Hall, London, p. 570.

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Jennings, S. and Pawson, M.G. (1992) The origin and recruitment of bass, Dicentrarchuslabrax, larvae to nursery areas. Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom 72: 199–212. Jennings, S., Lancaster, J.E., Ryland, J.S. and Shackley, S.E. (1991) The age structure and growth dynamics of young-of-the-year bass, Dicentrarchus labrax, populations. Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom 71: 799–810. Kelley, D. (2002) Abundance, growth and first-winter survival of young bass in nurseries of south-west England. Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom 82: 307–319. Kennedy, M. and Fitzmaurice, P. (1972). Biology of bass, Dicentrarchus labrax, in Irish waters. Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom 52: 557–597. Knutsen, H., Jorde, P.E., Andre, C. and Stenseth, N.C. (2003) Fine-scaled geographical population structuring in a highly mobile marine species: the Atlantic cod. Molecular Ecology 12: 385–394. Masski, H. (1998) Identification de frayères et étude des structures de population de turbot (Psetta maxima L.) et du bar (Dicentrarchus labrax L.) en Manche ouest et dans les zones avoisinantes. Thesis presented at the Faculty of Science in Brest. University of Bretagne Occidentale, pp. 136 + annexes. Naciri, M., Lemaire, C., Borsa, P. and Bonhomme, F. (1999) Genetic study of the Atlantic/ Mediterranean transition in sea bass (Dicentrarchus labrax). Journal of Heredity 90: 591–596. Pawson, M.G. (1992) Climatic influences on the spawning success, growth and recruitment of bass (Dicentrarchus labrax L.) in British waters. ICES Marine Science Symposium 195: 388–392. Pawson, M.G. and Eaton, D.R. (1999) The influence of a power station on the survival of juvenile sea bass in an estuarine nursery area. Journal of Fish Biology 54: 1143–1160. Pawson, M.G. and Pickett, G.D. (1996) The annual pattern of condition and maturity in bass, Dicentrarchus labrax, in waters around England and Wales. Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom 76: 107–125. Pawson, M.G., Kelley, D.F. and Pickett, G.D. (1987) The distribution and migrations of bass, Dicentrarchus labrax L, in waters around England and Wales as shown by tagging. Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom 67: 183–217. Pawson, M.G., Pickett, G.D. and Smith, M.T. (2005) The role of technical measures in the recovery of the UK sea bass (Dicentrarchus labrax) fishery 1980–2002. Fisheries Research 76: 91–105. Pawson, M.G., Kupschus, S. and Pickett, G.D. (2007a) The status of sea bass (Dicentrarchus labrax) stocks around England and Wales, derived using a separable catchat-age model, and implications for fisheries management. ICES Journal of Marine Science 64: 346–356. Pawson, M.G., Pickett, G.D., Lebalour, J., Brown, M. and Fritsch, M. (2007b) Migrations, fishery interactions and management units of sea bass, Dicentrarchus labrax L., bass in Northwest Europe. ICES Journal of Marine Science 64: 332–345. Pickett, G.D., Kelley, D.F. and Pawson, M.G. (2004) The patterns of recruitment of sea bass, Dicentrarchus labrax L. from nursery areas in England and Wales and implications for fisheries management. Fisheries Research 68: 329–342.

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Reynolds, W.J., Lancaster, J.E. and Pawson, M.G. (2003) Patterns of spawning and recruitment of sea bass to Bristol Channel nurseries in relation to the 1996 ‘Sea Empress’ oil spill. Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom 83: 1163–1170. Thompson, B.M. and Harrop, R.T. (1987) The distribution and abundance of bass (Dicentrarchus labrax) eggs and larvae in the English Channel and Southern North Sea. Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom 67: 263–274.

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Chapter 7

Scale and participation in recreational fisheries management Nordic examples Pekka Salmi, Erik Neuman and Tapio Hakaste

Abstract A major challenge for recreational fisheries management is in the complex, diverse and dynamic nature of the system. This chapter is based on the view that the way in which fisheries management institutions are designed and applied significantly contributes to the level of sustainability. We study stakeholder participation and spatial scale of management by drawing on examples of multistakeholder settings from northern Europe. The main tensions and conflicts in the case studies occurred between large-scale access rights for anglers and local owner-based management. Large management areas provided by public fishing rights enhance fishing opportunities for non-local anglers, but they generally do not encourage participation and responsibility in management. For better sustainability, the management institutions should prepare for communication between levels and enhance stakeholder participation. Local stock management should be improved and based on biological monitoring.

Introduction A major question for successful recreational fisheries is how fishers’ access to the desired fishing waters is arranged. Typically, problems have been related to competition with other resource user groups and the negative impacts resulting from these water uses on the quality of the fishing experience. Non-fishery impacts on recreational fishing resources can include, for instance, hydropower development, water quality problems, water abstractions for agriculture and recreational (non-fishery) use of waters (Hickley and Tompkins 1998; Arlinghaus et al. 2002). Conflicting demands also within the fisheries sector may determine 130

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the ‘social carrying capacity’ of a fishery and thus opportunities for recreational fishing (Arlinghaus 2005). There are various manifestations of collision between different stakeholder groups (Wilson et al. 1998; Arlinghaus 2005). Conflicts triggered by management of the access to the fishery rosources are in many instances cultural rather than interest driven (Jentoft 2003; Arlinghaus 2005). Designing institutions from the conflict management perspective is important especially when numerous or heterogenic stakeholder groups use the same fishing waters (Arlinghaus 2005). This chapter is based on a view that how management institutions are designed and adapted contributes significantly to the level of sustainability and conflicts in recreational fisheries. Sutinen and Johnston (2003) have proposed angling management organizations (AMOs) to better integrate the recreational sector into the management of fisheries. The AMOs are expected to encourage improved resource stewardship, reduce enforcement and monitoring costs, fewer management conflicts and greater long-term net economic benefits in recreational fisheries. However, conflicts between and among stakeholders can still be prevalent (Arlinghaus 2005), suggesting that additional factors are necessary to consider for minimizing conflicts. Along with changes in society, such as globalization, the spatial scale and level of participation in decision making are important determinants of governance institutions (Kooiman and Bavinck 2005). Public participation in decision making has been widely debated and studied, among others, in the fields of environmental planning (e.g. Rydin and Pennington 2000) and in forestry (e.g. Niskanen and Väyrynen 1999). Social science analyses of fisheries institutions are concentrated on issues surrounding commercial fisheries with an emphasis on co-management theory. Recreational fisheries have been rarely addressed as a stakeholder group in this literature. The social-psychology-oriented ‘human dimensions’ research tradition in the United States and elsewhere (Aas and Ditton 1998; Arlinghaus 2005, 2006) has provided valuable information about recreational fishers’ attitudes and opinions, but not much attention has been paid to address issues like scale and participation in recreational fisheries management. A major challenge for fisheries management is in the complex, diverse and dynamic nature of the system (Kooiman et al. 1999). The objective of this chapter is to discuss challenges of recreational fisheries management with an emphasis on stakeholder participation and spatial scale by drawing on case studies and examples from northern Europe. After reviewing recent discussions on participation, representation and scale in fisheries management, four case studies are presented and compared. For this purpose we analyse the local management of recreational fisheries in the Nordic case areas in terms of ecological, socioeconomic, community and institutional sustainability (Charles 2001).

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Participation, representation and scale in fisheries management Management systems are never designed in an institutional vacuum (Jentoft 2003) and the organization of management systems varies significantly around the world. Owing to the diversity also, the paths of development vary. From the historical perspective, Harris (2001) points out that the views of fisheries management have shifted from traditional to modern and further to postmodern. In the traditional view, authority is invested in local communities, while in the modern view authority is structured hierarchically and fisheries management is exercised in a top-down manner and the state authority and science are dominant. ‘Community participation’ is a postmodern view, where the conflict between disparate goals is submerged in a conflict over management process and which is often presented as a solution for problems of modern top-down fisheries management. Brown (2001) defines ‘community-based cooperative management’ as an arrangement where authority and responsibility over local resources is shared between government and local resource users and/or their communities. Harris (2001) raised a troublesome question: who is the community that is to participate in the management process? The community is no longer just local actors, which has led analysts to talk of stakeholders. Recreational fishers are important stakeholders in many fisheries although they often live permanently outside the fishing site and thus are not members of the ‘local community’. Representation of stakeholder groups and the scale of management are interwoven in co-management theory (e.g. Wilson et al. 2003). This can be encompassed at any spatial scale. Co-management can be broadly defined as a collaborative and participatory process of decision making between representatives of user groups, governmental agencies, research institutions and other stakeholders (Jentoft 2003). Co-management has been presented as a way forward from fishery crises (Sen and Raakjær Nielsen 1996), which are at large crises of fisheries management rather than resource crises (Symes 1996). Recreational fishers have become powerful stakeholders in many fisheries (Arlinghaus et al. 2002), for example, in the US fisheries management (Mikalsen and Jentoft 2001). However, they are not self-evidently included in a participatory management system (Varjopuro and Salmi 2003). There are numerous subgroups of recreational fishers, which tend to complicate representation in the management system. Co-management is considered as one manifestation of co-governance, where societal parties join hands with a common purpose in mind (Kooiman and Bavinck 2005). Other forms of co-governance comprise communicative governance, public–private partnerships, regimes and networks. In order to reach successful collaboration, attention is directed to the design of institutions, for example, which groups, and in which way, should participate in the day-to-day management (Kooiman 2003).

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As co-management may occur at different geographical and political levels, the spatial scale affects the way stakeholders are represented. On smaller scales, decision making can be handled in face-to-face communications in which differences about facts can be sorted out and differences about values can be debated and compromises reached (Degnbol et al. 2003). In many cases, direct participation – although a democratic ideal – will be out of question because of the sheer number of legitimate interests involved (Mikalsen and Jentoft 2001). Larger scale requires other procedures for representation and deliberation (Jentoft 2003). In practice, fisheries decisions are rarely made solely by the state or, for instance, solely by the local community. The governance system is often a mixture of tasks and rights at different hierarchical levels and scales. Ostrom (1999) argues in favour of polycentric systems, where citizens are able to organize not just on one but multiple governing authorities at different scales. Each unit may exercise considerable independence to make and enforce rules within a circumscribed scope of authority for a specified geographical area. Pascual-Fernández et al. (2005) have addressed the importance of institutional linkages: institutions are linked to each other and form networks that are themselves institutions. The functioning of these networks is dependent on how they are structured and what flows within them. McCay and Jentoft (1996) have argued that fisheries management should adopt the principle of subsidiarity, that is, the management authority should be vested at lowest possible organization. The lowest level could be the vessel, an angling club, firm or a local community. Securing local involvement may bring local and tacit knowledge to the management discussions. In some situations, however, the subsidiarity principle can mean regional, national or even international level of decision making. Jentoft and McCay (1995) suggest that a fisheries management regime should not surpass the ecosystem boundary as defined by fish stock boundaries. Thus, local stocks should be subject to local level management, while migrating stocks should be the responsibility of regional, national or transnational institutions depending on the particularities that pertain to each species. In the discussion of developing institutions for natural resource management the delimitation and size of the managed area are important factors. Bruckmeier and Neuman (2005, ref. Ostrom 1999; Neuman et al. 2004) have collected five arguments in favour of small areas for natural resource management: z z z z

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Managers need to have a joint understanding of the functioning of the resource and how their actions affect the other managers and the resource. Managers must trust each other and observe their mutual relations. Managers should have good knowledge of the area. Managers must have a good possibility of controlling the fishery.

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d

c

b

a

Osakaskunta, fiskelag, Statutory Fishery Association. Fiskevårdsområde, Local Fisheries Management Area. Kalastusalue, fiskeområde. Fiskevårdssammanslutning.

Free: angling with a rod and natural bait, ice fishing with a rod. Province-wide lure fishing fee system

Legal use rights

Free: angling with a rod and natural bait, gill-netting for herring (Clupea harengus) for local people

Regional associationd Fisheries authority of the Provincial Government

Fisheries Regionc

National and district fisheries authorities

Local Fishery Associationa

Local Fishery Associationa

Public

Individual owner

Individual owner

Private

Åland Islands

Turku archipelago/Case Häme

Ownership

Study areas

Table 7.1 Management institutions and state-organized use rights in the study areas.

Free: rod fishing, fishing with long-lines and herring gill-nets in deep water.

National and regional fisheries authorities

––

Local Fishery Associationb

Individual owner

Östhammar archipelago

Scale and participation in recreational fisheries management z z

135

The resource should be distributed in few populations per species, ideally one. Three arguments have been presented in favour of large areas. { Large management areas enable better fishing opportunities. { In large areas, more personal and economic resources are available for management. { Managing large areas reduces the risk that exploitation of the same population in several areas will complicate management.

We use the above arguments later in the discussion section for studying management challenges of recreational fishing at different scales.

Recreational fisheries management in Nordic case areas Fisheries and management institutions Coastal and inland water areas in Sweden and Finland have traditionally been under private ownership and managed (jointly) by the people who own the shoreline (Table 7.1). The water owners are responsible for the local management of fisheries. The Local Fisheries Associations (LFAs) organize joint decision making concerning the collective village waters. Water owners have traditionally been mostly locals, but lately a considerable part of the waters has come in the possession of people who live outside the area. Moreover, the ownership structure has become fragmented especially due to growing needs of summer cottage dwelling. Consequently, there are many joint-owner groups within lake and coastal water areas and the ownership structure has become a mosaic (Sipponen 1999). The LFAs in the case study areas are normally based on a village extending from a few to a few dozen kilometres with less than ten to hundreds of stakeholders. There are currently approximately 2100 LFAs in Sweden (Fiskeriverket 2002). These organizations are well established inland, but there is so far a small number along the coasts. The major proportions of privately owned coastal water areas, where LFAs have not yet been established, are managed in an informal way by individual water owners or their associations (Sandström et al. 2002). In Finland, there are a total of about 7500 LFAs, 75% in the inland waters (Salmi et al. 2002). However, only a small part of these associations are operative. In coastal areas the average size of private waters is often substantially smaller than in the lake areas. Especially the non-local recreational fishers, together with commercial interests, have demanded larger fishing areas than those provided by the LFAs. Therefore, fisheries regions (FRs) was founded in the 1980s to offer a forum for decision making on a larger scale of operation than that of the local associations. The idea behind FR is to strengthen cooperation in uniform watersheds, where it is appropriate to coordinate LFAs. FRs makes a management plan that collects information about fish stocks and fishing and provides management guidelines for the water area.

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Stockholm

Östhammar

Sweden

Finland

Aland

Figure 7.1 The case study areas.

Turku

Tampere

Hämeenlinna meenlinna

Lahti Lathi


137

Fisheries in Sweden are governed by 21 county administrations, which belong to the state governance system, and the National Board of Fisheries. In Finland, the central authority is the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. In the 1980s the introduction of district authorities, responsible for all inland and coastal waters, strengthened the role of the government in Finnish fisheries management. The special provincial government in the autonomic Åland Islands has substantial power as the ‘central’ authority. It issues rules concerning, for example, minimum sizes for captured fish of some species and mesh sizes for fishing gear. These rules must be followed by the local managers, which, however, can decide about further restrictions. In the past, fish resources have formed an important part of livelihoods and subsistence in Swedish and Finnish coastal and freshwater areas. The commercial use has decreased and concurrently recreational fisheries have substantially increased, as in all industrialized countries. The use of passive fishing gear in recreational fishing is a special feature of Nordic fishing culture. Subsistence fishing traditions, especially the use of gill-nets, small fyke-nets and wire traps, have importance although rod fishing has increased and dominate. We name the users of passive fishing methods as household fishers and the users of different types of rod and/or line gear as anglers. Local fishers are mostly household fishers, albeit angling is also common among them. The summer cottage dwellers form an important fisher group, which can be characterized as semi-local (Salmi et al. 2006). Household fishing is common also among them, when they have the legal possibility for it. Non-local fishers are almost exclusively anglers. Angling became free for the public along the Swedish Baltic coast in 1985. In Finland, except the Åland Islands, the adoption of a province-wide lure fishing fee system in 1997 allowed rod fishing in the privately owned waters irrespective of the owners will. It is still, however, possible to buy licences from the LFAs for fishing with rods, like for passive gears. The Finnish state-organized lure fishing permits are sold for each province and the income is distributed back to the LFAs and individual water owners. Trolling is not included in Swedish ‘free fishing’, but in Finland trolling with one rod is allowed when the lure fishing permit is purchased. In many cases, the FRs have created their own licence areas for trolling, where fishers can use several rods. These can also bring significant incomes for the FR. To sum up, fisheries interests, practices and management in Sweden and Finland are a complex mix of official and private stakeholders at different scales, and angling, household and commercial fishing sometimes go on in the same area.

