Marine protected areas performance in a model of the fishery. Natural Resource Modelling

• Main Authors: Ussif Rashid Sumaila, Fisheries Centre
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2002
• Subjects: atlantic cod; North East Atlantic
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.624.3833; http://www.seaaroundus.org/journal/suma.pdf

ABSTRACT. What bio-economic benefits can be expected from the implementation of marine protected areas (MPAs) in a fishery facing a shock in the form of recruitment failure, and managed jointly compared to separately? What are the opti-mal sizes of MPAs under cooperation and non-cooperation? I explore these questions in the current paper by developing a computational two-agent model, which incorporates MPAs us-ing the North East Atlantic cod fishery as an example. Results from the study indicate that MPAs can protect the discounted economic rent from the fishery if the habitat is likely to face a shock, and fishers have a high discount rate. The total stand-ing biomass increases with increasing MPA size but only up to a point. Based on the specifics of the model, the study also shows that the economically optimal size of MPA for cod varies between 50 70 % depending on (i) the exchange rate