Challenges in integrating short-term behaviour in a mixed-fishery Management Strategies Evaluation frame: a case study of the North Sea flatfish fishery

This study presents a fleet-based bioeconomic simulation model to the international mixed flatfish fishery in the North Sea. The model uses a Management Strategies Evaluation framework including a discrete choice model accounting for short-term temporal changes in effort allocation across fisheries. A simplified random utility model was used based on the expected revenue (or economic attractiveness) and two tradition parameters related to short and long term historical fishing patterns. All three parameters were significant. Even though reactions and adaptations vary between fleets, the estimated conservative behaviour of the main fleets led to only marginal effect at the stock level. The importance of accounting for fleet behaviour was then evaluated using an elasticity analysis to explore how increased weight of economic attractiveness contributes to changes in the biological output and positive increase in the economic performance of the individual fleets. This showed the existence of a window of sensitivity of the model to the behaviour assumptions. The study highlights the challenge of implementing an effort allocation model in a general framework of Management Strategies Evaluation for mixed-fisheries, and illustrates the necessary trade-offs between very detailed numerical relationships and the representation of aggregated processes. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.