Study sites The study sites were chosen to provide varying examples of recreational fisheries management challenges in the setting of an owner-based governance system. The four study areas are the Östhammar archipelago in Sweden, the Turku archipelago, the Åland Islands and the Häme lake area in Finland (Figure 7.1).

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The Östhammar area is located about 100 km north from Stockholm in the municipalities Östhammar and Norrtälje. The water area of the study site covers c.100 km2. The area is unique when compared with other Swedish Baltic coastal areas, because it is managed by ten functioning LFAs. The case study areas in the Turku archipelago comprise 2 out of 15 FR in the archipelago, Nauvo and Velkua. The main parts of the Velkua FR are situated in the municipalities Velkua and Rymättylä, 40 km west of the city of Turku. The size of the water area of the Velkua Region is 361 km2 and that of Nauvo is 1006 km2. The study area in the Åland Islands was made up of four municipalities: Geta, Hammarland, Kökar and Lemland. Their total archipelago water area, that is, the area inside the border between the inner private waters and the common water of the open sea, is 1140 km2 and their total population is c.3800. The Häme study site is an inland area in southern Finland. It is larger than the other study sites with over 800,000 inhabitants in 56 municipalities. The total water area is 3870 km2. In this province there are altogether 2000 water owner units, which are combined into 30 FRs.

Challenges in fisheries management The Östhammar area The data in the Östhammar area were collected in a mail survey using an eightpage questionnaire (Salmi 2002) treating the conditions in 2001 and was sent to water owners, other estate owners, holders of boat places, fishing club members and occasional visitors of the area. The total sampling population was 1995 persons or households and 1443 questionnaires (72%) were returned. The material also consists of 16 qualitative interviews, made with representatives of local water owners, fishers and other local groups, tourist entrepreneurs and representatives of the fisheries and environmental authorities. Recreational fishing is extensive and carried out by locals, owners of summer cottages and tourists. Gill-netting for pikeperch (Sander lucioperca), whitefish (Coregonus lavaretus) and perch (Perca fluviatilis) are most important for both commercial and household fishers, while the anglers mostly fish for pike (Esox lucius) and perch. The LFAs are dominated almost totally by local water owners. They considered possibilities for household fishing (mostly gill-nets) as an important benefit of water ownership. Also a vast majority of the owners who lived permanently in another area found household fishing opportunities somewhat or greatly important. Rod fishing opportunities were considered important among the nonlocal water owners. More than two-thirds of the local water owners found it essential that the ownership supports keeping alive traditions of the family and archipelago life.

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According to the local stakeholder groups, the most typical conflict was that between water owners and anglers. Owners of private waters were worried about the increased fishing pressure from the rod fishers and the lack of regulations dealing with the development. Trolling was considered a more efficient method than gill-nets. Water owners connected the disappearance of large-sized fish with increased trolling. Alternatively, anglers criticized the situation where private water owners have the right to decide about gill-net fishing and could not understand the negative attitudes towards trolling among the water owners. The anglers especially disapproved household fishers who catch more fish than they could use and sell the surplus. The local water owners in the Östhammar area were typically against the free access of anglers to the privately owned waters, because it has transferred an essential part of the power and control away from the owner level and changed the economic opportunities – water owners cannot any more control or receive licence incomes from rod fishing. They stated that the funding of fisheries management and especially fish stocking are suffering. The anglers were considered ‘free riders’, who use the resource without sharing the costs. The strongest arguments against the free rod fishing made comparison to communism and owners’ assets confiscated by the state. In addition, there were claims that the anglers cause damage and use the locals’ jetties and boat sheds as their own. These accusations were contradicted by anglers. A fishery advisor in the area found it peculiar, when the state decides about free rod fishing without properly compensating the owners. To solve or reduce these conflicts, most stakeholders in the Östhammar area wanted to improve monitoring of fish stocks and to strengthen management cooperation between different groups. All groups wanted to enhance locals’ participation in fisheries governance, but opinions varied whether they would increase water owners’ or recreational fishers’ influence in the governance. Only a few informants regarded increased power for the non-local recreational fishers or for the authorities as important. The Åland Islands The material from the Åland Islands was collected by a mail survey almost identical to that for Östhammar. The Åland survey also dealt with the conditions in 2001. The questionnaire was sent to 765 randomly chosen estate owners (about 200 in each of the four municipalities) and to the professional fishermen and to the chairmen of the LFAs, who also got a special questionnaire concerning their specific activities. The mail survey was returned by 63%, and in total 437 answers was used in the analysis. Approximately 70% of these respondents owned water. Most of them (93%) had shares in undivided waters. Two hundred and eighteen persons considered themselves as household fishers, 29 as rod fishers and 20 combined the two forms.

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A special citizenship in the Åland province is needed for buying land and water and they can only be inherited by direct heirs, which mean that almost all water owners have a strong local connection, even if they live outside the islands. Different from Finnish and Swedish coastal waters, angling in the archipelago still demands permit from the water owner. Recreational fishing is carried out by locals, owners of summer cottages and tourists. Visiting anglers using local tourist services are common. Gill-netting for whitefish and perch are most important for both the professionals and the household fishers, for the latter also flounder (Platichtys flesus). Anglers fish mostly pike and perch. About 40% of the local water owners participated in the meetings of a LFA and only 7% of the non-locals. As regards the benefits of water ownership, both categories valued the household fishing opportunity highly. Social factors as maintaining the traditions and taking part in local management also ranked high: c.60% among the local owners and 70–80% among the non-local. The occurrence of conflicts in Åland was low. Few respondents found the fishing pressure too high. Twenty percent of the locals considered the professional fishers to fish too much and 17% the rod-fishing tourists. Among the non-local water owners, the corresponding figures were 6 and 38. The opinion that tourists catch too much was quite common also among commercial fishers. Two-thirds of the respondents had no opinion as regards conflicts between different groups, which probably reflects the view that there are few serious conflicts. Among those who expressed an opinion, 70% found the conflict between water owners and fishers important and 53% that between fishers and nature protection. As regards methods for improving the fisheries management system, high proportions had no opinion (31%) or were content with the situation (25%). ‘Increasing the cooperation between groups’ was the only popular (31%) method to improve the management. Very few wanted to give the authorities or specific groups more influence. The great majority of interviewed tourist fishers were quite content with their fishing opportunities, but a few fishing in an area split on small LFAs and numerous private owners wanted bigger waters available on the same licence. The Turku archipelago The data from the Turku archipelago were compiled combining qualitative and quantitative methods. Most of the material used here is from qualitative interviews. In the Nauvo Region, 25 interviews were made with water owners, recreational fishers and managers (Salmi and Nordquist 2003). In Velkua a total of 38 persons from the corresponding stakeholder groups were interviewed together with an additional mail survey sent to 365 water owners (Salmi et al. 2001). A total of 165 (45%) responded to the survey. In the FR of Nauvo, the participation rate in LFA meetings was 55% for the local and 45% for the non-local water owners. The actual power of the local own-

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ers is substantially greater, because they have bigger properties than the nonlocals, who are often summer cottage dwellers. A constraint for FR in the Turku archipelago is that the boundaries have been drawn according to those of municipalities, which are not coherent entities from the perspective of fish stocks or fisheries. The benefits of water ownership in the Turku archipelago were related to the possibility for household fishing and keeping traditions alive. The target species of both recreational and commercial fishers are similar to those of Åland. Local water owners associated conflicts usually with recreational fishing, especially to those fishers who access the privately owned waters using the provincial lure fishing fee. The opposition to this system was justified by three main arguments: (1) the licence system causes harm to commercial fishing and the tourist industry, (2) the ‘lure fishers’ disturb nature, fish reproduction and other people using the shore for recreation and (3) the licence system hampers the local management and control of fisheries. The provincial lure fishing fee system was often labelled as ‘legalized poaching’. Some LFAs had stopped the stocking of pike and trout (Salmo trutta) fingerlings after the adoption of the lure fishing fee system, because ‘only a fool stocks fish for other people free of charge’. Criticism towards the lure fishing fee system was mostly targeted at specialized non-local trollers, using relatively big mobile boats. Many non-local anglers held the state-organized fishing rights important because water owners did not provide enough fishing areas for rod fishers before the province-wide lure fishing fee system was established. The public rod fishing rights have eased recreational fishers’ access especially to those fishing grounds where owners had been reluctant to provide licences or where local fisheries management was absent. The opportunity to move between fishing sites became easier, which benefited trolling and other mobile anglers. The local recreational fishers, however, are often water owners, or access local fishing waters rather easily as community members, and thus they are usually satisfied with the old local owner-based licence system. It can be concluded that in the Nauvo region the rights of commercial and local household fishers were of primary importance. In a few other FR in the area, the recreational fishing opportunities have been ranked higher and joint-licence areas have been provided for trolling and other rod fishing, the Velkua Region being an example. The Velkua FR consists of numerous small ownership units: 333 LFAs and 598 privately managed water areas in 2001. A vast majority of the small water areas have been inactive and thus the FR has made attempts for increased activities and sparkle more joint-licence areas for angling. Although the commercial and household fishing traditions were important for water owners and other local people both in the Velkua and Nauvo FR, in Velkua the wide use rights of non-local anglers were generally seen as less problematic than in Nauvo. One explanation for the difference is that Velkua is both geographically and culturally closer to the urban areas. Nauvo belongs to an area characterized by distinct fisher–peasant traditions and emphasis on local

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Licence incomes

Resources for local management

Insignificant Extensive

Local power to regulate the fishing

Conflicts

Institutional

Significant

Support of the local community

Community

Mostly missing Restricted, local licence

Information on local fish stocks

Ecological

Licence incomes

Extensive

Insignificant

Significant

Restricted, local licence

No

Household fishers, all cases Åland

Socio-economic Opportunities for recreational fishing

Sustainability criteria

Sustainability dimension

Licence incomes mediated by the state

Partial

Insignificant

Varying

Wide, state licence

Mostly missing

Häme

Anglers

Licence incomes mediated by the state

Partial

Intense

Small

Wide, state licence

No

Turku

Table 7.2 The sustainability of the local recreational fisheries management in the studied cases.

Licence incomes (only from trolling)

None

Intense

Small

Free

Mostly missing

Östhammar


143

entrepreneurship. The importance of natural resources, especially the fish, has strengthened the culture of self-management, which is often manifested by invoking the local private ownership. Lake fisheries in Häme In Häme, the managers and chairmen of the FR were interviewed. The focus was on what their organizations had achieved after 20 years of operation. A total of 30 semi-structured interviews were carried out by the district fisheries authority. The province of Häme is considered the leading recreational fishing area in Finland with about 300,000 fishers a year (Anon 2005). The most popular methods are rod-and-reel fishing from shore, ice-fishing and trolling (Toivonen et al. 2002). The catches consist mainly of pike, perch, pikeperch and roach (Rutilus rutilus). Pikeperch is among the most wanted catch, in addition to the salmonids brown trout and land-locked salmon (Salmo salar). Managing the partly migratory pikeperch stocks, and some minor brown trout stocks, are issues where the intermediate management level represented by the FRs is better suited than the local level (LFA). However, only 10 of 30 FRs in the Häme district have used their right to regulate fishing, although there are biological evidence expressing concern over the overharvest of the pikeperch stocks (Lappalainen et al. 2005). Different groups had different opinions about how the fishing regulations should be implemented. Anglers point out the higher efficiency of gill-nets compared with trolling or angling, while water owners are more concerned about how to supervise that all fishery groups obey shared rules. Harvest regulations is a topic, where scientific knowledge and the local procedures seldom seem to meet. Although the majority of the decision power within a FR is clearly in the hands of the water owners, the establishment of this organization also gave the recreational fishers a formal mandate to participate in fisheries management. Recreational fishers’ access to fishing seems to be the easiest field for cooperation within FR in Häme. They have formed joint-licence areas for anglers: the same licence is valid for fishing in several privately owned water areas. These licences were introduced before the state-organized provincial lure fishing fee system introduced as a parallel system from 1997. It is possible that the already widespread joint-licence system in the Häme region partially mitigated conflicts, which arose elsewhere in Finland (see above). On the other hand, the provincial lure fishing fee also brings remarkable income for many water owners in the Häme region. This has probably also mitigated the conflicts.

Discussion We want to evaluate fisheries management in our cases against the following sustainability criteria (Table 7.2):

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144 z z z z


Ecological sustainability: the existence of a stock management based on sufficient information. Socio-economic sustainability: good fishing opportunities for the recreational fishers. Community sustainability: the recreational fishery supports the local communities and causes no serious conflicts. Institutional sustainability: a good capability of local management institutions to maintain and balance other sustainability dimensions.

Serious problems of ecological sustainability are rarely at the core of recreational fishing problems in the studied Nordic recreational fisheries. There are contradictory perceptions about the impact of angling on fish stocks, but the effects of household gill-netting are more widely recognized and regulation measures are increasing. A major challenge is that data on how fishing, regulations and stocking affect the local stocks is insufficient or missing in almost all study areas, and hence the management is mostly based on trial and error. The recreational fishers’ organizations, dominated by the urban fishers, have used political influence at the government level to create new access rights for anglers in Sweden and Finland, with the exception of the Åland Islands. The establishment of these rights aroused tensions especially in the Östhammar and Turku archipelagos. Decision making regarding household fishing opportunities were in the hands of local water owners in all studied areas, but use rights for anglers vary from local licences in the Åland Islands to totally free access in the Östhammar case. Turku and Häme offer multiple opportunities for anglers when purchasing licences: province-wide lure fishing fee, joint-licences provided by the FR or local licences from the water owners. When the owners have the possibility to regulate the recreational fisheries and make income from it, the fishing contributes to upholding cooperation and traditions and thus supports the local communities. This is the case for household fishing in all areas and for angling in the Åland Islands and in the Häme area, while the contribution from anglers in the other areas are insignificant. Conflicts between the locals and non-local anglers have been intense in both Östhammar and Turku. Subjects of the conflicts are related not only to competition over fish and fishery management decisions, but equally so to more general questions of control, self-determination, cultural traditions and sustainability of the local community. In the Åland Islands, the water owners are content as they have control over the full spectrum of fishing. The system for selling licences to tourists was well developed rather early. Moreover, recreational pressure from nearby cities is substantially smaller in Åland than in the other study areas. Consequently, there has been no political pressure to free angling from the local control. In spite of these local regulations, fishing tourism is far better established in Åland than in the other studied coastal archipelagos.

