Productivity Impacts of Veil Nets on UK Crangon Vessels |
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| Authors: | James Innes Sean Pascoe |
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| Institution: | 1. James Innes is with the CEMARE, University of Portsmouth, Burnaby Terrace, 1‐8 Burnaby Road, Portsmouth PO1 3AE, UK. E‐mail: for correspondence. Sean Pascoe is with the CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research, 233 Middle Street, Cleveland 4163, Australia. E‐mail: . This study was undertaken as part of the DEFRA‐funded project ‘Gear Technology, Discard Reduction and Environmentally Friendly Fishing Studies’ (MF0738);2. and the European Commission sixth framework project DEGREE – Development of Fishing Gears with Reduced Effects on the Environment (Project No. 022576). The authors would like to thank Andy Revill, Tom Catchpole and Andy Lawler from the Centre for Fisheries, Environment and Aquaculture Studies (CEFAS), and Trond Bjorndal, Simon Mardle and Ana Norman‐López from the Centre for the Economics and Management of Aquatic Resources (CEMARE), University of Portsmouth. The authors would also like to thank the reviewers and editor for their useful comments and suggestions. |
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| Abstract: | As with many shrimp fisheries, the North Sea brown shrimp (Crangon crangon) fishery has been characterised by by‐catch and discarding of juvenile fish species that are of value to other fleet segments. To offset this externality, the mandatory use of veil nets or separator panels was introduced in 2003 for all vessels using an aggregate beam length of more than 8 m. Sea trials prior to this date suggested that retained catch might be reduced by between 8% and 35%, depending on the area and season. These studies, however, do not consider the behavioural response by fishers to reduce this impact. In this study, the actual impact of the restrictions on the productivity of UK Crangon vessels was estimated using a production frontier approach. The ex post analysis suggests that a productivity decline of around 14% has been experienced by UK vessels adopting this gear. |
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| Keywords: | By‐catch gear restrictions productivity stochastic production frontier veil nets C23 Q22 Q28 |
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