This thesis examines the economic and political aspects of the Soviet distant water fleet. The Soviet Union is the number two fishing nation, responsible for 12% of the world catch. The USSR is planning to further expand its efforts by implementing a multifaceted strategy to increase the quantity and quality of fish and fish products. However, future expansion is unlikely. The 1990's will be a challenging decade for the Soviet fishing industry. Fish will remain a source of much sought after hard currency and food, but the prospects for the optimistic growth forecasted by the Soviet government are not realistic. Despite the current profitability of this industry, several factors limit future growth of this sector, including restricted Soviet access to coastal fisheries, depleted stocks worldwide, as well as the high cost of open ocean fishing operations. In addition, there is pressure for global conservation for many of the stocks targeted by the Soviet distant water fleet. This has led to the increase of regional management schemes in the South Pacific, East Caribbean, and the Antarctic which effectively close off most new areas of expansion to the USSR. As a result, the Soviet fishing industry has increasingly turned to developing its coastal fisheries and mariculture capabilities to increase its annual harvest.

The lack of economic analysis on export-led shrimp farming in India has become of major national importance as a result of the Indian Supreme Court's December 1996 decision to ban the shrimp farming sector. The ban was a direct result of concerns over the impact of shrimp farming-in terms of its degradation of the environment and marginalization of local people from coastal resources. In addition to questions raised with respect to the nature and extent of environmental and socio-economic externalities of this sector, recent parliamentary debate raised equally important questions regarding the sustainability of shrimp farming under a variety of production methods. However, assessment of the productive efficiency of shrimp farms under increasingly intensive production methods is lacking. Parametric and non-parametric approaches to measuring the productive efficiency of shrimp farms are applied to farm-level data collected from the Kandaleru region in India. First, technical efficiency is modelled, measured and explained by estimating a restricted translog stochastic frontier production function using maximum-likelihood methods. The variation of technical efficiency indices across the shrimp farm sample is explained using farm specific characteristics and managerial variables. Farm mechanisation, location and size are found to be significant factors explaining total inefficiency. Second, scale effects are extracted from the total efficiency index by applying Data Envelopment Analysis techniques. An inverse relationship is found to exist between farm size and efficiency. Next, social and environmental impacts facing rural inhabitants as a result of the shrimp farming sector's growth and development are assessed using primary survey data collected from twenty-six villages located adjacent to shrimp farms. The most frequently cited problem by local inhabitants is blocked access to public areas. This is followed by problems of agricultural land salinity, well water salinity, unemployment, fodder & fuelwood collection problems and health problems, respectively. The immediate policy direction is clear: larger farmers could reduce the intensity of production to maximise efficiency and minimise input slacks to reduce the risk of environmental degradation both within the aquatic pond environment and to the natural ecosystem. Similarly, they could enable free but supervised access through their farms to public areas such as the Bay of Bengal, Kandaleru creek or public pasture lands.

Sierra Leone has considerable fishery resources and needs the foreign exchange that trading these products internationally would achieve. Yet the nation is unable to export its fishery products through an inability to achieve HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point) standards and certification. A lack of HACCP has meant that overseas markets have been closed to Sierra Leone for over a decade. Previous attempts at resolving these problems of HACCP certification have been made, but none has produced any significant advancement towards achieving compliance with HACCP. This study attempts to uncover the barriers to compliance with HACCP by the Sierra Leone food safety management system, as perceived by the regulators, enforcement officials and businesses. This thesis also focuses on benefits determined and prioritized by regulators, enforcement officials, businesses, and consumers that will motivate successful implementation of HACCP. It is a qualitative case study utilizing triangulation involving a three-stage research design methodology comprising a set of convergent interviews of 22 people, followed by 77 individual case interviews and 3 focus group interviews. Ranked lists of 18 scored barriers and 22 benefits of HACCP for Sierra Leone national food safety management system were produced. The results of this study may provide suggestions for stakeholders to strengthen fishery safety infrastructure in order to protect public health, prevent fraud and deception, avoid food adulteration and facilitate trade. The results have shown that there are many and specific barriers in the SMEs in Sierra Leone that need to be removed, and their appropriate identification lies in the perceptions of national regulators, enforcement, and businesses who are familiar with their culture; attitudes; strength, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT). These barriers delineate the overarching principles of fishery safety infrastructure, and provide policy makers; enforcement officials; fishery businesses; academic and other relevant research institutions with valuable data on the benefits of successful implementation of HACCP-based systems.