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Licence incomes are the most important economic resources for local fisheries management. Especially in the Östhammar study site the lack of licence incomes from angling counteract local fisheries management and add to the conflict. It has been claimed, that the construction of LFAs was halted along the Swedish Baltic coast largely due to the free rod fishing: these fishers needed no more to buy fishing licences from the water owners, which eroded the economic basis for local management. When resources are lacking, it is difficult to create forums for communication and participation in order to build trust and networks. In the Åland Islands most of the LFAs are well equipped, but in other studied sites enhancing communication networks is a key challenge. The process of formulating a management plan in the Finnish FR is a vehicle for discussing the goals and practises of local fisheries management. The studied examples reveal challenges in achieving sustainable institutional arrangements in complex multi-stakeholder settings. The ‘rules of the game’ result from historical developments and political power relations. Along with the changes in the societies, the statutory institutions and legislated fishing rights have been subject to reforms. In the Swedish and Finnish recreational fishing management, first the traditional and then the modern hierarchical view have become important (Harris 2001). The recent diversification of fisher groups widens the discussion from ‘local community’ to ‘stakeholders’ in which also the non-resident groups, such as the urban recreational fishers, are included. Arguments in favour of small management areas include good knowledge of the area, joint understanding of the functioning of the resource and building of trust and ability to control the fishery (Bruckmeier and Neuman 2005). Moreover, the spatial scale of management should be defined in such a way that the fish resource is distributed in few populations per species, ideally one. Good fishing opportunities for non-local fishers speak in favour of larger management areas. The areas should also be large enough for harnessing sufficient social and economic resources for management. In our examples, the target species have a number of smaller stocks with different spawning-places and genetic differences in a scale roughly corresponding to that of the local management units (Bruckmeier and Neuman 2005). To avoid overfishing and its most serious consequence, loss of genetic variation, stock management should be based on genetically defined stocks (Laikre et al. 2005) and on appropriate information on their status. Such information demands well-planned monitoring, which is mostly lacking in all the studied areas. The main tensions and conflicts in the studied Finnish and Swedish examples occurred between the large-scale access rights for anglers and the local ownerbased management. From the non-local anglers’ perspective, there should be easily accessible and large enough fishing areas. The state-organized wide angling rights in Sweden and Finland have obviously provided these, but at the same time the motivation and resources for fisheries management at the local scale

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have diminished. Anglers have used their political influence to affect the statelevel formation of wide public fishing rights, but they have scantly participated in the day-to-day decision making. As water owners, many local household fishers and anglers have an option to participate in the LFAs. The institutional problems in the studied areas, excluding the Åland Islands, stem from fragmentary governance structure, which lacks emphasis on creating communication and trust between stakeholder groups. The main challenge is how to build bridges between local and non-local stakeholders. Enhancing institutional linkages (PascualFernández et al. 2005) between the spatial scales of management would help incorporate fisher’s knowledge, local monitoring of fish stocks and strengthen human and economic resources to the management system. The weakness of public fishing rights in the studied areas is that anglers lack involvement and responsibility regarding management. The autonomic position of the province of Åland provides tools for developing the governance system in connection with local circumstances and especially the strong traditions and culture of commercial and household fishing. There the conflicts are small largely due to the strong owner engagement and lack of pressure for wider public rights for anglers. The state has a crucial role in (re)designing the institutions for fisheries management and cooperation, but there should be close collaboration with relevant stakeholders right from the beginning of the process. Local stakeholders have a key position in the management regime and the representation of well-organized recreational fishers’ groups can be arranged by their organizational representatives, but how can the interests of large numbers of unorganized and occasional fishers be involved? It is likely that a person who fishes once or twice a year is not particularly interested in fisheries governance as long as fishing opportunities are sufficient. One option to incorporate knowledge about occasional anglers’ values, problems and interests is to use social science surveys, albeit this method does not possess the benefits of face-to-face communication (Varjopuro and Salmi 2003). FR in Finland form an organization model, which can increase cooperation between the stakeholders above the village level, provide good fishing opportunities and monitoring of fish stocks. The presented case study from Häme area shows that this organization can find common interests for cooperation and build trust between stakeholders especially in lake areas, where compatible geographical borders for management units can be established more easily than in the coastal areas. There the scale of the FR has been suitable for developing access rights for fishers and also improved the fish stock management. However, the success of the FR differs substantially and the organization is not well known by the public. Especially in the Finnish coastal areas, these institutions have not functioned adequately, partly because they were established without participation of the islanders (Salmi 2001). Another way of achieving the advantages of large areas is used in the Åland Islands, where local owner associations are cooperating voluntarily in selling fishing licences for large areas and in stocking operations (Neuman and Holmström 2003).

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Drawing from the Finnish and Swedish experiences we suggest the following general recommendations for the development of well-functioning recreational fisheries institutions: z z z

encouraging local stock management based on sufficient information, which presumes monitoring of sedentary fish stocks building trust, handling conflicts and securing fishing opportunities through stakeholder participation improving communication and institutional linkages between scales of management to enhance the knowledge base and resources for decision making.

References Aas, Ø. and Ditton, R. (1998) Human dimensions perspective on recreational fisheries management: implications for Europe. In: P. Hickley and H. Tompkins (Eds) Recreational Fisheries. Social, Economic and Management Aspects. Fishing News Books, Blackwell Science, Oxford, pp. 153–164. Anon (2005) Recreational Fishing (2004). Finnish Game and Fisheries Research Institute, Official Statistics of Finland SVT. Agriculture, Forestry and Fishery, Vol. 62, p. 47. Available online at: http://www.rktl.fi/www/uploads/pdf/tilasto2005_62.pdf. Arlinghaus, R. (2005) A conceptual framework to identify and understand conflicts in recreational fisheries systems, with implications for sustainable management. Aquatic Resources, Culture and Development 1: 145–174. Arlinghaus, R. (2006) Overcoming human obstacles to conservation of recreational fishery resources, with emphasis on central Europe. Environmental Conservation 33(1): 46–59. Arlinghaus, R., Mehner, T. and Cowx, I. (2002) Reconciling traditional inland fisheries management and sustainability in industrialized countries, with emphasis on Europe. Fish and Fisheries 3: 261–316. Brown, R.C. (2001) Community-based cooperative management: renewed interest in an old paradigm. In: T. Pitcher, P. Hart and D. Pauly (Eds) Reinventing Fisheries Management. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, pp. 185–194. Bruckmeier, K. and Neuman, E. (2005) Local fisheries management at the Swedish coast: biological and social preconditions. Ambio 34: 91–100. Charles, A. (2001) Sustainable Fishery Systems. Fish and Aquatic Resources Series 5, Blackwell Science, Oxford. Degnbol, P., Wilson, D.C., Jensen, S.S. and Grolin, H.A. (2003) Spatial Scale in Coastal Zone Management: Current Approaches, Challenges and Possibilities. Paper presented at: Rights and Duties in the Coastal Zone, 12–14 June 2003, Stockholm. Fiskeriverket (2002) Yttrande till Utvärdering av det fria handsredskapsfisket (SOU 2001:82). Available online at: www.fiskeriverket.se (in Swedish). Harris, C.K. (2001) Social regime formation and community participation in fisheries management. In: T. Pitcher, P. Hart and D. Pauly (Eds) Reinventing Fisheries Management. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, pp. 261–276. Hickley, P. and Tompkins, H. (1998) Preface. In: P. Hickley and H. Tompkins (Eds) Recreational Fisheries. Social, Economic and Management Aspects. Fishing News Books, Blackwell Science, Oxford, pp. ix–xv.

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Jentoft, S. (2003) Co-management – the way forward. In: D. Wilson, J. Raakjær Nielsen and P. Degnbol (Eds) The Fisheries Co-management Experience. Accomplishments, Challenges and Prospects. Fish and Fisheries Series 26, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, pp. 1–14. Jentoft, S. and McCay, B. (1995) User participation in fisheries management. Lessons drawn from international experiences. Marine Policy 19: 227–246. Kooiman, J. (2003) Governing as Governance. Sage Publications, London. Kooiman, J. and Bavinck, M. (2005) The governance perspective. In: J. Kooiman, M. Bavinck, S. Jentoft and R. Pullin (Eds) Fish for Life. Interactive Governance for Fisheries. MARE Publication Series No 3, Amsterdam University Press, pp. 11–24. Kooiman, J., van Vliet, M. and Jentoft, S. (1999) Creating opportunities for action. In: J. Kooiman, M. van Vliet and S. Jentoft (Eds) Creative Governance. Opportunities for Fisheries in Europe. Ashgate, Aldershot, pp. 259–272. Laikre, L., Palm, S. and Ryman, N. (2005) Genetic population structure of fishes – implications for coastal zone management. Ambio 34: 110–117. Lappalainen, J., Malinen, T., Rahikainen, M. et al. (2005) Temperature dependent growth and yield of pikeperch, Sander lucioperca, in Finnish lakes. Fisheries Management and Ecology 12: 27–35. McCay, B. and Jentoft, S. (1996) User participation in fisheries management. Lessons drawn from international experiences. Marine Policy 19: 227–246. Mikalsen, K.H. and Jentoft, S. (2001) From user-groups to stakeholders? The public interest in fisheries management. Marine Policy 25: 281–292. Neuman, E. and Holmström, B. (2003) The fishery and its management in the municipalities of Lemland, Kökar, Geta and Hammarland. Åländsk Utredningsserie 2003, 4. The Provincial Government of Åland, Mariehamn, p. 34 (in Swedish). Neuman, E., Bruckmeier, K., Laikre, L. et al. (2004) Local Fishery Management at The Swedish Coast – Biological and Social Precondition. HERS SUCOZOMA Report 2004:2. Human Ecology Department, Göteborg University, Sweden (in Swedish). Niskanen, A. and Väyrynen, J. (Eds) (1999) Regional Forest Programmes: A Participatory Approach to Support Forest Based Regional Development. EFI Proceedings No. 32, European Forest Institute, Joensuu. Ostrom, E. (1999) Coping with tragedies of the commons. Annual Review of Political Science 2: 493–535. Pascual-Fernández, J.J., Jentoft, S., Kooiman, J. and Trinidad, A. (2005) Institutional linkages. In: J. Kooiman, M. Bavinck, S. Jentoft and R. Pullin (Eds) Fish for Life. Interactive Governance for Fisheries. MARE Publication Series No. 3, Amsterdam University Press, pp. 217–238. Rydin, Y. and Pennington, M. (2000) Public Participation and Local Environmental Planning: the collective action problem and the potential of social capital. Local Environment 5: 153–169. Salmi, J., Muje, K., Salmi, P. and Virtanen, P. (2001) Paikallinen vesialuehallinto ja muuttuva kalastus. Velkuan kalastusalueen intressiryhmien näkemyksiä. Kala- ja riistaraportteja nr 238, Finnish Game and Fisheries Research Institute, Helsinki, p. 52 (in Finnish).

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Salmi, J., Salmi, P. and Muje, K. (2002) Kalastuskuntien ja alueiden profiilit vuonna 1999. Valtakunnallisten postikyselyjen tuloksia. Kala- ja riistaraportteja nr 247, Finnish Game and Fisheries Research Institute, Helsinki, p. 41 (in Finnish). Salmi, P. (2001) Private Water Owners and Multiple-use Conflicts in the Finnish Archipelago Sea. Paper presented at the Inaugural Conference ‘People and the Sea, Maritime Research in the Social Sciences – an Agenda for the 21st Century’, 30 and 31 August and 1 September 2001, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Salmi, P. (2002) Local Fishery Management and Private Property of Coastal Waters – Case Study Östhammar-Singö Archipelago, Swedish East Coast. HERS-SUCOZOMA Report 2002:7, Göteborg University, Human Ecology Section, Gothenburg. Salmi, P. and Nordquist, J. (2003) Kenen ehdoilla kalavesiä käytetään? Kalavesien omistus ja intressiryhmien näkökulmat Nauvon kalastusalueella. Kala- ja riistaraportteja nr. 285, Finnish Game and Fisheries Research Institute, Helsinki, p. 36, http:// www.rktl.fi/www/uploads/pdf/raportti285.pdf (in Finnish). Salmi, P., Toivonen, A.-L. and Mikkola, J. (2006) Impact of summer cottage residence on recreational fishing participation in Finland. Fisheries Management and Ecology 13: 275–283. Sandström, O., Holmström, B., Lappalainen, A. et al. (2002) Förvaltningsmodeller för Östersjöns skärgårdsfiske och vattenbruk, Tema Nord 2002:521 (in Swedish). Sen, S. and Raakjær Nielsen, J. (1996) Fisheries co-management: a comparative analysis. Marine Policy 20: 405–418. Sipponen, M. (1999) The Finnish Inland Fisheries System. The Outcomes of Private Ownership of Fishing Rights and Changes in Administrative Practices. Biological Research Reports from the University of Jyväskylä 73, Jyväskylä, p. 81. Sutinen, J. and Johnston, R. (2003) Angling management organizations: integrating the recreational sector into fishery management. Marine Policy 27: 471–487. Symes, D. (1996) Fishing in troubled waters. In: K. Crean and D. Symes (Eds) Fisheries Management in Crisis. Fishing News Books, Blackwell Science, Oxford, pp. 3–16. Toivonen, A.-L., Moilanen, P. and Railo, E. (2002) Suomi kalastaa 2001 – Kalastusrasitus kalastusalueilla. Kala- ja riistaraportteja 266, Finnish Game and Fisheries Research Institute, Helsinki, p. 52, http://www.rktl.fi/www/uploads/pdf/raportti266. pdf (in Finnish). Varjopuro, R. and Salmi, P. (2003) Co-management and recreational fishing. In: D. Wilson, J. Raakejaer Nielsen and P. Degnbol (Eds) The Fisheries Co-management Experience. Accomplishments, Challenges and Prospects. Fish and Fisheries Series 26, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, pp. 231–245. Wilson, D., McCay, B., Estler, D. et al. (1998) A Social and Cultural Impact Assessment of the Highly Migratory Species Fisheries Management Plan and the Amendment to the Atlantic Billfish Fisheries Management Plan. US Department of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Marine Fisheries Service, Highly Migratory Species Office, p. 180. Wilson, D., Raakjær Nielsen, J. and Degnbol, P. (Eds) (2003) The Fisheries Co-management Experience. Accomplishments, Challenges and Prospects. Fish and Fisheries Series 26, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht.

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Chapter 8

Substitution in recreational fishing Brad Gentner and Stephen Sutton

Abstract Fisheries managers need to measure participation rates and patterns to understand how anglers will respond to management actions and to changes in the recreational landscape. Understanding substitution in recreational fishing is an important component of gauging anglers’ behavioural response to these changes. Substitution has implications for licence sales if anglers switch to different activities, stock impacts if anglers switch to different species and crowding if anglers switch locations. In this chapter, current methodologies used by social psychologists and economists to measure activity substitution, target-species substitution and site substitution are discussed. Each disciplinary approach reviews several studies that directly or indirectly examined angler substitution giving the reader the background necessary for more in-depth examination of substitution. Finally, both disciplinary approaches are compared and contrasted with an eye towards integrating substitution research across the two disciplines.

Introduction Recreational fisheries managers and service providers need information on the factors that influence recreational fishing participation rates and patterns (Aas et al. 2000; Criddle et al. 2003; Arlinghaus 2006). Without such information, recreational fisheries managers cannot forecast how policy, environmental or economic changes will impact anglers, fish stocks, other environmental factors and the economy. More specifically, it is important for local management to explore angler substitution decisions in the face of changes in the recreation landscape including changing policies or changing environmental conditions. In the face of a changing recreational landscape, an angler may substitute different species, different locations or different activities to maintain the same level of benefits. For example, establishment of regulations that differentially affect angler segments may force some anglers into location or activity substitution decisions (Arlinghaus 2005). Such behavioural adaptations involving substitution 150

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decisions can undermine management goals or negate the expected benefits of recreational fisheries management, especially if these adaptations are unknown or unanticipated (Cox and Walters 2002). If new fishing regulations for one species cause anglers to increase targeting of substitute species, unanticipated changes in exploitation rates of the substitute species and changes in expenditure patterns can occur (Gentner 2004). Likewise, if anglers have substitute activities that provide them with similar benefits to fishing, activity substitution decisions can result in reduced fishing licence sales, reduced rates of fishing participation, reduced fishing frequency and reduced levels of angler expenditures (Ditton and Sutton 2004). Finally, changes in the cost of fishing, such as increasing fuel prices, may cause anglers to substitute lower-cost activities, disrupting the economies of coastal communities. Collectively, these are salient topics for fishing-related service providers, for communities that depend on economic activity generated by fishing activity, for fisheries managers who are responsible for ensuring sustainable exploitation of fisheries and for fisheries administrators whose budgets depend on the support of fishing licence revenues. From an academic perspective, the concept of recreation substitution has been used to understand how anglers make choices of activities, target species and fishing locations when faced with changes in the recreational landscape or changes specifically with their preferred type of fishing activity. At one point or another, most anglers experience changes that influence the benefits available from various types of fishing, or experience changes that influence their ability to obtain the benefits they desire. In general, social–psychological and economic theories suggest that, when anglers experience trade-offs, constraints or changes in the quality of their experience, they will try to select alternatives that most closely resemble the original experience they were seeking, thereby enabling them to maximize the benefits they obtain from participation. For example, when faced with reduced access, increased cost or reduced physical ability, anglers may respond by reducing their fishing participation and replacing fishing with another activity, such as hunting, that provides them with similar benefits. Likewise, when facing changes in fishing for a preferred species or at a preferred location, such as new regulations or declining fish stocks, anglers may change their behaviour by targeting alternative species or fishing at alternative locations that provide them with similar benefits (Carpenter and Brock 2004). Finally, substitution may occur if other conditions change such that the individual is able to obtain a greater level of benefits by choosing to target other species or participate in activities other than fishing. Substitution in recreational fishing has been studied by both social psychologists and economists with somewhat different conceptual development and methods used within these two disciplines. Unfortunately, economic and social– psychological research on substitutability in recreational fishing has been conducted largely independently with little cross-discipline integration. In this chapter, we review the current state of knowledge about substitutability in recreational

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fishing from both a social–psychological and an economic perspective, and provide some guidance for developing a more integrated approach to future substitutability research.

