Principal Investigator(s): (Include name, affiliation and email address):

• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Fish movement; Bering Sea; Navarin; Theragra chalcogramma
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.503.6061; http://doc.nprb.org/web/09_prjs/909_app1_web.pdf

Summary of Proposed Work: The eastern Bering Sea fishery for walleye pollock (Theragra chalcogramma) yields gross exvessel revenues about $ billion and a first wholesale value over $1 billion; it is the premier US fishery. While there is general agreement that this fishery is managed under principles that will ensure sustainability, the eastern Bering Sea pollock stock is not wholly contained within the US EEZ and there are concerns about the role of historic and potential future catches from regions such as the Bogoslof Basin, the Donut Hole, and the Navarin Basin. The management of straddling stocks can be highly contentious and challenging, particularly when the stock is migratory or when the spatial distribution of abundance is variable. The absolute abundance of pollock and the spatial distribution of pollock abundance have varied considerably over the past three decades, with warmer conditions being associated with a shift of the center of abundance to the north and west, where a portion of the stock is subject to harvest by vessels licensed to operate in the Russian Federation EEZ. In this project, we will use stochastic simulations to identify optimal cooperative and non-cooperative harvest management strategies from the perspective of US and Russian pollock fisheries under climate-induced changes in abundance and the distribution of abundance. Like it or not, this stock is a shared stock. Game theory suggests that cooperative solutions offer many advantages; identifying cooperative solutions provide important leverage in negotiations. In the absence of cooperation it is even more important to identify strategic noncooperative solutions.