Harvesting in a pelagic fishery: The case of Northern Chile

Abstract

This paper analyses the pelagic fishery of Northern Chile, estimating harvesting functions that contribute to understand why rather poor incentives to exit may predominate in pelagic fisheries, despite scarcer fish stocks. Our results show that per‐vessel catch's stock sensitivity (the catch‐to‐biomass elasticity value) varies negatively with stock levels. Stock levels preceding a marked fall into biological overfishing would have been associated to biomass elasticities lower than the unitary value. This suggests that during catch bonanza periods, catch‐per‐unit‐of‐effort would fail to detect a rapidly declining stock trend, increasing the risk of fishing collapse. Moreover, external economies in search efforts would have reduced the incentives to exit, particularly for the smaller vessels in our sample. Finally, we find evidence of either constant or increasing marginal returns in the use of per‐vessel fishing effort, which suggests that inefficiency in production has resulted from direct restrictions upon fishing effort. Overall, our findings provide consistent evidence that enhances the necessity of more efficient regulations upon harvesting in pelagic fisheries.