Social–psychological perspective Social psychologists have studied fishing substitution as part of a larger interest in substitution in outdoor recreation in general. Most of this research is based on the conceptual framework developed by Hendee and Burdge (1974), who originally defined substitution as ‘an interchangeability among activities in satisfying participants’ motives, needs and preferences’ (Shelby and Vaske 1991). This definition has since been expanded further to refer to the interchangeability of recreational experiences ‘such that acceptably equivalent outcomes’ can be achieved by varying the timing, means of access, setting, resource or activity (Brunson and Shelby 1993). Thus, a replacement activity, setting, resource and so on must be perceived as satisfying one’s needs and providing similar outcomes to the original if it is to be considered a substitute (Iso-Ahola 1986). A replacement that does not provide the same benefits as the original is considered to be a complement or an alternative, but not a substitute (Shelby and Vaske 1991). Social psychologists are primarily concerned with substitution decisions in response to constraints on recreation participation (i.e. factors that interfere with individuals’ ability or desire to participate or their ability to achieve the satisfactions or benefits they seek). Substitution decisions that allow anglers to obtain acceptably equivalent outcomes by modifying their behaviour are investigated as one potential strategy for negotiating leisure constraints. The multi-dimensional nature of substitutability is illustrated in Figure 8.1. The original typology presented by Shelby and Vaske (1991) has been modified slightly to incorporate substitution between target species in recreational fisheries which Sutton and Ditton (2005) suggest is a ‘type of strategic substitution

Resource

Same

Same

Different

Temporal or strategic substitute

Resource substitute: −Site −Species

Activity substitute

Resource and activity substitute

Activity Different

Figure 8.1 A typology of substitution alternatives for recreational fishing (Source: Shelby and Vaske 1991).

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whereby the strategy is to substitute one resource (species) for another’. Varying the timing or means of access to undertake the same activity at the same location results in a temporal or strategic substitute (upper left quadrant of Figure 8.1). Participating in the same activity using a different resource (location or target species) results in a resource substitution (upper right quadrant). The two lower quadrants of Figure 8.1 encompass activity-related substitution decisions. Participating in a different activity at the same location results in an activity substitute (lower left quadrant), whereas participating in a different activity at a different location results in a resource-and-activity substitute (lower right quadrant). Within recreational fisheries, researchers have applied the Brunson and Shelby (1993) framework primarily to studying resource and activity-related substitutes for recreational fishing.

Activity substitution The extent to which anglers can replace fishing with another activity that provides them with the same benefits as fishing is the focus of activity substitutability research. Researchers have been interested in understanding the proportion of anglers that have potential substitutes for fishing, the activities that are substitutable and the personal and demographic characteristics of anglers that influence their willingness and ability to substitute other activities for fishing. Whereas these substitution choices would typically (but not necessarily) involve both resource (i.e. location) and activity substitutes, the primary interest has been in understanding the activity-related dimension of these substitution decisions. Substitution theory suggests that, for an activity to be substitutable for fishing, it must be perceived by the angler as providing the same benefits as fishing (IsoAhola 1986). Moreover, the perceived number and quality of available substitutes is thought to be inversely correlated with the psychological importance anglers assign to the various attributes of the fishing experience (Manfredo and Anderson 1987). Consequently, activities that appear to researchers and managers as being similar to fishing may not necessarily be perceived as substitutes by anglers themselves (Vaske et al. 1983). Vaske et al. (1983) suggest that directly questioning individuals about substitutes is the best way to identify the number and types of substitutes available. However, Manfredo and Anderson (1987) suggest that answers to direct questions may not always yield descriptions of quality substitutes, and that more attention should be devoted to understanding the importance of activity attributes in the substitution decision. A number of studies have directly questioned anglers as to whether there are ‘any other outdoor recreation activities that would provide you with the same level of satisfaction and enjoyment that you receive from fishing’. Ditton and Sutton (2004) reported that 51% of the saltwater anglers in Texas and Florida responded affirmatively to that question. Likewise, 60% of the anglers in a state-wide angler

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Table 8.1 Activities identified as acceptable substitutes for recreational fishing by anglers in Texas and Florida, USA, and Queensland, Australia. Texas and Florida (USA)

Queensland (Australia)

Activity

% of Anglers

Activity

Hunting

35

Camping

Golf

19

Hiking

32

Camping

16

Sports (including golf (17%), rugby, cricket)

31

SCUBA

10

Surfing/waterskiing

28

Boating

9

Hunting/shooting

13

Boating

13

% of Anglers 43

survey in Queensland, Australia, responded affirmatively to the same question. Common activities listed by the United States and Australia samples as acceptable substitutes for fishing included camping, hunting, golf and boating (Table 8.1). Additionally, Ditton and Sutton (2004) found that female anglers in Texas and Florida were more likely than male anglers to identify non-challenge-oriented activities such as swimming (17%), hiking (10%) and gardening (5%) as acceptable substitutes for fishing. A number of factors have been identified as important predictors of anglers’ willingness or ability to substitute other activities for fishing. Not surprisingly, anglers who are more specialized or committed to fishing are less able to replace fishing with another activity without loss of satisfaction and benefits (Manfredo and Anderson 1987; Sutton and Ditton 2005; Sutton 2006). For example, Sutton’s (2006) survey of Queensland anglers found that only 35% of the anglers who said fishing were their most important outdoor activity also reported to having other activities that provide them the same level of satisfaction and enjoyment as fishing. In comparison, 80% of the anglers who rated fishing as their third most important outdoor activity said that other activities could provide them with the benefits they receive from fishing. Committed fishers have invested more time, energy and money into fishing and therefore have, to some extent, rejected other activities in favour of fishing. Consequently, it is not surprising that committed anglers are less able to replace fishing with another activity because these anglers have become more dependent on fishing to meet their leisure needs than their less-committed counterparts. As Ditton and Sutton (2004) suggest, further attention to the relationship between commitment and substitution has the potential to provide a great deal of information about how and why anglers make activity substitution decisions. Such information can also be helpful in solving conflicts between different angler segments because the resulting management measures might have greater impact on committed anglers who benefit more from their fishing experience than less committed anglers (Arlinghaus 2005).

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Demographic characteristics of anglers have also been found to influence the ability to substitute other activities for fishing. For example, Ditton and Sutton (2004) found that anglers in Texas and Florida who were younger, more educated or male were more willing to substitute other activities for fishing than individuals who were older, less educated, or female. Demographic variables are thought to affect substitutability by influencing the fishing constraints that lead to substitution decisions experience by individuals. Previous work with a range of leisure activities (including fishing [Sutton 2007]) has shown that demographic variables such as age, education, income, and size and composition of households are significantly related to the level and types of constraints experienced. Because constraints on leisure activities appear to be somewhat populationdependent, the effects of demographic variables on willingness to substitute will probably vary across angler populations and sub-populations. Activity substitutability is a viable way by which individuals negotiate constraints on their participation in leisure activities. The few studies that have been conducted on activity substitutability in recreational fishing suggest that a substantial number of anglers may be able to replace fishing with another activity without much loss of satisfaction or benefit. The implications of these findings for recreational fisheries managers and service providers are clear: if constraints interfere with anglers’ ability to get the benefits they desire from fishing, many people are likely to drop out of fishing in favour of other activities where they perceive fewer constraints. Moreover, if new (i.e. less committed) anglers perceive constraints, these individuals may drop out of fishing and take up other activities before they have the opportunity to develop the attachment to fishing that provides them with the motivation to negotiate constraints and continue their participation. Collectively, these results point to a strong need for a better understanding of constraints on fishing activity and other factors that might cause anglers to quit fishing in favour of other activities.

Species substitution When anglers are faced with constraints that reduce the benefits or satisfactions they receive from fishing for their preferred species (e.g. new size or bag limits, reduced fish populations, reduced access), anglers may be able to alter their behaviour to obtain acceptably equivalent outcomes by targeting alternative species. In a study of shark anglers in the Gulf of Mexico (USA), Fisher and Ditton (1994) found that 68% were able to identify acceptable substitutes for shark fishing. Likewise, in a more general study of saltwater anglers in Texas and Florida, 86% of anglers reported that there was another species that could be substituted for their preferred species (Sutton and Ditton 2005). In both studies described above, species identified as acceptable substitutes were similar in terms of the challenge and setting characteristics of the original species.

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For example, shark anglers identified substitutes that involved fishing offshore for other large challenging game species such as king mackerel (Scomberomorus cavalla), and dolphin fish (Coryphaena spp.) (Fisher and Ditton 1994); likewise, most inshore anglers were able to substitute among similar inshore species like red drum (Sciaenops ocellatus) and spotted seatrout (Cynoscion nebulosus). In both studies, fishing for species that did not have similar challenge and setting characteristics was generally not seen as an acceptable substitute; shark anglers were generally unwilling to substitute inshore species such as red drum and spotted seatrout for sharks (Fisher and Ditton 1994), and anglers who preferred inshore species generally did not see offshore species as potential substitutes (Sutton and Ditton 2005). To further explore anglers’ perceptions of substitute species, Sutton and Ditton (2005) asked anglers in Texas and Florida to rate the importance of several factors in determining if another species was an acceptable substitute. Factors rated as most important were ‘having access to that type of fishing’, ‘the substitute species being good to eat’, ‘having the right kind of fishing tackle’, and ‘being able to fish in the same or similar settings’. Although fishing for one species may appear to provide the same benefits and fishing experiences as another, anglers may not find it an acceptable substitute if they have developed a high level of emotional attachment to a particular species [e.g. highly specialized carp, Cyprinus carpio L., anglers in some Central European countries (see Arlinghaus in press)] or if other variables are perceived as constraints. In particular, the cost of fishing for the substitute species must be considered. In Fisher and Ditton’s (1994) study of shark fishers, fishing for some offshore species such as billfish was not considered an acceptable substitute for shark fishing because of access and cost constraints associated with this type of fishing. Likewise, in a study of salmon fishing in New Zealand, Shelby and Vaske (1991) found that no other species were acceptable substitutes for river salmon fishing. These results suggest that some fisheries may be unique, with few other types of fishing or fishing locations offering acceptable substitutes (Arlinghaus in press), even when apparently similar fishing experiences are available. Results from the few studies that have investigated species substitutability suggest that target-switching is indeed a viable means for many anglers to negotiate constraints on their preferred type of fishing, although the extent to which target switching is likely to occur will probably vary across fisheries. Targetswitching behaviour could have serious management implications in multi-species fisheries. An important finding of the Sutton and Ditton (2005) study was that the percentage of anglers who reported currently targeting potential substitute species was generally lower than the percentage who believed each species to be a substitute for their preferred species. This ‘latent effort’ for potential substitute species indicates potential for effort shifts between target species in response to constraints that affect one type of fishing but not another. Such effort shifts could affect management goals if these goals are set on a species-by-species or fishery-by-fishery-specific basis without consideration of the inter-relationships between biological and sociological variables (Sutton and Ditton 2005), or without

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considering the potential regional movements shifts that might occur after regulatory or other changes in fishing quality at a particular fishery (Cox and Walters 2002).

Site substitution Site substitution is the replacement of one fishing site by another. Whereas site substitution has received considerable attention from an economic perspective (see the section on ‘Economic Perspective’ below) only a few studies have investigated site substitution from a social–psychological perspective. Ditton et al. (1975) found that anglers on Great Bay were not likely to fish when they visited Lake Michigan despite the close proximity of the two resources. In a study of salmon fishing in New Zealand, Shelby and Vaske (1991) found that few salmon anglers were willing to substitute other nearby salmon rivers for their preferred salmon river. Reasons most commonly cited by anglers for not perceiving other rivers as acceptable substitutes included the travel distance, costs associated with fishing there and perceptions of lower fish populations and poorer fishing conditions (Shelby and Vaske 1991). These results suggest that some anglers associate fishing with certain resources, and consequently, they may not perceive other sites as substitutes for their preferred site even though other sites may share apparently similar characteristics (Shelby and Vaske 1991). Conversely, when Manfredo and Anderson (1987) asked Metolius River fly fishers what they would do if the river was no longer available for fly fishing, 95% reported that they would continue to fly fish but at a different location (5% said they would choose a different activity). Moreover, two-thirds of respondents indicated that their chosen replacement was ‘as good’ or ‘almost as good’ as their Metolius opportunity (Manfredo and Anderson 1987), suggesting that site substitution can be an important option for anglers constrained from fishing at their preferred site, and that site substitution may be a more attractive option than activity substitution. Collectively, the results of the few studies examining substitutability among fishing sites suggest that the attractiveness of site substitution options will depend on the psychological attachment to the original site, perceptions about the similarity of potential substitute sites and the range of other substitution options (e.g. activity or species substitution options) available. However, considerable work remains in understanding the variables affecting the willingness of anglers to substitute among sites.

Economic perspective Economists have studied substitutability primarily as a by-product of obtaining better measures of demand and the net benefits, or welfare, obtained by individuals from participation in fishing (McConnell et al. 1994; Hicks et al. 1999;

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Gentner and Lowther 2002; Massey et al. 2006). The major assumption underlying the economic approach to studying substitution is that individuals make choices that maximize utility or benefit; hence, the economic and social–psychological approach rests on similar assumptions. However, methods employed to study substitution largely differ between the social–psychological and economic research tradition and, as will be shown later, economist focus on maximizing utility and are less focused on looking at perfect substitutes. Within the context of leisure activity choices, an economist assumes that individuals maximize their utility, or benefit, by choosing levels of consumption of all the goods that they consume, with angling being one good among many leisure activities. Likewise, within the narrower context of recreational fishing, it is assumed that anglers will make choices of locations to fish or species to target based on where they expect to receive the greatest utility. Substitution occurs when consumers move away from the consumption of one good to another, and can be driven by a number of endogenous or exogenous factors. From this theoretical perspective, fishing for one species versus fishing for another versus participating in some other non-fishing activity are seen as separate goods with different attributes that can be evaluated in substitution decisions. For example, tightening a regulation for one species might reduce its benefit compared with fishing for some other species or compared with participating in some other activity. Whether the individual chooses to switch to another species or changes activities altogether depends on which choice results in the greatest utility to the angler. Consequently, whereas social psychologists tend to see a distinction between different types of substitution, like activity substitution versus species substitution, economists view all types of substitution as more or less the same, at least from a theoretical and modelling standpoint. Economists measure the acceptability of substitutes by measuring the loss (or gain) in welfare resulting from the substitution decision. The acceptability of various substitutes can also be estimated prior to any expected change in the relative benefits of various choices by looking at the marginal rate of substitution (MRS). MRS defines the substitutability of activities or species by comparing how many units of the substitute would be necessary to leave the angler as well off after the loss of one unit of the preferred activity or species. This allows the relative ranking of the universe of all substitutes, not in terms of monetary units, but in terms of the relative acceptability of the substitute to the angler.

Economic tools Economic theory broadly characterizes economic agents into producers and consumers. The focus here is on consumers of recreational fishing and more generally consumers of recreation. Consumers choose a bundle of goods to consume, based on their preferences, to maximize their utility, or benefit, constrained by

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Fishing trips


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MRS = 6/4 = 1.5 fishing trips for every golf trip

6

U3 U2 U1 4

Golfing trips

Figure 8.2 Indifference curves and the marginal rate of substitution between fishing and golfing trips.

their income. The very heart of consumer theory is tracing consumer preferences for goods, not in monetary terms, but in terms of the relative substitutability of all goods in the consumption bundle. Take, for instance, the two-good example in Figure 8.2. To simplify this discussion it is assumed that there are only two recreational activities, fishing and golfing, and there is only one species of fish available. In the figure, each indifference curve, labelled U1, U2 and U3, represents all the possible combinations of fishing and golfing that produce the same utility level to an individual angler in each curve. The slope of any of these curves at any point is the MRS which measures the substitutability of fishing for golfing. In Figure 8.2, the point selected has a slope of 1.5, which means this angler would rather have 1.5 fishing trips than one golfing trip. For a given price for fishing and a given price for golfing, a consumer will pick the combination of fishing and golfing that maximizes their utility, given that the combination does not exceed their budget. It is this budget constraint that determines the mix of fishing and golfing and it is the indifference curve that traces a consumer’s preference for each. As you change the price for fishing while holding the price of golfing constant, the economist can trace out an individual’s demand curve where each budget constraint intersects an indifference curve. In Figure 8.3, we have the standard demand and supply curves for fishing. The derivation of the supply curve will not be discussed here because it is not necessary for understanding substitution decisions. With only the demand and supply curves, the total benefit to society of the current level of fishing activity can be determined by the size of the shaded triangle ABC in Figure 8.3. Economists call this area many things including welfare, benefits or willingness to pay for fishing. For this discussion, the term welfare will be used. Many changes in the recreational landscape can impact the shape and location of the demand curve for fishing. Increases in the price of fuel cause anglers to substitute away from fishing, because their budget constraint changes where it contacts the indifference curve.

