| Summary: | Depleted fish stocks across the globe, together with risk and uncertainty over future fishery resources, have raised questions about the management and ownership of increasingly northerly distributed species. The case of the invasive Snow Crab in the Barents Sea illustrates multidimensional weaknesses in existing governance structures in Arctic fisheries as species ranges shift. Commercial exploitation started in 2012 as an open-access fishery in international waters of the Loophole, but shifted into a private property management regime after the designation of the crab as sedentary in 2015. Today the fishery is managed separately by Russia and Norway in the Russian Exclusive Economic Zone, the Norwegian part of the Loophole and the Svalbard Fisheries Protection Zone (FPZ). The closing of the commons has resulted in the exclusion of European vessels, which has generated a large conflict between Norway and the EU regarding the property rights for sedentary resources. Acknowledging the invasive nature of the crab, which has largely been ignored by decision-makers so far, we analyze strategic interactions among Norwegian and EU players that accommodate for enforcement (or not) of property rights. The fishery in the Svalbard FPZ acts as a control at the invasion frontier that limits the spread further north and west. We consider the interactions between Norway and third-party countries at this frontier, by identifying their direct and indirect payoffs at stake. The decision of third-party countries to fish and accept or reject the property rights enforcement by Norway affects payoffs to fishers, other stakeholders involved in the rights dispute, and more broadly distributed ecosystem values. Our focus on the invasion externality allows for explicitly considering the implications of Snow Crab management for the rest of the world, beyond just fisheries stakeholders, and differentiates this study from previous applications of game theory in fisheries.
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