Overexploitation, conflicts and inequality in resource use are common consequences of many fishery management systems such as those in the developing countries. A better understanding of the spatial dynamics of fisheries and the causes of past failures in management is needed in order to provide more effective management systems. The small-scale inland fisheries in Tonle Sap are used as a case study in this thesis, as they combine property rights and conservation in the form of distinct management zones (private, common and conservation zones) with access to private fishing grounds determined through allocation of licences through an auction system. This thesis uses a choice experiment approach to investigate how this allocation system affects different groups of fishermen. The results indicate that the auction system is likely to further the advantages of better-off fishermen irrespective of the characteristics of fishing lots. This suggests that it is unlikely that the design of fishing lots in itself would be an effective way of securing access to fishing resources for all types of fishermen. Agent-based modelling is then used to examine the links between conservation and private property rights, through an analysis of the spatial effects of property rights and conservation, using different management system designs and focusing on the interactions between heterogeneous fishermen, fish biomass and fishing regulations. Private property is found to promote better fish biomass conditions on its own, but does not necessary generate the best conservation or socio-economic outcomes for fishing communities when evaluating the entire fishery. Conservation zones perform better when the reserves are located in baseline quality fish habitats and the reserve size is large. The results show how positive effects on fishery sustainability can be achieved. Effective management for subsistence fisheries can be designed using property rights and conservation areas, combined with other fishery regulations and enforcement, in order to ensure biological and socioeconomic sustainability.

Following the adoption of the sweeping neoliberal reforms adopted in the last quarter of the 20th century, within a few years the Argentine fisheries sector shifted from a relatively stable accumulation process – organised around a Fordist structure of production, domestic capital, waged labour and an ‘under-exploited’ resource base – to a situation of over-fishing, internationalisation of capital and flexible production based on the precarisation of the labour force. While this and similar processes elsewhere have been examined from either an ecological or socio-economic perspective, scholarly studies exploring the socio-environmental articulation and impact of regulation systems emerging from the neoliberal restructuring of production in the urban global south are still rare. Articulating the perspectives of political ecology and regulation theory, this thesis examines: (a) the driving logic and contradictions of industrial production unfolding in the shift from a Fordist regime to a regime of flexible accumulation in an urban peripheral economy in the global context; and (b) the way in which such shift reshaped the ability of the state, firms and citizen workers to deal with increased scarcity, vulnerability and conflictivity. The central hypothesis of this study is that neoliberal restructuring operates through a dispositif of socio-environmental regulation based on an exclusionary system of social reproduction, labour exploitation and nature expropriation, a dispositif that normalises capitalist accumulation through the production and re-production of differential sustainability. However, such dispositif is not static but subjected to a socio-spatial dialectical process that might have the capacity to subvert the way in which nature and labour are disciplined under the hegemonic neoliberal rationality. By focusing on the Argentinean fisheries sector in Mar del Plata city (historically, the ‘national’ epicentre of the activity), the thesis seeks to understand how urban-based struggles confront a regulation crisis at multiple scales (e.g. from the workplace to the sea).

No description available.