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Price C Demand

Welfare

B A

Supply

# of fishing trips Figure 8.3 Demand, supply and welfare.

Regulations change consumer’s preferences for fishing, which, in turn, change the shape of the indifference curves. Increases in fishing participation from other anglers may create crowding, which may lower the utility some consumers receive from fishing. Other changes in the recreational landscape have similar effects. All of these changes induce substitution away from fishing and change the shape or position of the demand curve. When the shape of the demand curve changes or shifts inwards or outwards, the size of the triangle ABC changes. Take, for example, a policy that reduces harvest for the only fish available in this simplistic example. This reduction reduces the relative attractiveness of fishing to golfing, causing the consumer to prefer more golfing and less fishing after the policy than before. This change in preferences shifts the demand curve inward, moving demand from D′ to D″ in Figure 8.4. Now the size of the welfare triangle has shrunk to AEF, thereby showing a loss in welfare. This welfare measure, while measuring the loss to society from the policy, also measures the acceptability, in monetary terms, of substituting fishing for golfing. In practice, economists do not have the luxury of starting with individual consumer preferences to construct indifference curves, income constraints and individual demand curves. Instead, economists begin by observing transactions in the market to construct demand curves. Substitution can be estimated from these demand curves using various techniques. Analysis of substitution, while possible with these models, has not been the focus. To add complexity, fishing trips are not goods traded in the market, and so an economist cannot simply examine sales receipts. As a result, economists use non-market valuation techniques to construct demand curves and study angler preferences. Within the class of non-market valuation techniques there are two basic measurement tools – revealed preference (RP) tools and stated preference (SP) tools. RP data are derived from observing choices made by consumers in the marketplace whereas the collection of SP data involves presenting hypothetical market transactions to consumers using a survey.

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Price C

E

B A

Supply

D D’’

D’ # of fishing trips

Figure 8.4 A welfare loss from tightening a harvest restriction.

Site choice models have emerged as the model of choice when examining demand for recreational fishing trips. Hunt (2005) gives an overview of the history and the current state of the art in site choice models, including a comprehensive bibliography. Typically, RP data consists of cross-sectional data collected from anglers on site after the completion of a fishing trip. As a result, site choice models are rarely used to examine activity substitution or species substitution but are suited for examining site substitution decisions (McConnell et al. 1994; Hicks et al. 1999; Hunt 2005). To examine activity substitution or species substitution using RP data, it would be necessary to collect data on all recreational choices made over a period of time – data that are not typically collected. An alternative to expensive and time-consuming panel data collections is the collection of SP data. One type of SP data well suited to the examination of substitution is the stated preference choice experiment (SPCE). SPCE’s present anglers with a series of hypothetical trips that have been decomposed into a group of attributes describing the fishing trip and asks anglers to pick their preferred trip. Variation in trip attributes is controlled though an experimental design that allows the importance of the individual attributes to the overall trip choice to be estimated through statistical modelling. A good primer on SPCEs is the Louviere et al. (2000) book. SPCEs have the following advantages RP panel data. First, as the researcher controls the variation in an SPCE, efforts can be focused on species of concern. With panel surveys, the researcher does not know a priori if there will be enough variation in species targeted or regulations to be able to estimate substitution. Lack of variation in regulation is often cited as a problem when analyzing policies with RP data (Gentner 2004; Hunt 2005). Panel surveys also place a large record-keeping burden on the participant, making it difficult and expensive to recruit panel members and keep those participants involved in a long-term and

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35,851

17,556

King Mackerel

Dolphin

–1.74

–$51,052.45

Job losses

–$150,521.01

$2,498,901

$132.28

–581

–359

441

656

–979

–340

Effort change

Income impacts

1.9%

2.5%

1.8%

–5.2%

–1.1%

Share change

Sales impacts

Expenditures and impacts

Total welfare loss

Welfare loss/trip

Welfare effects

Net loss

No trip

32,418

18,891

Red Snapper

2003 Effort

Grouper

Target species

1: Reduction in bag limit from 4 to 2 fish

($) 68.98

($) 50.60

($) 69.09

($) 89.01

($) 67.20

Average trip cost

–$67,107

–$24,757

$22,297

$45,328

–$87,101

–$22,874

Total expenditure change

Changes in expenditures

Table 8.2 Effort change, welfare loss and economic impacts of a 50% reduction in the red snapper bag limit.


163

burdensome survey. Finally, panels require a longer time horizon than SPCEs, requiring much more forethought by managers when making and analyzing policies.

Activity substitution While research on activity substitution is needed, to our knowledge, no work has been done specifically looking at activity substitution. Historically, detailed data on the recreational consumption bundle purchased is not collected with enough specificity over a long enough time series to estimate substitution across different activities. Most SPCE surveys do allow the angler to choose not to take a trip, as seen in Oh et al. (2005), but what the angler would choose to do instead is not asked. Future SPCEs should include a follow-up question(s) to delve further into this topic.

Species substitution This section will focus on a study conducted in the south-eastern US in 2003 and is an extension of a paper published by one of the present author (Gentner 2004). This effort focused on four species or species groups: groupers (Epinephelus and Mycteroperca spp.), red snapper (Lutjanus campechanus), king mackerel, and dolphin fish. Table 8.2 displays the model output from a simulated two fish reduction in the red snapper bag limit, which is a 50% reduction from the current bag limit. From Table 8.2, this reduction reduces red snapper effort by 5.2%. Where does this reduction in effort go? Intuitively, most anglers, particularly those heavily invested in fishing, will not quit fishing but will switch to another species in the face of tightening regulations. This model allows this substitution to be quantified. From this analysis, 1.1% of grouper trips would also be lost, but king mackerel effort would rise by 1.8% and dolphin effort would rise 2.5%. After accounting for substitution, only 1.9% would quit fishing altogether. Interestingly, a reduction in the red snapper bag limit reduces grouper trips, indicating that red snapper and grouper are complements. That is, red snapper anglers also fish for grouper on the same trip and vice versa. Such a relationship between red snapper fishing and grouper fishing had been suspected but had not been quantified. With these forecasted shifts in effort, fishery biologists can determine if the change in red snapper bag limit will achieve the desire reduction in red snapper mortality and if another stock might be imperiled because of substitution into other fisheries. Also, through the forecasted effort shifts, it is possible to examine economic impacts more directly. These additional data allow for a more accurate estimate of economic impacts because, in this case, incorporating substitution has the effect of ameliorating estimated economic impacts; about 30% of the

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decreased expenditures for red snapper and grouper fishing are offset by increased expenditures for king mackerel and dolphin fishing. If desired, price elasticities of substitution could also be calculated across the different species to support the creation of multi-species bioeconomic or computable general equilibrium models, with incorporation in to ecosystem models discussed below.

Site substitution Site substitution is probably the most well-studied area of substitution in economics; see Hunt (2005) for a list of papers using RP site choice modelling techniques. While not usually the focus of these papers, site substitution can be estimated from their results. Aas et al. (2000) examined site substitution under private ownership in the face of increased harvest regulations using an SPCE. Aas et al. (2000) divide a hypothetical brown trout (Salmo trutta) and European grayling (Thymallus thymallus) river in Norway into three sections with varying regulation profiles: status quo with regard to regulations and two sections whose regulations are allowed to vary. Under the status quo, anglers face no gear restrictions, face a 25-cm minimum size limit and face no bag limit. In the first example, in both varying sections, one and two, average catch rates goes up by one fish, average size goes up by 10 cm and both have no gear restrictions. Section one has an increased minimum size limit to 35 cm and a 5 fish/day bag limit, while section two has the same minimum size as the status quo (25 cm) and only allows the retention of two fish per day. In this scenario, there is substitution away from both the status quo section (17% loss) and section two (13% loss) towards section one (increasing 30%). Aas et al. (2000) found that, by segmenting anglers into fly-only anglers, general or mixed-gear anglers, and non-fly angler, the substitution patterns differed, showing segmentation matters. Caulkins et al. (1986) use a site choice RP model to examine substitution when water quality conditions change on a body of water. While this paper is primarily a comparison of two different RP methods, they show that a one unit increase in water quality at Shadow Lake in Wisconsin will increase effort at that lake by 12%, showing that anglers will substitute towards higher water quality. While not explicitly discussed, Carpenter and Brock (2004) incorporate substitution in their ecosystem model of hypothetical lake region. This is a good example of how substitution plays a holistic role in the management of fish stocks and other ecosystem variables. Carpenter and Brock (2004) develop a stylized model that predicts effort shifts across the landscape based on stock abundance at different lakes and based on travel distance to those lakes. They show that, when regulations are uniform at all lakes, anglers will fish down the stocks at lakes closest to home and then substitute to more distant lakes as catch quality declines. This is a growing area for research in substitution, as substitution is the key that links the human element of ecosystems to changes in those ecosystems.

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Towards an integration of disciplines It is clear from the preceding sections that there are disciplinary differences that have hindered social psychologists and economists from working more closely together towards a comprehensive understanding of substitution in recreational fishing. The primary difference seems to be that social psychologists and economists define the concept of substitution somewhat differently. Social psychologists define substitution in terms of the interchangeability of experiences that provide ‘acceptably equivalent outcomes’ in the face of constraints on an angler’s preferred fishing experience. Under this conceptualization of substitution, behaviour shifts that do not result in ‘acceptably equivalent outcomes’ (as perceived by the individual making the choice) are not considered substitution. Within substitution research, social psychologists have largely ignored other choices that anglers might make in response to changing circumstances that result in non-equivalent outcomes. For example, in investigating species substitution, the social psychologist would ask anglers to identify other species that would provide them with the ‘same satisfaction and enjoyment’ as fishing for their preferred species, and use the resulting data to make predictions about the potential for effort shifts in response to constraints on anglers’ preferred fishing type (Sutton and Ditton 2005). However, anglers could also respond to new constraints by choosing other species or activities that do not provide the same satisfaction and enjoyment. These experiences would be considered to be compliments or alternatives, but not substitutes (Shelby and Vaske 1991). The economic perspective is broader: substitution is any behaviour change in response to changing circumstances under the assumption that anglers make choices to maximize their utility or benefits obtained from participation in leisure activities. Thus, even if the behavioural shift results in substantially different outcomes obtaining the same or lower utility, it would still be considered substitution if it is a utility maximizing choice. Such behavioural shifts would not be accounted for under the ‘traditional’ social–psychological approach to studying substitution, which depends largely on identifying ‘acceptably equivalent outcomes’. Economists view substitutes on a continuum from non-substitutes to perfect substitutes and can estimate the extent to which choices along the continuum provide a similar level of benefits as the original through the marginal rate of substitution and through examining changes in angler welfare. Moreover, economists focus more broadly on substitution resulting from any number of exogenous or endogenous changes in the market for recreational activities. Economists measure the loss in satisfaction when moving from perfect substitutes to less-than-perfect substitutes in terms of the willingness to accept a lower level of utility from changes in the preferred activity. In the case study presented earlier, the policy generates a loss of $132.28 per trip (Table 8.2). That is, every angler would feel a loss if the opportunity to catch and keep four red snapper was no longer available. To an economist, this loss is a measure of the ‘acceptability’

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of the substitute to the angler, and is useful for making predictions about behavioural shifts. However, economists view all behaviour through an angler’s utility function, and cognition cannot be captured as an argument in the utility function. On the other hand, social psychologist can focus on the angler’s cognition or perceived constraints when making substitution decisions. Consequently, economic studies generally do not reveal whether anglers who experience such welfare losses would still perceive the experience as providing outcomes that are ‘acceptably equivalent’ to the original. If anglers did perceive acceptably equivalent outcomes, then such behavioural shifts would be considered substitution by social psychologists as well. However, anglers who suffered a welfare loss and did not perceive the choice as providing acceptably equivalent outcomes would not be considered by the social psychologist as having made a substitution decision even though this behavioural shift may be a valid way of responding to the newly imposed regulation. The red snapper species substitution example indicates that anglers will compensate for changes in the red snapper bag limit by targeting king mackerel or dolphin, and provides valuable quantitative estimates of effort shifts across these species. Linking behavioural adaptations to likely biological impacts is a major advantage of the economic approach when properly coupled with a biological model of the species target. Carpenter and Brock (2004) take this approach one step further, linking location substitution with an ecosystem model. However, these results cannot tell us why anglers choose these substitutes, the extent to which these substitutes are perceived by anglers as being equivalent to the original or the extent to which species or locations not included in the models might also be substitutes. Social psychologists, however, can better explain the internal, more subtle predictors of substitution that are not easily captured by a SP modelling approach. Hence, we view social–psychological and economic approaches as complementary, each fulfilling a different role for the researcher and the manager. If the social–psychological definition of substitution was adapted to include substitute activities, species or locations that offer a less than acceptably equivalent experience but ones the angler would undertake, the definitions of social psychologists and economists would merge into a common framework that only differs in the way substitution is measured. Clearly, cognition and perception have a place alongside quantifying behavioural shifts and associated economic and biologic impacts stemming from substitution. The SPCE outlined in the case study above provides a vehicle for bridging the gap between the social– psychological and economic approaches to studying substitution and provides the link to couple social and natural sciences. In addition, hypothetical choice models have also been used to understand angler choices of management regulations (Aas et al. 2000; Gillis and Ditton 2002; Oh et al. 2005). Incorporating cognitive and perceptual variables into the design and execution of economic choice surveys would lead to a more integrated understanding of substitution

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decision making, thereby developing a more comprehensive understanding of species substitution versus activity substitution versus location substitution in response to changes in the social, ecological and managerial landscape of recreational fishing.

Conclusions This chapter has outlined the concepts of substitutability in recreational fisheries as investigated and applied by fisheries social psychologists and economists. Results of the studies reviewed in the previous sections clearly show that substitution choices by recreational fishers have the potential to affect management goals, the benefits obtained by individuals from their participation in recreational fishing and fishing participation rates and patterns. Compared with other recreational fisheries management issues, substitution has received relatively little attention from researchers and managers. There is a clear need for more theoretical and applied research into substitution decision making and the outcomes of substitution behaviour aimed at providing quality information in support of recreational fisheries management. The separate approaches to studying substitutability used by social psychologists and economists should be viewed as complimentary, with each discipline bringing important conceptual and empirical elements to the table. By working together in a more integrated fashion, social psychologist and economist can improve the analysis of angler substitution, across activities, sites and species.

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McConnell, K.E., Strand, I.E. Jr., Valdes, S.K. and Weninger, Q.R. (1994) The Economic Value of Mid and South Atlantic Sportfishing. Volume 2: Report on Cooperative Agreement #CR811043 01 0 between the University of Maryland, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Marine Fisheries Service, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, p. 134. Oh, C., Ditton, R.B., Gentner, B. and Riechers, R. 2005. A stated discrete choice approach to understanding angler preferences for management options. Human Dimensions of Wildlife 10: 173–186. Shelby, B. and Vaske, J.J. (1991) Resource and activity substitutes for recreational salmon fishing in New Zealand. Leisure Sciences 13: 21–32. Sutton, S.G. (2006) An Assessment of the Social Characteristics of Queensland’s Recreational Fishers. CRC Reef Research Centre Technical Report No. 65. CRC Reef Research Centre, Townsville, p. 150. Sutton, S.G. (2007) Constraints on recreational fishing participation in Queensland, Australia. Fisheries 32: 73–83. Sutton, S.G. and Ditton, R.B. (2005) The substitutability of one type of fishing for another. North American Journal of Fisheries Management 25: 536–546. Vaske, J.J., Donnelly, M.P. and Tweed, D.L. (1983) Recreationist defined versus researcher defined similarity judgments in substitutability research. Journal of Leisure Research 15: 251–262.

