Optimal Management of Northern Atlantic Bluefin Tuna

• Autor(a) principal: Pintassilgo, Pedro
• Data de Publicação: 1999
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10362/89152

This paper presents the analysis of the optimal management of the Northern Atlantic bluefin tuna, for both eastern and western stocks. A multi-gear and age structured bio-economic model is optimised in two scenarios: one where the strategies are restricted to a fixed gear structure and another where the strategies are unrestricted. For both scenarios, two policy instruments are considered: constant TAC and constant effort. The corresponding optimal use is then compared with an open access scenario. The main results are qualitatively very similar for the East and West Atlantic. For the two scenarios, the policy of regulating effort yields higher payoff than the optimal TAC. It is also concluded that there are substantial gains of departing from open access to an optimal regulated scenario. As expected the gear structure of catches and effort proved to be highly relevant in the optimal payoffs. This results from the fact that the various gears target different age classes and present very distinct economic efficiency. One of the main conclusions of this paper is that the present share of the different gears in the bluefin tuna fishery, in both East and West Atlantic is far from the optimal one.