The attempts to achieve the sustainability of fisheries sector are affected by the existence of the fishing fleets as the principal tool for fishing activities. This thesis reports on research to develop a holistic methodology for ensuring that fishing vessels working in Indonesian waters are themselves sustainable, accordingly it can support the achievement of sustainability of Indonesian fisheries sector. A sustainable fishing vessel can be simply defined as a vessel that fulfils the requirements of the three pillars of sustainability regarding the social, economic and environmental aspects throughout its life cycle. Based on the requirements for the sustainable fishing vessels, and by considering the conditions of most fishing communities in Indonesia, this research project is aimed at proposing an appropriate approach and method to the design of fishing vessels for specific fishing communities, in order to ensure that the implementation of the three pillar of sustainability are considered during the design process. The proposed approach to design a sustainable fishing vessel for a specific fishing community has been developed and tested through a case study in a selected fishing community. An 18 meters length multi-purpose fishing vessel has been designed for fishing community in East Java, Indonesia. In order to increase the acceptability of the proposed vessel, local fishers’ requirements concerning the new design have been elicited. The aesthetic characteristics of traditional fishing vessels and current fishing practices have been adopted and adapted. Furthermore, in order to ensure that the proposed vessel fulfils the requirement for a sustainable fishing vessel, the technologies that can be applied on-board have been assessed in terms of their social acceptability, economic viability and their potential negative impact to the environment. The results of Focus Group Discussions to have local fishers’ views and feedback regarding the proposed design, showed excellent responses from the local fishers. The results show that the initial approach by carefully considering local fishers requirements and conditions without ignoring the potential improvement in the future is the appropriate approach to design fishing vessels for specific fishing communities in Indonesia.

No description available.

There is an ongoing argument that the biological priorities of the CFP are not a straightforward solution to the problems facing international fisheries management, and that social objectives need to be incorporated into policy. However, the social arm of fisheries is little understood in a management structure that prioritises scientifically-produced quantitative data over narrative-based evidence concerning the everyday lives of those living and working within the fishing industry. By investigating notions of fisheries ‘dependency’ and ‘community’ - labels that currently pervade fisheries management but that remain poorly understood by decision-makers - with people in coastal fishing communities in Scotland, this research provides important new evidence to inform the social dimensions of fisheries policy. In-depth qualitative data collected through interviews and participant observation in three Scottish case study areas - Fraserburgh, the Outer Hebrides and Shetland - suggest that fisheries ‘dependency’ extends from a family’s income to the importance of fishing identity and heritage, whilst ideas of ‘community’ are complex and multiple. Empathy, created through shared routines of uncertainty and risk, emerges as an important factor in defining and binding people together. So too does the shared experience of living in remote areas, bringing together not only those who work in the fishing industry, but also those in the wider territorial community. The controversies that arise at the interface between the current constitutional set up of fisheries management and the heterogeneous nature of the fishing ‘community’ suggest that understandings of fisheries ‘dependency’ need to take into account the strength of attachment to fishing as a positive identity and the substantial commitment to the sector that people show. Rather than attempting to shift people away from fishing, steps might be taken to support the strong social and business networks linked to the industry, and increase flexibility within fisheries management to accommodate the complexities of the fishing ‘community’.

It has been several decades that groundfish stocks have decreased around the UK. Meanwhile, grey seal population has increased. This has created a controversy between fishers and conservationists as regards to the role grey seals have played in the stock depletion. Currently, opinions are still divided, and further studies need to be done to mitigate these conflicts. A bioeconomic model able to quantify the economic impact of grey seal predation on West of Scotland demersal fisheries for cod, haddock and whiting was developed. The biological part of the model accounts for seal predation and fishing catches and is linked to an economic model accounting for fleet revenues and costs. Three scenarios are tested. The "€status quo F"€ model assesses seal predation impacts on fleet revenues at the biological equilibrium. Two dynamic models are also studied to determine seal impacts when fleet behaviour is considered: the maximum economic yield scenario (MEY) where the fishery net profit is maximised and the bioeconomic equilibrium (BE) model where the profits are dissipated in the long-run. Cod is the fish the most impacted by grey seal predation so is the key stock in evaluating fishery effects. While the biological impacts can be important, seal predation is not economically important at the fishery level but some fleets are more sensitive than others. The large whitefish trawlers are likely to be the only fleet that could benefit from a reduction in grey seal predation. The following increase in its revenues would be certainly improved by fishery regulations.