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Chapter 9

A bioeconomic analysis of different management regimes in recreational fisheries Jon Olaf Olaussen and Anders Skonhoft

Abstract The chapter analyses various management regimes in recreational fisheries within a bioeconomic framework. It demonstrates how bioeconomic modelling may be used to reveal the different forces that must be taken into account when managing recreational fisheries. The key point of this approach is that ecological and economic objectives, as well as trade-offs between the two, have to be considered to accurately measure the effects of management actions. We show how four different management regimes, ranging from the myopic price-taking management scheme to the social planner solution affect the overall surplus, the allocation of benefits between anglers and landowners (or the property right holder) and the harvest and stock abundance. The model is illustrated using an example from a Norwegian Atlantic salmon fishery.

Introduction Various management regimes in recreational fisheries yield different outcomes with respect to harvest, stock size, overall surplus, landowner surplus and angler surplus. In this chapter, four management regimes for a recreational fishery are presented and discussed. As in all modelling, we stick to stylized representations, well aware of the more complex and often mixed regimes one faces in the real world. However, by cultivating these stylized examples, more general insights on the economic and biological forces involved are obtained. This type of modelling is phrased bioeconomic modelling. For an easily understood introduction to bioeconomic modelling in general, the reader is referred to Conrad (1999). Further, the reader will appreciate the thorough presentation of bioeconomic modelling in the more advanced work of Clark (1990) and Conrad and Clark (1987). 170

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Bioeconomic analysis of different management regimes

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A comprehensive and in-depth presentation of the required mathematics and comparative statistics involved are given in Silverberg (1990). Bioeconomic models are commonly applied to analyse recreational fisheries. One of the first studies was a model on marine recreational fishing by McConnell and Sutinen (1979). The conceptual article on recreational fishing by Anderson (1993) also provides a good example of the power of bioeconomic modelling. One of the most important new issues Anderson analysed was how to incorporate catch and release and bag limits into recreational fishing models by introducing a distinction between landings and catch. In addition, many authors have been dealing with bioeconomic models of commercial and recreational fisheries harvesting the same fish stock (see Bishop and Samples 1980; Rosenman 1991; Cook and McGaw 1996; Laukkanen 2001). The key point of all bioeconomic modelling is that ecological growth conditions are taken as restrictions when the objective function is maximized by the fishery management authority. The managing authority may be private landowners or official authorities while the objective function may be the landowner profit function or the total surplus generated in the fishery (more details follow). This last type of objective function is typically found if the national authorities manage the fishery. For simplicity, it is assumed that the natural system is in biological equilibrium in the cases presented in this chapter. Throughout the chapter, the analysis applies examples from a typical Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) recreational fishery in Norway. However, the insights from these examples can be generalized to similar management situations worldwide. For example, while Norwegian Atlantic salmon fisheries are predominated by private ownership, the state is also a large landowner in some rivers. On the contrary, while national or state authorities provide most fishing permits in the United States, exceptions where riparian right holders possess exclusive rights to fish also exist [e.g. the well-known Supreme Court decision in the Craft versus Burr case in the Jackson River in Virginia 1996. See Murphy and Stephenson (1999)]. Cox and Walters (2002, p. 117) state that access and effort limitations also occur across North America. In fact, increasingly, closed seasons and closed areas are used in the United States in both freshwater and saltwater. The variety of management regimes considered range from the type characterized by strong rights to public access of fishing opportunities in New Zealand opposed to the strong protection of private property rights in all freshwater fisheries in Scotland.

The Atlantic salmon recreational fishery Biological equilibrium The size of the salmon population in biomass, or number of fish, at the beginning of the fishing season in year t is Xt. Both a coastal and a river fishery act on

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the salmon during the spawning run from its offshore environment to the coast, where reproduction takes place in its parent or home river. However, in the following section the marine fishery is ignored to make the exposition as tractable as possible [see Olaussen and Skonhoft (2005) for a full model with marine harvest]. Accordingly, the stock entering the home river is Xt. The recreational river fishery exploits this spawning population along the upstream migration. When the exploitation rate is 0 < yt < 1, the spawning stock becomes (1 – yt)Xt = St. This spawning stock hence yields a subsequent recruitment R(St) to the stock in year t + τ, where τ is the time lag from spawning to maturation age (see e.g. Hvidsten et al. 2004).1 Throughout the analysis, it is assumed that the stock– recruitment relationship R(St) is of the Shepherd type (Shepherd 1982), with ∂R(St)/∂St = R′(St) ≥ 0, R″(St) ≤ 0 and R(0) = 0. More salmon in the stock increases the recruitment, but at a decreasing rate. Hence, a small increase in the spawning salmon stock may lead to a substantial increase in the recruitment if the initial stock level is low, but only modestly or not at all if the initial stock is high (more details follow). Further, we assume that none of the spawners survive,2 that is,

X t +τ = R (St )

(1)

Following the approach of Anderson (1983, 1993), McConnell and Sutinen (1979) and Lee (1996), the recreational fishing effort is measured in number of daily fishing permits sold.3 In real life, fishing permits may be for 1 day, 1 week or a whole season. However, all these possibilities are combined in 1-day permits as this is the most common type (Fiske and Aas 2001). Thus, the fishing effort is directly expressed in terms of the number of day permits, Dt. When assuming that the catch in the river follows the instantaneous Schaefer-type harvest function, the river yield Yt is Yt = qDt X t

(2)

where q is the catchability (productivity) coefficient. In a recreational fishery, this productivity parameter is typically affected by various types of gear restrictions, for example, with respect to types of bait and fishing equipment that are allowed. Moreover, the total catch in the river is per definition

Yt = yt X t

(3)

From equations (2) and (3) it follows that the river exploitation rate is yt = qDt. The biological equilibrium version of (1) may then be written as: X = R (S ) = R ((1 − qD ) X )

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(4)

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For R′(S) > 0, equation (4) yields a negative relationship between X and D, that is; more harvest effort D reduces the equilibrium stock X [see Olaussen and Skonhoft (2005) for more details].

Demand and cost functions We now introduce a market for sport fishing in our representative spawning river. On the supply side there is a fixed number of landowners who are given the right (by law) to sell fishing permits (NOU 1999). The competition from landowners in other rivers may vary. Crucial factors are the distance between the rivers, which may range from some few kilometres to over a hundred kilometres, transportation costs and various river-specific attributes like the quality of the fishing (see below).4 In most instances, the market situation is probably something between price-taking and monopoly behaviour (Skonhoft and Logstein 2003). However, both these market forms are studied as stylized extremes. Price-taking simply means that the landowners take the fishing permit price as exogenous. This market situation arises if there are many landowners providing fishing permits in fairly similar (homogeneous) nearby rivers. Therefore, if one of the landowners decides to set a higher price in a given river, none of the anglers will fish there because they have a large supply of substitute rivers with similar characteristics. As demonstrated in the Appendix to this chapter, under price-taking market conditions, the permit price will be equal to the marginal cost of providing fishing permits. The marginal cost is the cost of providing one extra fishing permit. Therefore, if the landowner instead tries to lower his permit price, he or she will operate below his or her marginal cost, and hence, the landowner is forced to increase the price to avoid selling at a loss. A monopolistic landowner, on the other hand, operates under quite different market conditions. A monopolistic landowner is able to influence the permit price directly by determining how many permits to be sold as demonstrated in the Appendix to this chapter. Monopolistic power arises when the landowner faces no competition from nearby rivers, either because the substitutes are too distant or because the nearby rivers are not good substitutes due to some river-specific attributes, like catch rates or other measures of trip quality. Hence, there is a specific demand for buying permits in this specific fishing river, which the monopolistic landowner takes advantage of. On the demand side, there are a large number of potential recreational anglers demanding fishing permits. Demand is a function of the angler preferences for the attributes of the fishing experience. Economic theory states that price per day is one of the most important attributes and Anderson (1983), among others, has expanded this list to include the average size of the fish caught, the total amount of fishing effort by all individuals, the anglers’ income, the market price of fish,

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companions and the nature of the surroundings [see also Rudd et al. (2002) for a more general overview]. Empirical evidence shows that two of the most important determinants of fishing trip satisfaction in the Norwegian Atlantic salmon fishery are the price of permits and, as a notion of the quality of the river, the size of the catch (Fiske and Aas 2001).5 In the following we focus on just these two factors. In line with McConnell and Sutinen (1979), the quality effect is expressed as average catch per day, and for a given number of fishing days, a higher catch per day shifts the demand function upwards. The inverse market demand for fishing licences (when suppressing the time notation) is hence given as

P = P ( D, v )

(5)

where P is the fishing permit price per day and v is the catch per day induced demand effect defined as v = θ Q, with Q = Y/D = qX from equation (2). Therefore, the parameter θ > 0 indicates how catch per day translates into demand. Obviously, the quality effect will vary between rivers and it may change over time. For these and others reasons, it is difficult to assess the strength of the quality effect, but on the whole we may interpret θ as a parameter measuring how important the catch is compared to other factors influencing demand (see also discussion section below). Hence, in addition to ∂P / ∂D = PD < 0 , we have Pv > 0. PD < 0 which means that the more fishing permits the anglers have already bought, the less they are willing to pay for an additional permit as illustrated by the downward sloping demand schedule depicted in Figure 9.1. Pv > 0 simply means that anglers are willing to pay more for each fishing permit if the quality of the fishing experience in terms of average catch per day is higher as illustrated by the upward shift of the demand curve in Figures 9.2 and 9.3.

Permit price, P a

P∗ c

b Demand curve (willingness to pay) P = P (D, ν)

D∗

Number of permits, D

Figure 9.1 Angler surplus.

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When inserting catch per day into the inverse demand condition (5), the current profit of the landowner reads: π = P( D, θ qX ) D − C ( D).

(6)

The first term on the right-hand side of equation (6) is the total income of fishing permit sales and is simply the permit price multiplied by the number of permits. The latter term C(D) is the cost function, covering fixed as well as variable costs with C′(D) > 0 and C″(D) ≥ 0. Fixed costs include various types of costs associated with preparing the fishery (constructing tracks, fishing huts and so forth), whereas variable costs include the costs of organizing the fishing permit sales together with enforcement. In the following, we will assume constant marginal costs [C′(D) > 0 and C″(D) = 0) as depicted in Figures 9.4 and 9.5. This means that the cost of providing one extra permit is the same irrespective of how many permits that are offered initially. Before we analyse how different market conditions affect the way the fishery is managed when maximizing the profit function [equation (6)], we demonstrate how angler, landowner and total surplus in the fishery is calculated.

Angler surplus, landowner surplus and total surplus The angler surplus is defined as the difference between the amount the anglers are willing to pay (wtp) for the fishing permits and what is actually paid (the going permit price). For example, if the wtp is NOK 100 (Norwegian kroner, NOK 1 ≈ €0.12) for a fishing permit and the actual permit price is NOK 50, the surplus is NOK 50. By summing up all anglers who have a willingness to pay that exceeds the actual permit price, we have the total angler surplus. This is illustrated in the permit–price diagram in Figure 9.1, where the total angler surplus is given by the area abc when the permit price is P* and D* permits are sold. Note that the demand curve in Figure 9.1 is depicted for a given stock size. What if the stock changes? The complicating factor when measuring angler surplus is that the demand curve is dependent on the stock size [see equation (5)] which is the aforementioned quality effect (see Anderson 1983). Hence, a higher stock size means that the demand curve shifts out as depicted in Figure 9.2, and where the angler surplus increases by the area abb`a` due to the stock increase when the price is still P* and the number of permits sold increases. From the biological equilibrium condition (4) we recall that an increased number of fishing days D, or increased market demand, reduces the stock. As demonstrated by Anderson (1983), in order to measure consumer (angler) surplus correctly in such a setting, constant stock externality demand curves should be introduced. These are denoted as constant quality demand curves in the following and all demand curves depicted in Figures 9.1–9.5 are of this type. Hence, angler

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Permit price, P a′

a

P∗

c

b′

b

Demand curve (willingness to pay) P = P(D, ν) D∗ Number of permits, D Figure 9.2 The quality effect and angler surplus.

Permit price, P

a′ PM c′

b′ Demand curve P = P (D, νM)

a

P* c

b

DM

Demand curve P = P (D, ν∗)

D∗ Number of permits, D

Figure 9.3 Measuring angler surplus when quality and price increase, vM > v*.

surplus is measured under the demand curve when all anglers are familiar with the total number of permits sold, and hence, they know the harvest pressure and the accompanying stock size. In other words, when, say D* permits are sold as in Figure 9.3, the accompanying stock size is X* and the relevant demand curve is the curve for which the given stock is exactly X*. Hence, the angler surplus when D* permits are sold is given by the area abc. Consider next a situation where only DM fishing permits are offered in the market. Then the accompanying stock is XM and where XM > X*. As the stock is higher than when D* permits

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Permit price, P

e

PM d

c

a

b

P∗

f

Supply curve, C ′ (D) Demand curve, P(D, ν)

DM

Number of permits, D

Figure 9.4 Landowner and total surplus.

were sold, the P = P(D, v*) curve is no longer relevant when measuring the angler surplus. Rather, we must measure the area below the new constant quality demand curve P = P(D,vM). Hence, if the anglers buy DM fishing permits at the price PM the new angler surplus is given by the area a'b'c'. The landowner surplus (profit) is given by the difference between the actual price charged in the market and the cost of providing a fishing permit which is the marginal cost of providing permits (or the supply curve of the landowners). When assuming that the marginal cost is constant, C″(D) = 0, the supply is given by a horizontal curve in Figure 9.4. If the permit price is PM as in Figure 9.4, the profit (landowner surplus) described by equation (6) is hence simply the difference between total income and total cost as illustrated by the area abcd. On the other hand, if the permit price is P* as in Figure 9.4, then the permit price is equal to the marginal cost of providing permits, and hence, the landowner surplus is zero. The total surplus in the fishery is simply the sum of angler and landowner surplus, and hence, if P* is the going permit price as in Figure 9.4 then the total surplus and angler surplus coincides (because the landowner surplus is zero) and is given by the area aef. On the other hand, if PM is the permit price, then the angler surplus is given by the area cde, and together with the landowner surplus abcd, the total surplus is given by the area abce.

Surplus under monopolistic versus price-taking supply To understand why different market conditions generally lead to different total surplus as well as differences in the distribution of surplus between anglers and landowners, we now compare the surplus under price-taking and monopolistic supply. As already mentioned, price-taking supply may happen when there are many other rivers with similar quality located nearby. In the case of a price-taking

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landowner, or perfect competition, the landowner surplus is zero because competition drives the price of permits equal to the marginal cost it takes to provide them. As explained earlier, the permit price is in reality determined by the marginal cost since demanding a higher price means that anglers will fish in substitute rivers (see the Appendix for technical details). This situation is already depicted in Figure 9.4 where P* and D* now refer to the permit price and number of permits sold under price-taking supply, respectively. As discussed earlier, monopolistic permit supply means that the landowner is able to take advantage of the downward sloping demand schedule for permits. Exactly how the monopolistic manager determines the number of permits and permit price and the accompanying consequences for the equilibrium stock size is demonstrated in the Appendix. The key point is that the monopolistic landowner is able to restrict the supply of fishing permits (which the price-taking landowner per definition is unable to do). The landowner charges the amount per permit that the anglers are willing to pay, which is the monopolistic price PM, where permits are sold until marginal revenues equal marginal costs (marginal revenue is defined as the revenue of selling one more permit – see the Appendix). The reason why the monopolistic landowner has the power to set price where marginal revenue equals marginal cost is that the anglers cannot get the same good from anyone else. Under monopolistic supply then, the landowner surplus (profit) is the net income of providing fishing permits, and is hence given by the difference between total income and total cost. As the total cost is the area below the supply curve, the monopolistic landowner surplus is given by the area abcd in Figure 9.4 when DM (hereafter the number of permits under monopolistic supply) permits are sold at the monopolistic permit price PM. Figure 9.5 demonstrates another feature of the differences between price-taking and monopolistic supply of permits by the landowner. As just explained, the price-taking landowner ends up providing a total of D* permits at the price P*, while the monopolistic landowner provides DM permits at the price PM. To make Figure 9.5 as simple as possible, the figure is drawn for two stock sizes. First, P = P(D,v*) is drawn for X*, which is the actual stock size when the landowner is a price-taker. Second, P = P(D,vM) is drawn for XM which is the actual stock size when the landowner is a monopolist. As we typically see that the monopolistic landowner finds it more economically rewarding to sell less fishing permits at a higher price than the price-taking landowner, the monopolistic landowner holds a larger stock than the price-taking landowner such that XM > X* [due to the ecological equilibrium condition (4)]. Hence, the quality of the fishing experience is higher under monopolistic than under price-taking management meaning that the demand curve under monopolistic management shifts out compared with the demand curve under price-taking conditions. We are now able to consider the differences in angler surplus, landowner surplus and total surplus under price-taking and monopolistic supply conditions when the demand for angling is affected by the quality in terms of the stock size.

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Permit price, P

a′

a b′

PM

Demand curve P = P(D, v M )

P∗

c

b

Supply curve C ′(D) Demand curve P = P(D, ν ∗)

DM

D∗ Number of permits, D

Figure 9.5 Angler surplus under monopolistic and price-taking management.

In Figure 9.5, angler surplus have changed from abP* under price-taking supply to a′b′PM under monopolistic supply. It turns out that it is generally unclear whether the angler surplus is higher under monopolistic than under price-taking management. The figure is drawn for a situation where the angler surplus is highest under price-taking supply of fishing permits, abP* > a′b′PM. This will always be the case as long as the slope of the demand function is unaffected by the quality effect like in Figure 9.4. However, we cannot generally rule out the possibility that the slope is steeper after the quality shift, and if so, the angler surplus may be higher under monopolistic than under price-taking management. Hence, if anglers respond strongly to the quality effect, we may have a situation where the angler surplus is lower under the price-taking than under the monopolistic management. The intuition is clear cut and may be illustrated by an example: Think of a situation where 1000 fishing permits are sold in a small river at the price of NOK 50 per permit. It may very well be the case that none of the anglers are willing to pay more than NOK 50 because the harvesting pressure is relatively high (low fish stock and hence low quality in terms of catch per day). The aggregate angler surplus is hence NOK 0. But what if only 50 permits are sold in the same river at the price of NOK 500 per permit? As the harvest pressure is significantly lower and we presumably have a higher fish stock, we may find that some of these 50 anglers are willing to pay even more than the 500 NOK, and if so the angler surplus is >NOK 0. Generally, as the demand curve has shifted, it is not possible to say whether the angler surplus is highest under price-taking or monopolistic supply of permits. The landowner surplus changes from zero under price-taking supply to PMb′cP* > 0 under monopolistic supply. Regarding total surplus, the sum of angler and

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landowner surplus, we see that it unambiguously increases under monopolistic management as long as the angler surplus is at least as large as under price-taking supply of permits. However, in cases where the angler surplus decreases as discussed earlier, the total surplus effect is ambiguous.

Management regimes and results Myopic landowners We will consider two types of time horizons that managers may take into account when they make their management decisions, the myopic (short sighted) and the long-term planning horizon. Assume firstly that the landowners supply fishing permits based on current economic and biological conditions. When landowners act myopic, it means that they ignore all possible future effects of their actions today. For example, the landowner just considers the present stock size and does not take into account how the current fishing pressure will affect the future fish stock through recruitment. There may be various reasons leading to such myopic management, one important reason being insecure property rights due to the marine harvest activity (which is not modelled explicitly here). Other factors such as ecological and environmental uncertainties may also play a role. It may also be that the landowners act ‘as if’ they were myopic simply because they believe that their fishing permit sales today do not influence the future stock size. Myopic behaviour seems to fit with the stylized management situation in many Norwegian salmon river fisheries (Skonhoft and Logstein 2003). Probably, this is due to the traditional view that even a small number of spawners will be sufficient to fully recruit a salmon river. As will be discussed below, it turns out that this reasoning makes sense: The extent to which the myopic behaviour is important for the stock size depends strictly on the recruitment relationship.

Myopic monopolistic landowner The first result column in Table 9.1 reports the results in the myopic monopolistic case [all parameter values are based on Olaussen (2007)]. The equilibrium stock (X) is 15.9 (all numbers hereafter in 1000) salmon while 11.1 permits (D) are sold. The resulting fishing permit price (P) is NOK 0.38. The accompanying angler surplus (AS) is NOK 1841, landowner surplus (LS) is NOK 3686 and total surplus (TS) is NOK 5527.

Myopic price-taking landowners We next consider price-taking landowners; that is, the landowners take the fishing permit price as exogenous. It is still myopic management and so future effects

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Table 9.1

Results, different management regimes in a typical Norwegian salmon river. Myopic

X

181

Long-term planning (infinite planning period)

Monopolistic

Price-taking

Monopolistic

Social planner

15.9

14.9

15.9

15.4

D

11.1

20.7

10.8

18.0

P

0.38

0.050

0.39

0.15

AS

1841

6438

1735

4862

LS

3686

0

3687

1819

TS

5527

6438

5422

6681

Notes: X is stock size (in 1000), D is number of fishing permits (in 1000), P is permit price (in 1000 NOK), AS is angler surplus (in 1000 NOK), LS is landowner surplus (in 1000 NOK), and TS is total surplus (in 1000 NOK).

on the fish abundance are ignored as well. Technically, this means that the landowners maximize the profit function (6) with respect to number of permits, while taking the price and the stock as given. Again, the details are found in the Appendix while the numerical results are shown in Table 9.1. Not surprisingly, the stock size is driven down by an increasing number of permits sold compared to the previous monopolistic case. Notice, however, that the substantial increase in permits (from 11.1 to 20.7 permits) only reduces the equilibrium stock by about 1000 salmon per year. To a large extent, this owes to the recruitment function being of the Cushing type which means that quite few spawners are able to fully recruit the river. The reason why the number of permits sold increases so much is the substantial fall in the permit price when the landowners are no longer able to restrict the supply of permits. Thus, a lower permit price means more angler days and the angler surplus (AS) increases substantially compared with the monopolistic case. On the other hand, the landowner surplus (LS) is competed away and decreases to zero. The zero landowner surplus follows directly from the assumption of a constant marginal cost curve as the pricetaking landowner faces a permit price equal to his marginal costs (see the Appendix). Note, however, that even with increasing marginal costs, the market supply curve would still be equal to the constant marginal cost curve depicted in Figure 9.5 as long as all landowners are price-takers (perfect competition), and hence, the landowner surplus would still be zero.

Long-term planning The case where the landowners take into account that their permit sale decision this year affects future stock abundance is now considered. This means that landowners have a long-term planning horizon, that is, they are aware of the future consequences of current harvest activity.

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Monopolistic landowner with long planning horizon The problem of the monopolistic landowner is now to maximize the profit function [equation (6)] while taking the effort–stock equilibrium relationship given by equation (4) into account (again, see the Appendix for details). The outcome following this management scheme yields more or less the same results as under myopic monopolistic management (Table 9.1). This is obviously not a general result, but hinges critically on the given recruitment function as well as the given parameter values. Briefly speaking, there is not much to gain in terms of restricting the number of permits compared with the myopic monopolist. The reason is that the myopic monopolist restricts the number of permits sold sufficiently to secure a high equilibrium stock level; hence there is not much to gain in terms of a higher stock by restricting it further.

Social planner solution As opposed to the monopolistic landowner, the social planner aims to maximize the total surplus (TS), that is, the sum of angler surplus (AS) and landowner surplus (LS) while taking the stock–effort equilibrium relationship (4) into account. As indicated, this may typically be the objective if the national authority, or a non-profit organization, manages the river. Fishing permits provided by the national authorities are common practice in a number of countries (see above). The same type of management may occur when, for example, a fishing association is given the authority to provide fishing permits in a specific lake or river under conditions determined by the authority or a landowner association. The results presented in Table 9.1 may seem surprising at first glance. It turns out that the social planner management is less stock conserving than both monopolistic regimes considered. However, the interpretation is straightforward. The overall gain obtained by lowering the permit price and hence increasing the number of permits sold outweigh the loss in terms of driving the stock down. In addition, again due to the specific recruitment function at hand, the stock decrease is quite small. As expected, the total surplus (TS) is higher than under the other management regimes (NOK 6681), but note that neither the anglers nor the landowners strictly prefer the social planner solution over the other management regimes. The anglers as a group are better off under the myopic price-taking management while the landowners prefer both monopolistic regimes instead of the social planner regime. From the angler group point of view, they are facing a higher permit price than in the myopic price-taking case. This means that those anglers that are willing to pay less than the social planner permit price (NOK 0.15), but more than the myopic price-taking permit price (NOK 0.05) lose their surplus. However, the landowners gain more than the anglers lose by charging NOK 0.15 instead of NOK 0.05 compared with the price-taking situation. Even so, they will prefer the monopolistic cases in which they are able to

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maximize their surplus by charging higher prices. Note also that although the difference in total surplus between, for example, the social planner and myopic price-taker management is quite small, the distributional differences are substantial. This seems also to be a more general lesson from the present example since, although the stock size differences between the different management regimes under consideration here are quite small, the distributional consequences depend critically on the type of management.

Discussion Through different market conditions, like perfect competition or monopolies, different property rights regimes, like privately held resources versus publicly held, and different planning horizons, such as myopic or long term, different management regimes arise. In this chapter we have shown how different management regimes in a recreational fishery, ranging from the myopic price-taking management scheme to the social planner solution, affect overall surplus, the allocation of benefits between anglers and landowners (or the property right holder) and the harvest and stock abundance. As bioeconomic models incorporate the economic consequences (in terms of benefits) and the biological consequences (through the size of the fish stock), some crucial trade-offs facing a recreational fishery manager are highlighted. For example, a typical economic trade-off occurs when selling more permits comes at the cost of bringing down the permit price while a typical ecological trade-off occurs when fishing more today decreases the future fish stock. To what extent does it pay off to restrict access to a given fishery in order to raise the fish stock and profits? It is not surprising that it depends critically on the underlying biological and economic factors. As mentioned in the introduction to this chapter, modelling is about making simplifying assumptions. To what extent the results survive when the assumptions are relaxed tell us whether it is a good model or not. For example, including more factors influencing the demand for fishing permits seems necessary. One important issue to be mentioned is to what extent the number of anglers fishing the beat at the same time affects the demand [see Anderson (1980) for a theoretical exposition]. Generally, there seems to be at least two contradictory hypotheses about how this would affect the demand. On one hand, increasing the number of anglers may lead to crowding at the site and thereby reducing the demand. This pulls in the direction of a reduced angler surplus in the price-taking and social planner regimes compared with the monopolistic regimes in our analyses. However, sociability may be an important part of the angling experience too, and hence, the angler satisfaction may in fact increase with the number of participants, at least to some point. If this is the case, the angler surplus in the price-taking and social planner regimes will be higher than suggested by our results. Another fruitful hypothesis seems to be the one argued by Schuhmann and Schwabe (2004), who found empirical support for a non-linear utility–congestion relationship

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among recreational anglers. Analysing the Roanoke River striped-bass fishery in North Carolina, they found a positive linear term for congestion on recreational demand, while the quadratic term was estimated to be negative. They argued that some degree of aggregate use was viewed favourably, perhaps for social reasons, but that after a particular level of aggregate use was reached, further increases reduced the site quality and thereby its utility. See also Boxall et al. (2003). On the other hand, in a Norwegian survey, Atlantic salmon anglers reported strictly decreasing willingness to pay levels as the number of anglers at the beat was increased (Olaussen 2006), indicating that any potential sociability effects were dominated by crowding. It seems therefore clear that making general assumptions about how anglers respond to congestion are not very fruitful, as this may vary between different types of recreational fisheries. However, casespecific knowledge about how congestion affects the anglers are crucial if angler (consumer) surplus is to be measured correctly, and hence it is also crucial if overall surplus to be maximized. We have demonstrated how total surplus and the distribution of surplus between landowners (property right holders) and anglers are distributed under different management regimes. In addition, this analysis calls attention to the fact that there are many ways of managing a recreational fishery. It turns out that some apparently very different management regimes may yield quite similar results with respect to some of the potential objectives of the manager, and also large differences with respect to others. We have concentrated on typical economic objectives in this chapter, but it should be noted that managers may have other objectives in mind as well. However, the analysis provided here indicates what consequences one may expect of changing management regimes, and what differences may be expected when comparing different management schemes.

Acknowledgements The authors wish to thank Øystein Aas and Brad Gentner for their helpful comments and suggestions on an earlier version of this chapter.

Appendix: Technical note Myopic monopolistic landowner The myopic monopolistic landowner maximizes the profit function (6) with respect to number of permits sold while taking the stock as given. The first-order condition in this case is written as: (A1)

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The left-hand side is the marginal income while the right-hand side is the marginal cost of selling fishing permits. Hence, the monopolist offers more fishing permits until the extra income of selling one more fishing permit is equal to the extra cost. Differentiating the economic equilibrium condition (A1) yields

(A2) The numerator on the right-hand side is positive because of the second-order condition for a maximum to be fulfilled. Under the reasonable assumption that the quality effect dominates the potentially negative cross-effect in the demand function, such that P′′Dν (D,θqX)D + P′ν (D,θqX) > 0, we find that the economic equilibrium condition, if existing, is positively sloped in a X–D diagram, and hence a bioeconomic equilibrium exists as long as the ecological equilibrium schedule is negatively sloped in the X–D plane.

Myopic price-taking landowners Price-taking landowners maximize the profit function (6) with respect to number of permits, while taking the price as well as the stock as given. The first-order condition is, therefore, written as P(D, ν) = C ′ (D),

(A3)

and hence they simply sell permits until the permit price equals the marginal cost of providing permits. Differentiation of the first-order condition yields dX/dD = [C″(D)–P′D (D, θqX)]/P′ν(D,θqX). Again, the numerator is positive due to the second-order condition for the maximum, and we hence find that this equilibrium condition is positively sloped in the X–D plane as well.

Long-term planning monopolistic landowners The maximization problem facing a landowner maximizing over an infinite planning period under monopolistic conditions may be written as the current value Hamiltonian (Conrad and Clark 1987) (A4) where ρ is the discount factor, ρ = 1/(1+ δ), δ is the yearly rate of discount and λ is the shadow value of the resource constraint. As the time lag in recruitment is 5 years, the stock dynamics is given by a fifth-order differential equation, and

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hence no analytical solutions are obtainable. However, although beyond the scope of this text, the equilibrium conditions may be derived (see e.g. Clark 1976, 1990).

Notes 1 See Clark (1976) for an analysis of the dynamics of a delay-difference recruitment model. 2 Hvidsten et al. (2004) find that only 0.3–3.8% of the spawners survive justifying this simplifying assumption. 3 Others have used a different approach – for instance, Bishop and Samples (1980), Cook and McGaw (1996) and Laukkanen (2001) use the actual catch. 4 Note that there may be many landowners in each river competing with each other as well. In such cases, the degree of homogeneity between the products the various landowners offer will determine the degree of monopolistic price setting, and where more homogeneity means more price-taking behaviour. However, in the following we focus our attention to the competition between rivers, implicitly assuming that the landowners in our representative river act as one landowner when determining the permit price. 5 In a survey of Norwegian rivers, 92% of sport fishermen reported that the quality of the river in terms of average catch per day was important. In addition, 72% reported that the price of fishing permits was important (Fiske and Aas 2001).

References Anderson, L.G. (1980) Estimating the benefits of recreation under conditions of congestion: comments and extension. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 7: 401–406. Anderson, L.G. (1983) The demand curve for recreational fishing with an application to stock enhancement activities. Land Economics 59(3): 279–287. Anderson, L.G. (1993) Toward a complete economic theory of the utilization and management of recreational fisheries. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 24: 272–295. Bishop, R.C. and Samples, K.C. (1980) Sport and commercial fishing conflicts. A theoretical analysis. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 7: 220–233. Boxall, P., Rollins, K. and Englin, J. (2003) Heterogeneous preferences for congestion during a wilderness experience. Resource and Energy Economics 25: 177–195. Clark, C.W. (1976) A delayed-recruitment model of population dynamics, with an application to baleen whale populations. Journal of Mathematical Biology 3: 381–391. Clark, C.W. (1990) Mathematical Bioeconomics. John Wiley, New York. Conrad, J.M. (1999) Resource Economics. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Conrad, J.M. and Clark, C.W. (1987) Natural Resource Economics. Notes and Problems. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

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Cook, B.A. and McGaw, R.L. (1996) Sport and commercial fishing allocations for the Atlantic salmon fisheries of the Miramichi river. Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics 44: 165–171. Cox, S. and Walters, C. (2002) Maintaining quality in recreational fisheries: how success breeds failure in management of open-access sport fisheries. In: T.J. Pitcher and C.E. Hollingworth (Eds) Recreational Fisheries: Ecological, Economic and Social Evaluation. Blackwell Science, Oxford. Fiske, P. and Aas, Ø. (Eds) (2001) Laksefiskeboka. Om Sammenhenger mellom Beskatning, Fiske og Verdiskaping ved Elvefiske etter Laks, Sjøaure og Sjørøye. NINA Temahefte 20: 1–100. Hvidsten, N.A., Johnsen, B.O., Jensen, A.J. et al. (2004) Orkla- et Nasjonalt Referansevassdrag for Studier av Bestandsregulerende Faktorer av Laks. Nina fagrapport 079. Laukkanen, M. (2001) A bioeconomic analysis of the northern Baltic salmon fishery: coexistence versus exclusion of competing sequential fisheries. Environmental and Resource Economics 18: 293–315. Lee, S-T. (1996) The Economics of Recreational Fishing. Dissertation, University of Washington. McConnell, K.E. and Sutinen, J.G. (1979) Bioeconomic models of marine recreational fishing. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 6: 127–139. Murphy, E.A. and Stephenson, K. (1999) Inland Recreational Fishing Rights in Virgina: Implications of the Virginia Supreme Court Case Kraft V. Burr. Special Report SR131999. Virginia Water Resource Research Center. NOU (1999) Til Laks åt Alle Kan Ingen Gjera? NOU 1999:9. Olaussen, J.O. (2007) Playing Chicken with Salmon. Marine Resource Economics 22: 173–193. Olaussen, J.O. (2007) Bandwagon or Snob Anglers? Evidence from Recreational Atlantic Salmon Fishing. Working Paper 2006, Department of Economics, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim. Olaussen, J.O. and Skonhoft, A. (2005) The Bioeconomics of a Wild Atlantic Salmon (Salmo salar) Recreational Fishery. Working Paper Series 14/2005, Department of Economics, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim. Rosenman, R. (1991) Impacts of recreational fishing on the commercial sector: an empirical analysis of Atlantic mackerel. Natural Resource Modeling 5(2): 239–257. Rudd, A.M., Folmer, H., van Kooten, G.C. (2002) Economic evaluation of recreational fishery policy. In: T.J. Pitcher and C.E. Hollingworth (Eds) Recreational Fisheries: Ecological, Economic and Social Evaluation. Blackwell Science, Oxford. Schuhmann, P.W. and Schwabe, K.A. (2004) An analysis of congestion measures and heterogeneous angler preferences in a random utility model of recreational fishing. Environmental and Resource Economics 27(4): 429–450. Shepherd, J.G. (1982) A versatile new stock-recruitement relationship for fisheries, and the construction of sustainable yield curves. Journal du Conseil, Conseil Internationale pour L`Exploration de la Mer 40 (1): 67–75. Silverberg, E. (1990) The Structure of Economics: A Mathematical Analysis (2nd edn). McGraw-Hill Publishing Company. Skonhoft, A. and Logstein, R. (2003) Sportsfiske etter Laks. En Bioøkonomisk Analyse. Norsk Økonomisk Tidsskrift 117(1): 31–51.

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Chapter 10

Economic impact of angling in Scotland and Iceland Sveinn Agnarsson, Alan Radford and Geoff Riddington

Abstract This chapter discusses two recent studies of angler expenditure and their impact on output and employment, one Scottish and the other Icelandic. According to the former, anglers spend a total of €167 million on angling in Scotland, with salmon and sea trout fishing accounting for €108 million of this total. It is further speculated that angling in Scotland generates about €147 million in output and is responsible for €71 million of the income per annum, and that between 2450 and 2800 jobs depend – directly or indirectly – on angling. The Icelandic study estimates angler expenditure at €21.1–24.6 million, and the total output effect at €84.9–99.6 million. These are though overestimates, as they do not allow for any possible substitution effects. There exist close links between angling and tourism in general, and these ties can be explored to further increase the revenue generated by anglers, both at the regional and domestic level.

Introduction Historically, two kinds of ‘economic’ evaluations have been applied to recreational fishing. One set of evaluations focuses on the impact of angling on local/ regional income and employment. Studies of this kind include Cobham Resource Consultants (Anon 1983), Whelan and Marsh (1988), Mackay Consultants (Anon 1989), Dunn et al. (1989), Radford et al. (1991), Moon and Souter (1994) and Riddington et al. (2004).1 The other form of economic evaluation is rooted in the economic value/cost benefit analysis (CBA) framework. This type of study examines economic value and its sensitivity to changes in resource allocation. The primary focus is on how a change in resource-use impact on the well-being of individuals as reflected in their willingness to pay for the change (see Hanley and Spash 1993). As such, the evaluation process might be unconcerned about the differential impacts on 188

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the incomes of individual regions or sectors of the economy. Examples of this kind of evaluation of angling activity include Willis and Garrod (1991), Davis and O’Neill (1992), Foundation for Water Research (1996), Gibb Environment (1999), Willis and Garrod (1999) and Spurgeon et al. (2001). This chapter concerns itself with the first type of economic evaluation and presents two recent studies of angler expenditure and their impact on output and employment, one Scottish and the other Icelandic. Both were published in 2004 and estimate the effect angling has on the domestic economy using similar methodology, although the Scottish study is more sophisticated in three ways. First, it computes the ‘economic’ impact both at the regional and national levels, second, it differentiates between four types of fisheries and third, it allows for various substitution possibilities.

Theoretical background In order to evaluate the economic impact of a certain activity, for example, angling, it is necessary to first identify the full effects of a change in angling expenditure, and then analyse the substitution possibilities that exist for individual anglers.

Multipliers In a modern society numerous linkages exist between different branches of economic activity, and in order to identify the full impact of a certain economic activity it is necessary to trace all these links, or at least obtain a decent picture of these complex linkages, so that the total contribution of the activity in question may be properly assessed. In general it can be expected that the total effect will exceed the initial expenditure, but the difference between the two may differ between activities and change over time.2 This total effect is often decomposed into three categories: direct, indirect and induced effects. The direct effect is simply the increase in local incomes (wages and selfemployment income) and any increase in locally sourced inputs (i.e. additional local output) that arise from the initial angler expenditure. To determine the magnitude of the initial direct effect, it is therefore vital to know the composition of angler expenditure so that the share of locally sourced inputs can be identified. There are various indirect effects arising from the direct effect. Specifically, the local impact of producing these additional locally sourced inputs is known as the first-round indirect effect. This effect manifests itself in further increase in local incomes (wages and income from self-employment) and further demands by firms for locally produced inputs, which creates further rounds of successively smaller indirect effects. The combined impact of the direct and all the rounds of indirect effects are modelled by what is termed ‘Type I’ multiplier analysis.

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As described, both the direct effect and every round of indirect effects increases household incomes, and in each spending round a proportion of these are spent on locally produced goods, creating further local income and local output. This is the induced effect. ‘Type II’ multiplier analysis incorporates these induced effects into the analysis, enabling the estimation of the corresponding Type II total output effects and the Type II total income effect, which is also termed Type II gross value added (GVA). Once the (Type I and/or Type II) local incomes or output impacts are calculated, local employment (Type I and/or Type II) can be estimated through known relationships between output and employment or total wages and employment. The regional impact of angler expenditure will depend on such things as interfirm linkages within the regional economy, taxation policy and the proportion of local income normally spent within the region. These parameters themselves will be dependent on the size of the region: the smaller the area, the less likely local business and retailers will purchase locally produced supplies (weak indirect effects), and the less likely local households will purchase locally produced goods (weak induced effects).

Substitution possibilities Anglers will respond in different ways to the eventual loss of a particular type of fishing in a region (see Gentner and Sutton, Chapter 8, this volume). Some anglers will spend as much on alternative activities within region. If all anglers responded in this way, the cessation of angling for a given fishery type would have little impact on regional income and employment. On the other hand, if anglers divert their expenditure outside the region, one can argue that angling’s contribution to regional income and employment is significant. Practitioners often make the simplifying assumptions that visitors have better substitutes outside the region, whereas local residents have better substitutes within it (see Fisheries Resources Management 2000). This implies that a region would lose all visitor anglers spending and retain all local anglers spending. Researchers employing these assumptions thus only need to quantify visitor spending. The aforementioned assumptions are somewhat crude, and whilst this is an obvious point, the actual substitution possibilities are not always evident and may only be properly revealed by the anglers themselves. Moreover, substitution possibilities will vary with the size of the region; the smaller the region, the fewer substitutes there are within it. Further, substitution possibilities can vary through time. Thus, in the short run, the closure of a fishery may at first lead to a considerable decline in regional expenditures. In the long run, however, new activities may be developed.

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Scottish study The principal aim of the Scottish study was to analyse the impact on income and employment of angler expenditure in Scotland, both for the country as a whole and in seven regions (Dumfries and Galloway, Borders, Highlands, North-east Scotland, Central Scotland, Western Isles and Orkney and Shetland). For each region, the income and employment impact of four types of angling salmon (Salmo salar) and anadromous brown trout (Salmo trutta), resident brown trout, rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) and coarse fishing were to be estimated, as well as for the whole of Scotland.

Surveys The Scottish study relied on data generated through a survey of anglers and a survey of owners. A survey of freshwater anglers in Scotland was conducted in 2003 and sought to collect observations on angler days for each region–fishery combination, with the primary focus on expenditure per day. These estimates are scaled using information from the owner survey (see below). In the angler survey, the relevant population is the number of angler days for each region– fishery combination and not the number of anglers. In surveying the anglers, three survey instruments were employed. First, an electronic questionnaire was developed and published on the Web. Second, a paper version was produced and distributed via fishing clubs, proprietors, tackle shops and so on. Third, a total of 920 questionnaires were sent to fisheries, clubs and shops; 32.3% were returned. Finally, there was some limited on-site survey work with 71 questionnaires completed in the Shin and Spey catchment. The resulting database consists of over 3000 observations and has the capacity to provide information in a number of dimensions including by species (4), by region (7), by expenditure category (13) and by angler origin (13). The Owners’ Survey had the primary objective to provide estimates of angler days for each of the specified combinations of regions and fishery types and, for each of the combinations, to provide estimates of the proportion of anglers who are respectively local, visitors from within Scotland and non-Scottish visitors. The aspiration was to obtain data from every freshwater fishery in Scotland, and the survey of owners did not therefore involve any explicit sampling process. Also, where possible the intention was to use, amend or update previous studies. In the case of salmon and sea trout fisheries (and coarse and brown trout, that occur on riverine salmon and sea trout fisheries) 53 District Salmon Fishery Boards either provided names or collected information for river catchments. It was inevitable that there was some non-response. In the case of salmon and sea trout angling, there is systematic collection of catch statistics, and if one can

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estimate the relationship between angler effort (days) and catch, there is a basis for scaling observations for non-response. For other fisheries, a database of 2830 fisheries was established. In total 738 responses out of a possible 872 were received from the contact list. This provided estimates of angler days and origins for 1935 fisheries/waters of the 2830 entries in the database (68.4%). Some contact/responses provided estimates for many waters. This usually occurred when dealing with angling clubs and estates in particular.3 From the database, it is possible to aggregate individual estimates to provide estimates for Scotland as a whole, or for four fishing types, for seven regions, by 13 angler origins. For salmon and sea trout fisheries, estimates are available on a river-by-river basis. Other fisheries can be aggregated by Unitary Authority area or any other geographical boundary.

Angler activity, expenditure and substitution possibilities Angler expenditure varies greatly between fisheries. As expected, salmon angling attracts the highest spending per day, both generally (€199) and across every region. On average, the Highlands are the most expensive region (€206); but, rainbow trout in Dumfries and Galloway and coarse angling in the North-east are marginally more expensive than in the Highlands. These estimates include the expenditure by anglers on behalf of others. Anglers spend a total of €167 million on angling in Scotland, with salmon and sea trout anglers accounting for over 65% (€108 million) of this total. In terms of angler days, rainbow trout angling in Central Scotland attracts the largest activity, though salmon and sea trout in the Highlands and the North-east are much more significant in terms of expenditure. Local anglers who fish within their own region spent €54.2 million and were responsible for 33% of the €167 million total. Scottish anglers fishing other Scottish regions spent a relatively modest €25 million, (15%) of the total expenditure and anglers from outside Scotland €87 million (52%). If a fishery ceased to exist, then theoretically all angler expenditure could be lost to a region. In addition to separately estimating local and visitor spending, the study consequently also analysed anglers’ actual substitution possibilities, irrespective of where they came from. On average the survey indicated that 61% of the total angler expenditure in the salmon and sea trout fishery would be lost. The percentage varies between 20% in the Western Isles and 68% in the Border region. There is significant variation in the reaction of anglers. The Western Isles and Orkney and Shetland retain a greater proportion of their angler spending. This is probably because resident anglers would simply switch species rather than incurring the travel costs associated with fishing on the mainland. There also

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exists the strong possibility that a relatively higher proportion of visiting anglers incur the relatively higher costs in fishing these islands because their visit is essentially multipurpose (e.g. visiting relatives, staying with friends). These visitors are more likely to continue to visit even if their preferred fishing were not available. Using these loss figures it is possible to produce estimates of the expenditure lost to each region. From Table 10.1, it can be seen that €30.5 million of €52.2 million total expenditure would be lost in the Highland region. Unfortunately, the angler questionnaires could not accommodate questions about angler alternatives if a type of angling ceased throughout Scotland, or indeed if all forms of angling ceased in Scotland. It is thus important to realize that each cell in Table 10.1 reflects the regional expenditure that would be lost in circumstances where other types of angling are still available in the region and the first-choice type of angling is still available in other Scottish regions. Strictly, the loss to Scotland as a whole from the collapse of a type of angling throughout Scotland cannot be obtained by aggregating the losses to the individual regions (or to fishing types) as reflected in Table 10.1. This is because the substitution possibilities increase as the area becomes larger, but the questionnaire could not ask anglers about these particular substitution possibilities. In effect, the aggregation of the individual cells (the bottom row of Table 10.1) provides an upper limit on the expenditure loss to Scotland. This upper limit is closer to the true loss when the proportion of anglers normally transferring within Scotland, who would transfer outside, in the event of a complete Scottish collapse is greater.

Impact on income and employment The seven regional economies were modelled using an approach, developed by CogentSI,4 which can be finessed to produce models specific for angling for particular regions. As the model identifies expenditure patterns for anglers, local businesses, retailers and local employees, it effectively traces through the impact outlined below (see Figure 10.1). Gross value added (GVA) is a measure of the income in the form of wages, rents and income from self-employment to households in the region. By feeding the expenditure losses of Table 10.1 through the CogentSI model, it is possible to arrive at an estimate how much these losses would reduce local household income in the form of wages and all income from self-employment.5 Further, one can calculate the ratio of local income change to the initial change in expenditure. As expected, smaller less self-sufficient regions have lower ratios, but the expenditure patterns also vary between different anglers. Thus, salmon and sea trout angling in the North-east and Central regions have the highest ratios and brown trout angling in Orkney and Shetland the lowest.

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VAT

Imports

Local industry

Local industry Expenditure

Output 2

Output 1

Home wages plus

Home plus margin

Retail

Imports

Home plus margin

Local retail

Wages

Imports

Taxes

TAX

Direct Indirect Induced

Figure 10.1 Tracing the impact of angler expenditure.

Table 10.1

Expenditure loss summary table for Scotland (€1000). Salmon and sea trout

Brown trout

Dumfries and Galloway

2,585

1,343

The Borders

6,671

619

Highlands

30,507

North-east Scotland Central Scotland Western Isles Orkney and Shetland Scotland total

Rainbow trout

Coarse fish

Total

861

1,247

6,034

432

15

7,737

4,133

1,440

506

36,584

22,583

1,772

4,268

367

28,992

3,013

3,450

7191

1,195

14,850

239

363

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